Authors: Debra Ginsberg
She takes it from a box and puts it in the oven and cooks it on the rack for a short time and then she takes it out and cuts it with the pizza cutter and then she puts it on a plate for me to eat.
A box. She takes it from a box! I was now officially the mother from hell; a non-nurturing, uncaring shrew whose child’s most comforting food memories involved frozen pizza. Godammit, Blaze, I thought. Ice Princess must be getting a good laugh out of this one. I scanned the rest of the book. There was not one other child who mentioned his or her mother making food out of a box, which was good news for all the other mothers, every one of whom was now going to be reading about my son’s lousy eating habits.
There was more to the story, of course, than what was on those damning pages. Blaze wouldn’t have thought to tell Ice Princess that the reason I took pizza “from a box” was because it was one of very few things he would deign to eat in the first place. And it was Wolfgang Puck frozen pizza, thank you very much, and therefore not cheap, either. Still, why couldn’t he have chosen one of the other things I made for him, like pasta with olive oil and garlic or sauteed tofu?
“Pizza from a box?” I asked him. “That’s your favorite food?”
“I like it, Mom,” he said.
“Yes, well, you’re going to have to start eating some different foods. You can’t live on frozen pizza.”
Spurred by my shame over the Mother’s Day book, I decided it was time for a change in the way I dealt with Blaze and I was going to start with the food first. After all, who was the parent here? He had to eat and so he’d have to eat what I made him. To make it easier, I created a food game to win Blaze over to my way of thinking. I made seven
colored cards with drawings of different foods on each. One card had a drawing of a carrot, one had a sandwich, one a banana, and so on. I told Blaze that every day, he’d have to select a card and eat whatever was on it. He was in charge of which card he picked and he could eat whatever else he wanted as long as it included that particular food. Blaze seemed up for the game and we started well. I had included some foods that were already on Blaze’s menu, so for the first couple of days he chose those. We argued about every other card.
“Why do I have to eat a carrot? I hate carrots!”
“Just eat a little.”
“No.”
“A little.”
“No.”
“One bite.”
“No.”
If I got him to eat even a fraction of the food in question, I considered it a victory and moved on. I was sure that eventually he’d come around but I had doubts about my own stamina. These kitchen arguments could go on and on. Blaze had a will of iron and never backed down. We finally reached a point where the only card left was the one bearing a sandwich. After discussing a variety of options, we settled on a very simple cheese sandwich, no condiments. As soon as it was ready, Blaze stomped out of the kitchen. “I’m not eating that,” he declared.
“You will eat it,” I said.
“I don’t want a sandwich.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like it.”
“How do you know if you don’t try it?”
“I don’t want to try it.”
“If you don’t at least have a bite of this sandwich, I’m not making you anything else. You can be hungry.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said and threw himself onto the couch.
Although I had my moments of irritation, I very rarely got angry at Blaze. But seeing him sitting there, resolute, without the slightest regard for my authority sent me into a spin.
“You
will
eat it!” I snapped at him. “Whether you like it or not.” I marched over with the sandwich and broke off a piece. Blaze turned his head away and started to yell. I stuck the sandwich in front of his face but he kept moving away from me. This episode was turning into a major power struggle and I told myself that if I let Blaze win it, I would never be able to convince him of anything again. There was more dodging and yelling from him, more feinting with the piece of sandwich from me. Finally, I held him down with one arm while I forced a piece of cheese sandwich into his mouth with my free hand. He cried, gagged, choked, and finally spit out the wad of bread and cheese. If he had screamed at me then, even hit me, I would have maintained my angry indignation, but he merely looked up at me, his eyes brimming full with tears and a terrible look of betrayal. This is me feeding my child, I thought, and I had to cover my eyes with my hand so that he wouldn’t see the enormity of my mistake reflected there.
“Why did you do that, Mom?” His voice was trembly and small.
“I’m sorry,” I said and I was. “I just wanted you to eat a sandwich.”
“I don’t like sandwiches,” he said, and tears spilled onto his cheeks.
“I know,” I said. “Forget the sandwich. I’m sorry.”
I took him in my arms and stroked his head, soothing him while he sobbed it out. I was now very angry with myself. How long would it take me to realize that none of the usual rules applied to Blaze? He wasn’t like other kids who would eventually eat if they were hungry enough. Blaze, I now knew, would rather starve before eating something that offended him in some way. It wasn’t my job to change him, to mold him to any kind of standard, whether that standard came from a kindergarten classroom or my own imagination. My job was to feed him, in every sense of the word, to nurture him, and to understand
him. If, for him, that nurturing came out of a box, then fine. It wasn’t his judgment that was passed on the frozen pizza, it was mine.
