Authors: Debra Ginsberg
“I’ll get him,” Mr. Davidson says. “Keep an eye on the other kiddies, will you?”
Nobody else needs monitoring, as it turns out. They’re all sitting there, docile as cold little lambs. I watch Mr. Davidson grasp Blaze’s arm gently but firmly and steer him back to the fold while speaking into his ear, and turn my head back out to face the gray, choppy water. I sense that this is going to be one of those days without end.
At last, the snack bar break comes. I get my coffee and Blaze eats a bag of chips and drinks a soda. These items are barely past his gullet when he queries, “When are we going home?”
“Listen,” I say sotto voce, through gritted teeth, “I don’t want to hear one more demand out of you, do you hear me? You’ve already shown me your worst behavior today as it is. You wanted to come on this damn boat and you’ve done nothing but complain all day. I’ve seen better behavior from two-year-olds. You are embarrassing me and you are embarrassing yourself. This is a nightmare!”
“I want to go home,” Blaze says. “I’ve had enough.”
“We’ll go home when it’s time to go home.”
“I want to go home now.”
I hiss at him and grab his arm in a grip much less gentle than Mr. Davidson’s. “Quiet!”
“I won’t be silent.”
“Just wait until I tell Papa about this.” I don’t like to bring my father in as the bad guy, but this is an emergency situation. It works too. For a few moments, Blaze stops complaining. He refuses, however, to participate in the planned activities aboard the boat.
If I were less miserable, I think I would admire this field trip. The kids form groups and rotate along a series of stations on deck, learning a variety of ocean facts, from how to tell a sea star from a starfish to examining the water for algae. I follow along helplessly, stopping periodically to pull Blaze aside and tell him to cooperate. Mr. Davidson
watches my machinations with bemused interest and remains entirely unruffled.
“I don’t know how you do this every year,” I tell Mr. Davidson.
“Just lucky, I guess,” Mr. Davidson answers. “I’ve got the sixth-graders too, so I get to go on this boat trip
and
go away to sixth-grade camp every year.” He follows this statement with a chuckle.
“I don’t…” I trail off for a moment, unsure how to finish my sentence. “I don’t think Blaze will be able to go to sixth-grade camp,” I say, finally. “I know it’s not until next year, but if this is any indication…I just can’t see him going away by himself for a whole week.”
Mr. Davidson eyes me carefully. I don’t know him very well, but I can already tell that he’s not a man who admits defeat easily. If he were, he couldn’t possibly have spent twenty years teaching special education. He looks at me now a little sadly and says, “Maybe not. It doesn’t seem like something he’d enjoy. It’s pointless to force camp on a kid who isn’t ready. But we’ll see.”
It’s after five
P.M
. when we arrive back at the dock. My gratitude at being on terra firma once more is matched only by a sense of penetrating exhaustion. Blaze seems to have gotten some sort of bizarre second wind and he sits opposite me on the bus that will take us back to school, chattering and annoying his seatmate, a small boy who just wants to pass out peacefully where he sits. I’m too pissed off at Blaze’s shocking behavior today even to talk to him.
It’s dark when we arrive back at the school. My father is waiting in the parking lot to give us a ride home.
“Well, how was it?” my father asks as we climb into the car.
“Aside from the hypothermia?” I ask and shake my head. I spout my litany of complaints about Blaze’s behavior. How he was out of control. How he wouldn’t listen to me. How embarrassed I felt for both of us. How he didn’t deserve to go on any more field trips. My father’s face grows stormy and he turns around to look at Blaze.
“How could you do that to your mother?” he asks. Blaze says nothing.
Once we are home, I tell Blaze, “I want you to take a shower, get into your pajamas, and go to bed. I’m finished talking to you today.”
“I’m sorry about my behavior, Mom,” Blaze says.
“Why be sorry now?” I say. “What’s the good of that?” I choose my words carefully, consciously trying to elicit true remorse from my son. He has to understand the consequences of his actions. I don’t want him to be sorry because my disappointment in him makes him feel uncomfortable. I want him to be sorry because he doesn’t want
me
, or anyone else, to feel sad, disappointed, or pained.
