The Sharp End of Life. Dierdre Wolownick
and I knew that unless there was blood instead of laughter, or he lay writhing on the floor, things were as they should be and I could keep cleaning the kitchen or making coffee for my guests. And his big sister, his partner in adventure, took it all in stride; he was the only baby brother she’d ever known, so it was all normal, to her.
My father used to talk about a similar experience he’d had during World War II, when he was stationed in North Africa. He was terrified when he shipped out of New Jersey for a place he’d never heard of on the other side of the world—a place where a lot of people were getting killed. People he knew. But he used to tell me that it was impossible to keep up a fear like that. Eventually, it dulled into a vague ache in the back of the mind, fading behind the wear and tear of daily life, lying dormant until it was needed for survival.
Thanks, Daddy. Lesson learned. Over time, my fear for Alex’s safety had faded into something that could come screaming to life if needed. But for my own sanity, I had to train myself to put that aside as life chugged along.
The more parents I met like the woman at the playground, the more I realized that none of them would have been able to live with—let alone encourage—the skills my son worked so hard on every day. They, like my own mother, would have tried to shut him down. From their viewpoint, what he loved to do was far too dangerous for a little boy.
On weekends, I’d often see kids, usually with their dad, practicing with a bat or kicking balls across the cul-de-sac. And I knew that some of them went to dance or acrobatics or swimming classes. It seemed their parents had their own list of acceptable endeavors that they would encourage. Alex just wasn’t interested in any of those.
Some parents I talked with even suggested that I take him to a professional for evaluation, so he could be put on a drug that would slow him down—make him more “normal.” A drug? I didn’t even like taking aspirin. To give a perfectly healthy child a drug just to make him conform to someone else’s concept of normal seemed filled with hubris. What made their version of normal more valid than my son’s?
Other people advised trying gymnastics when I talked with them about the difficulties of raising Alex. “That’ll harness all that energy,” they promised.
For a year or two, we tried it with both kids. Alex hated it. The teacher controlled what his students were allowed to do during the class. To Alex, this was intolerable. His little body yearned to do so much more—to do what he knew he could do on those bars, rings, and ropes. He was probably more in control of his body than the gymnastics teacher was of his own. Instead of harnessing excess energy, gymnastics made Alex more pent-up and frustrated.
Can’t you control your son?
I could only ever think of one sensible reply to this: Why would I want to? Don’t you want your child to know what he’s capable of? How much she can accomplish? I wanted both my children to know that about themselves.
That was why I gave them the gift of bilingualism. I knew from experience that children can grow up using multiple languages—each one helps expand their brain, helps them view and interact with the world in ways incomprehensible to a monolingual person.
In the same way, they needed the freedom to choose the activities they loved, the ones that kept them up at night with anticipation. Stasia sampled many activities as she grew—soccer, dance, piano, flute—before finally settling on the few that would become the foundation of her adult explorations: running, cycling (often with camping involved), and anything that took her outdoors (with the written word and music as secondary passions). In Japan, one of her first words was “outside,” pronounced without consonants. “Ow—eye” she would exclaim any time we sat her down to put on her shoes for an excursion.
If I hadn’t given my children the freedom to discover the things they loved, their lives would probably have been much safer, and my life would have been much calmer. Easier. Should that be our goal?
I was sorry that Alex had no one to share his adventures with. I could relate to that from my own childhood, and now from my marriage. I knew from experience that loneliness can be survived, even surmounted. But I wished for better for my son.
I was married for life. For better or for worse. When I made a vow, I kept it. And we had been married in my parents’ Catholic church, in Pennsylvania, where the rules about that were very clear: “What God has joined, let no man put asunder.” And I had never known any divorced people. Back then, that word was always whispered, never said out loud, especially not in front of the children. It wasn’t a polite word, at least not in my world, not allowed by church or social milieu or family.
There would be no sundering, for us. I would make it work.
ten
IT TOOK ME DECADES to absorb the fact that I had never been a part of my husband’s life. Little hints were thrown in my path over the years, but no normal person could have understood what they were. Even simple things like saying hello or goodbye were complicated, or even frightening.
By the time Stasia and Alex were about seven and five, I was regularly writing articles for the local newspapers and for magazines, and short stories for whoever would pay me. I worked every school day in my quiet little office, the fourth bedroom of our house, accompanied by occasional distant barking that only highlighted the peace and made it easy to concentrate.
One day, around midafternoon, I was working hard on an article, hoping to finish it that day. I knew I was alone until the kids got out of school.
Suddenly, no warning, I heard a basso profundo at my elbow.
“Any mail?”
My pen flew across the desk as my other hand reached for my heart, which whipped wildly into arrhythmia.
“Charlie! Please don’t do that! You know I’m here alone—you scared the shit out of me!”
“Any mail today? I’m expecting a check.”
“No! God, could you please not do that again?”
He shrugged as he walked away.
The second time was a repeat of the first. And over, and over. For years. He would never let me know when he came into the house. Or left it.
In my European childhood, back in New York, everyone hugged and kissed each time they left or came home. It was a ritual that solidified family, made friends feel welcome. Everyone we knew did it. I’d never given it a thought until it disappeared from my life.
I never learned why Charlie did the things he did, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I lost track of how many times I stood in front of him, repeating a question over and over. There was nothing wrong with his hearing. So I’d repeat it again. How stupid is hope? How blind? I’d repeat my question until he got angry enough to lash out at me for bothering him. But I’d still have no answer to my simple questions about day-to-day life.
“When are you leaving for your conference?”
“When did they say we can pick up the car?”
Simple things I needed to know to run a household of four people.
Charlie’s silence made me a single parent. But I kept trying. That tenacity would serve me well later, but then it was the kind of blind, mindless repetition with the same predictable, empty result that can lead to insanity.
“Charlie, who’s picking up the kids today?” I tossed over my shoulder as I ran down the hall to help someone dress for preschool.
“Charlie, are you picking up the kids?” I asked again as I raced through the kitchen, throwing together everyone’s food in little bags or boxes. I picked up the crushed cereal bits off the floor. Closed the drawers Alex had used as steps to climb up on the counter. Wiped the juice off the table. Wiped the footprints off the counter. Brushed Stasia’s hair. Straightened the blinds that Alex had left askew on one of his breakneck passes through the kitchen.
“Charlie,” I said as I saw him walk past our blur of activity,