I threw the food cards away and gradually stopped trying to cajole Blaze into trying new foods. In his own time, he added enough to maintain a balanced, if somewhat monotonous, diet. Blaze never went near a sandwich again, and later I came to a full understanding of the strength of his will and how deeply the sandwich incident had affected him.
“I want to go on a hot-air balloon ride,” he told me one day.
“No way,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to ride around in a laundry basket hundreds of feet in the air,” I told him. “Plus, it’s really expensive. And loud.”
“It’ll be fun,” he said. “C’mon, Mom, please.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“I tell you what,” I said, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll go in a hot-air balloon with you if you eat a sandwich. Any sandwich with anything on it.”
“No, Mom, not that deal. That’s not fair. Give me another deal.”
“All you have to do is eat a sandwich,” I said. “That’s all.”
“I can’t do it,” he said.
“You’ll go up in a hot-air balloon but you won’t try a sandwich?”
“I’m not eating a sandwich.”
“Okay, it’s up to you. Let me know when you’re ready to eat a sandwich and then we’ll go in a hot-air balloon.”
To this day, the sandwich remains unmade and uneaten.
Blaze only gets up early on the weekends. On weekdays, when he has to get up for school, I have to haul him out of bed. This morning is no different.
“Blaze, time to get up,” I tell him for the third time. I bend over his
bed and kiss his cheek. “Come on, honey, you’ve got to eat breakfast.”
“I’m stuck,” he says, voice muffled by covers. “With tape.”
I sigh in relief. Blaze often finds himself “stuck” in bed. When he says he’s stuck with glue, I know it’s going to be a while before I can get him moving. However, stuck with tape means less resistance. When he’s stuck with glue and tape together, I know we’re going to be late for school.
“Tape’s not so bad. Here, let me help rip it off.” I make tape-tearing sounds and Blaze laughs, gets out of bed.
It’s a warm May morning. First grade is almost over. Blaze has done really well this year. So well, in fact, that I wish it could go on forever like this. He’s had a great teacher this year. Unlike Ice Princess, Ms. Lamb has eschewed strict curricula in favor of a more creative approach, letting the kids draw what they want or write stories off the tops of their heads. She gives spelling tests once a week and Blaze has scored 100 percent on almost every one of them. He is so proud of himself every Friday when he comes out of the classroom to meet me holding a perfect score in his hand.
Blaze no longer spends time in the special-ed class. Ms. Lamb doesn’t have a problem with his behavior and he’s doing grade-level work so there’s no need. I see Sally sometimes when I go to pick Blaze up from school. “He’s doing so well,” she says. “I miss him.” I tell Sally that Ms. Lamb is like a gift and that, were it not for her own skills, Blaze wouldn’t be doing as well. I’m quite sincere about this too. Now that Blaze is flourishing in a regular classroom, I love everybody.
Blaze hops down the stairs to eat breakfast. It may take him a while to get out of bed, but once he’s awake, Blaze stays in first gear, rushing full speed into his day.
Along with Blaze’s academic triumph, there is something else that has changed this year. Blaze seems to have finally found his voice, which is to say, he talks now. He talks all the time. He questions, he postulates, he explores literal meanings and makes his own metaphors.
He rambles. Occasionally he talks nonsense, stringing words together for effect. When he does this, I stop him, tell him that he can’t be understood and that people will think he’s weird. Sometimes he tries to brake himself, but, more often, he goes on, having fallen in love with words, their meanings, the sounds they make as they roll around in his mouth. I’ve had to make some rules; things he can talk about at school and things that have to stay at home. For instance, two of his favorite topics over the last couple of months, death and God, have been consigned to the discussion-at-home-only category while racial discrimination (which he really is having a tough time wrapping his mind around) can be discussed at school, since his class’s unit on Martin Luther King Jr. was what started the dialogue in the first place. He is not to discuss the fact that days of the week have colors for him at school, but it is all right to tell Ms. Lamb that the noise of the fire alarm scares him. This morning, Blaze wants to get in some discussion on the nonschool topics before we head out. He crunches dry cereal and talks between bites.
“Mom, who put salt in the ocean?”
“Nobody put salt in, it’s just there.”
“How did it get there?”
“It’s always been there.”
“Did God put salt in the ocean?”
“You could say that.”
“Why did God make the ocean salty?”
“I don’t know, Blaze.”
He takes a very brief breather. There’s more. There always is.
“Where’s God, Mom?”
“God is everywhere,” I tell him. “In everything.”
“I thought God was in heaven.”
“He is.”
“Then where’s heaven?”
“Where God is.”
“Mom!”
“Okay, that’s it, time for school, let’s go.”
Blaze struggles with his shoes and I help him. He still can’t tie his laces. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to tie his laces. Nothing I’ve shown him seems to work. I put his lunch box in his backpack (juice, granola bar, trail mix, fruit roll; the same things every day, according to his wishes) and we head out the door. A few steps away from the door and he’s at it again.
“Is God inside me too?”
“Yes, in everything and everybody.”
“Is God in heaven?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know; please, Blaze, enough. I can’t explain heaven to you this morning. Heaven is a state of mind. Everybody has a different concept of what heaven is, you know? Theologians and philosophers have debated the existence of God and heaven forever. It’s too complicated to get into right now, you’re just going to have to take my word for it.” I do this sometimes, just ramble off on my own, knowing that somewhere in there a few words or the quality of my tone will make sense to Blaze.
“No more on God and heaven now, okay? Remember what I told you, no talking about this at school.”
“Okay, Mom.”
He’s quiet for a bit and we walk the rest of the way to school in peace. Once we hit the campus, I tell him to have a great day and give him a kiss good-bye. “Be a good boy,” I say.
“Mom?” he says in a half-whisper.
“What?”
He points to his forehead. “Heaven is here,” he says.
“Blaze!”
“Okay, but is it? Is it, Mom?”
“Yes, all right. No more now.”
“Bye, Mom.”
I wave and smile at Ms. Lamb and watch Blaze disappear into her classroom. I wonder if he’s going to continue thinking about this or if he’s finally figured it out. God is in heaven. God is in everybody. Heaven is here. Well, I think as I turn around and head home, who’s to say that he’s wrong?
November 1996
T
hanksgiving has always been Blaze’s favorite holiday. The Christmas-Hanukkah-winter solstice season is a bit too overwhelming for him, what with all the frenetic gift giving and year-end parties. Halloween is exciting for him, but it does involve some work and going door to door in search of candy is usually a solo effort. New Year’s Eve is a bit of a bust because he can never make it up late enough for the new year to begin, and Independence Day, while beautiful with its fireworks, is too loud. With eight members in our family, there are many birthday celebrations throughout the year and Blaze loves these too, but Thanksgiving is the only time when we all get together without the expectations that come with gift giving and receiving. This is why Blaze, who often says, “I like my family to be together,” loves this day so much.
Our Thanksgivings follow a predictable pattern. We all cook something within our own area of specialty and bring it to my parents’ house. I make apple pie almost every year. This Thanksgiving, however, much to the derision of my entire family, I’ve expanded my range and made succotash. Maya makes a giant vegetarian pot pie and cinnamon rolls every year and my brother, Bo, makes two trays of lasagna. My father prepares an elaborate antipasto platter, a meal in itself, with marinated
cheeses, vegetables, and olives. Lavander is usually in charge of beverages (which makes her a favorite with Blaze, who eschews all the delicacies in favor of frozen pizza or spaghetti, but will drink almost anything) and Déja brings bread. My mother cooks nothing, but lays the table with linen and flowers. There is always more food than anybody can eat. On the rare occasions when we are joined by nonfamily members (girlfriends, boyfriends, and lonely workmates with no family in town) who bring their own dishes, there are leftovers for a week.
We don’t often have outsiders at our Thanksgivings. For one thing, our vegetarian feasts don’t appeal to the majority of people who can’t see celebrating this holiday without eating turkey. For another, our family gatherings are fairly loud, competitive, and intense, and it’s a hardy soul indeed who can stand a full six hours of this atmosphere without having grown up in it. So far, we haven’t found many return customers for Thanksgiving and generally that suits everyone fine, because the pressure to be on one’s best behavior in front of a potential mate or friend is often too much for us anyway.
This year, there are no visitors, just the eight of us gathered around the table watching my brother as he ceremoniously “carves” the lasagna. Blaze circles the table recording the scene with a video camera, producing sliding images of the floor, ceiling, plates, and mouths. Midway through dinner, my father asks the same question he has asked for as long as any of us can remember.
“What is everybody thankful for?” he queries. “Who wants to go first?” Everybody groans with the weight of having to come up with either a smart-ass answer that is witty enough or one that sounds sincere and interesting at the same time. There is a mix of both this year; some of us making remarks about the food, not having to go hungry, being thankful for stretch pants, and so on. When it’s Blaze’s turn, he doesn’t protest. “I’m thankful for the family,” he says.
After we’ve eaten dinner but before we’ve stuffed ourselves with dessert, we break out the board games. This is another family tradition
that lives on despite the fact that it almost always ends badly. By badly, I mean that there is almost no board game invented that doesn’t lead to a raging argument among the various members of my family.
(Unlike the old days when the three youngest siblings were too little to play and went to bed early. Then, it was only the four of us, my parents, Maya and I, huddled around a good game of Clue or Masterpiece, now defunct. Now there are simply too many competing personalities for civility.)
Gradually, we’ve run through almost all of the available standbys. Trivial Pursuit was the first to go, hurled unceremoniously into the fireplace one year after this question was heard several times: “You think you’re smarter than me, don’t you?”
Pictionary bit the dust a couple of years later when various players accused other players of wanting to play the game only to show off their superior drawing skills. Monopoly is too long and too boring (although my brother makes interesting side deals—“I’ll sell you Park Place if I don’t ever have to pay when I land on it”—that piss off the players not in on said deals). With most of the old standbys gone, we try the new, faddish games that come out every year. Hardly any of them make it to a second Thanksgiving and usually end up in toy-drive boxes by Christmas. Still, we maintain this annual ritual with all of its histrionics. The biggest proponent of the game playing is Blaze, who has yet to participate as an active player.
This year we play a game, in teams, that has something to do with shouting out as many answers as possible within a certain category. We really don’t need any encouragement to start yelling and soon it’s a free-for-all:
“What’s the matter with you, why can’t you get any of the answers?”
“I got all of them in the last category, what about you?”
“Why are you helping their team? Don’t you want to be on my team, is that it?”
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
“They’re cheating!”
“I don’t want to play on your team!”
By unanimous decision, the game ends before anyone can win. This way, we can avoid the usual door-slamming exits that follow a Thanksgiving board game.
“Why do we keep playing these stupid games?” my mother asks.
“Because it’s fun,” Déja says.
“So certain people can show off how smart they are,” Lavander says.
“Is that directed at me?” Maya asks.
“Come on now,” my father says. “Break out the cinnamon rolls.”
Blaze is sitting at the table now, waiting for dessert (of which he always partakes), and has started playing with the small green chips that have come with the now-abandoned game.
“I’ve got a game,” he says, suddenly. “Everybody plays.” He deals the green chips until we all have at least two. “Okay,” he says, “everybody look at your cards.” We all pick up our chips and stare at them.
“Who’s got the radio cassette?” Blaze asks.
“I do,” I say.
“Okay, who’s got the horse?”
“I do,” my father says.
“Nana, have you got the jackal?” Blaze asks.
“Yes, I’ve got the jackal and I’ve got an elevator,” says my mother.
“I have the zebra,” Lavander says.
“I’ve got the metal iron,” Blaze says. “What have you got, Bo?”
“I’ve got the…um, it starts with a
J. JL
.”
“Jail?” my father asks.
“Jell-O,” Blaze says.
“I’ve got the CD,” Maya says.
“I’ve got a cave and a vacuum cleaner,” Blaze says. “The cave trades with the zebra.” He exchanges one of his chips for one of Lavander’s.
“Hey,” Bo says, “I want the metal iron. I’m trading my Jell-O for a metal iron.”
“I’m not trading,” Blaze says. “You have to steal it.”
“A steal! Excellent,” Bo says.
It goes on like this for a few minutes, all of us trading, stealing and exchanging the plain green chips, enchanted by the fact that we’re able to play this game that, for all intents and purposes, makes no sense at all. Finally, Blaze says, “All right, everybody has to add up their points.” While we’re all trying to come up with a number that might work, my father yells triumphantly, “I’ve got it! I win!”
“He wins!” we all cheer and break into hysterical laughter. We laugh so hard it takes several minutes to calm down enough to talk.
“That’s a good game, Blaze,” my mother says, wiping tears from her eyes. “What’s it called?”
“Card Gazetteer,” he says without hesitation and this sends us off into fresh gales. Blaze is glowing and wants to play again. It’s the first game we’ve played for many years that hasn’t ended in a row.
After the second game (which follows much the same pattern as the first), we break it up. Maya and my mother go to the kitchen to make coffee and tea.
“Blaze is so creative,” I tell my father. “Look at that game. He just came up with that off the top of his head. And we all managed to play it.”
“We could play it because we know him,” my father says.
“But isn’t that the essence of creativity?” I ask. “It’s not because we all know him but because we’re all willing. That’s how a game gets made—somebody thinks up a premise and rules and then you just play.”
“Yes, but it would be difficult for anybody else to play that game with him, that’s what I’m saying,” my father tells me. “Like somebody his own age, for example.”
“So, does it make us weird because we can play his game?” I ask.
“What do
you
think?” my father says and shrugs.
“Maybe we should tell them about this game at the next IEP meeting,” I tell him. “Then they’d really think we were all crazy.”
By the time that Blaze finished first grade, I was convinced that his school problems were a thing of the past. I believed that he had finally “straightened out,” to use my father’s words, and that, despite his differences, he would be able to integrate into a regular classroom. He had been taking growth hormone for several months and was starting to catch up to his peers in height. Even better, he had been very healthy for a whole year, with no asthma attacks or frantic visits to the ER. Academically, he had kept up with his class and had even excelled in some areas. It was difficult to argue with this success, so at our last meeting of that school year, the IEP team decided to enroll him in a regular-education second grade classroom and use Sally’s special-ed class as a backup plan if that was needed.
That summer, Blaze spent every day swimming. He was never happier than when he was submerged in water, whether it was in the ocean or our condo community’s swimming pool. He called the latter “the jewelry pool” because of the way the light sparkled off the blue water. I lay on a chaise near the water’s edge and read books, newspapers, and magazines while I kept an eye on him, feeling chewed up and tired after a night spent running around the restaurant where I worked. I was ready for a change, I decided, and it had been a long time coming.
I had been waiting on tables for half my life and I was sick of my identity as a waitress–single mother. I was already thirty-three and felt that I had nothing to show for myself, except for the ability to survive comfortably. I’d spent a good portion of the last few years in one predicament or another with Blaze, whether these were physical or school related. Now that these crises had passed, I discovered a big void in my personal life. I didn’t want to end up becoming “Alice”: an old waitress, soaking my feet and wisecracking with my son, waiting for some man to come and rescue me. (And even if I had wanted such
a scenario, I had serious doubts that it would ever pan out quite that way for me, anyway.)
One of the side jobs I had during this period was a position as a reader for a well-known literary agent. When one of her employees left to get married that summer I took over the position in her office. It was the first time in my life that I’d worked full-time with the rest of the working world. I loved the job and immersed myself in it fully. I spent much less time with Blaze and throughout August, Maya took my spot beside the pool. When school started in September, she agreed to pick Blaze up when she was at home, which was most of the week. For the other days, I enrolled him in an after-school child care program. Even then, I didn’t pick him up, though. It was Maya who brought him home before I got there. We all saw much less of each other, but I was convinced it was all right. This was what everyone else did, wasn’t it?
Second grade began inauspiciously. Because I wouldn’t be able to pick Blaze up from school anymore, I made it a point to meet with his new teacher, Kimmi, on the first day and ask her if it was possible to set up some sort of schedule to talk every week so that I’d know how Blaze was faring. Kimmi was very busy sorting pencils and arranging kitty stickers and seemed a little baffled as to why I would want to talk to her personally on a regular basis.
“He had such a great year in first grade,” I told her. “I really think he can do well again but I want to make sure that if there are any problems, I know about them right away and then I can work on it with him.”
“Uh-huh,” Kimmi said.
“I used to talk to Ms. Lamb every day,” I continued, “because I came to pick Blaze up. But I’m working at a different job now and I can’t be here when school gets out, but I think it’s important…” I trailed off.
Kimmi had long hair the color of butter and large, round eyes that stared at me with a total lack of irony. To be honest, I didn’t see much else in those eyes, either, but it was the absence of irony that bothered me the most. Nothing to be done, I thought. You can’t exactly complain about a teacher because she’s not ironic enough.
“I could call you at home,” Kimmi said as if she’d suddenly come up with a cure for cancer. “If that would work for you.”
“That would be fabulous,” I said. “Maybe every Tuesday or Wednesday—something like that?”
“Sure,” Kimmi said, showing me her lovely white teeth.
Kimmi and Blaze were a bad match from the very beginning. At home, he complained that he didn’t like her but, when pressed, wouldn’t or couldn’t say why. He absolutely hated sitting cross-legged on the floor at the beginning of the day when Kimmi did “circle activities” with the class. Each child had a masking tape strip marked with his or her name that they were required to sit on for the duration of these morning activities. As if she were echoing the complaints from kindergarten, Kimmi reported that Blaze did everything to wiggle, squirm, and finagle his way off his name square and out of the circle every morning.
“He’s really having difficulty attending,” she said. “I think that the activities we’re doing now may be too difficult for him.”
Blaze
was
attending, it turned out, just not to what Kimmi was saying. He reported on what each child in the circle looked like, what noises they made, whether anybody cried, laughed, or was sent to a time-out.