I collapse into the darkness of my own bed shortly after Blaze, but despite my fatigue, I can’t sleep. The day spins itself around and around in my head. I keep seeing Blaze run away, out of control, listening to nobody. My thoughts are black. Is this the way it’s going to be forever? Blaze is growing. In height, he has almost caught up with me. He is no longer a small boy to be lifted up and away from trouble by his mother. What will happen if he continues on in this way? I can barely control him physically now. I have more faith in Mr. Davidson than I’ve had in any of Blaze’s teachers, but I wonder now if that will be enough. And if it isn’t? Where do we go from here?
June 1999
T
here are two days left until the end of the school year. In my classroom, as well as in all the others, the kids seem to sense the anticipation of the exhausted adults around them. We’re all tired for good reason. This has been a tough year in the preschool. One of our kids stopped showing up in February, her emotionally unstable mother claiming that “she’s sick.” Another child barely made it through surgery in March and spent several weeks on life support. Still another was in a major car accident that severely injured her sister. The school nurse asked the child’s father for a medical release, but he hasn’t produced one. She hasn’t been back to school since then. Our teacher went to their house, but the doors were all locked, shades drawn, and weeks’ worth of mail was crammed in the mailbox.
The “light toileting” Dr. Roberts had so euphemistically described when she offered me this job turned out to be a vast understatement. There have been between eight and ten children in our classroom this year and, at any given time, only one or two are able to use the bathroom by themselves. Some children arrive every morning with a full diaper. “He did it on the way over here,” the mothers always say. “So sorry.”
Our children often come to school sick. “He was fine this morning,”
the mothers say when we point out fevers, coughing, streaming noses. As a result, our classroom has become a veritable petri dish of infectious diseases. We had an outbreak of strep throat in April, which sent three adults in the classroom (myself included) to urgent-care facilities. We’ve battled pinkeye, bronchitis, and pneumonia. I’ve already had all three this spring.
Of course, there have been high notes as well. Most of the kids have made good progress. Little things, like successfully potty training a child who, mere months ago, shrieked in terror at the very thought of the bathroom, send us into a state of euphoria. I started a rudimentary, but very successful, yoga program with the kids a few months ago. The sight of eight severely handicapped preschoolers in perfect “downward dog” position, alone, was worth the price of admission. Still, I understand now, like never before, why teachers start looking so very happy come June. In the staff lounge, there is a calendar with a running countdown of the days left (complete with a red
X
through the days we’ve survived). It’s as if we’re all soon to be paroled.
Today, one of our parents has scheduled a magician to come by the class and perform his act. We speculate: Will it freak the kids out—rabbits jumping out of hats and the like? Loud noises? Crowds? These are all things that are way out of the comfort zone for our kids and we are nervous. What’s more, we’ve invited the two other special-ed classes to join us, so the room will be full of special-needs kids from the ages of three to eight years old.
At the appointed time, we gather on the floor: kids, teachers, and aides. I’ve got one child on my lap and one directly in front of me within arm’s reach. The little one in front of me is a sweet towhead from another class named Jill who I’ve worked with a few times over the course of the year.
“Hi, Miss Debra,” she says through the space her front teeth have recently vacated. She grabs one of my hands and holds on to it tightly while I pat her softly on the back with the other. I have learned the
power of touch this year. We are always in physical contact with our kids. We stroke their heads and their backs. We clean their faces and brush their cheeks with our fingers. We hold them on our laps, our arms creating a ring of safety around their bodies. We hug them tightly when they are sad. We squeeze their hands and dance with them. Touch is our primary form of communication in this classroom, a wordless language that everybody understands. When I look around now, I can see this language spoken clearly.
The magician, who looks somewhat daunted by the task ahead of him (I can hear him asking himself,
What was I thinking?
), introduces himself and performs a little physical comedy with a chair. He fakes falling down a few times and the kids, including our little ones, laugh uproariously. He asks for volunteers. These kids, who often won’t even acknowledge the presence of other humans, willingly and eagerly jump up to “help” him.
The magician does the old ring trick first, sliding large metal rings in and out of each other.
All the adults say, “How does he
do
that?” but the kids look back at us like we’re all crazy. Of course the rings disconnect, their glances seem to say. Why wouldn’t they?
The magician chooses Sam, a six-year-old diagnosed with autism, to hold a set of rings and tells him to try to pull them apart. Of course, Sam can’t do it and his face reddens with the strain of trying. Then the magician effortlessly separates his own rings. Sam doesn’t waste any time pondering how the magician is able to do this, promptly handing over his own rings with an expression that clearly says,
Fix these
. Sam doesn’t seem mystified, merely relieved, when the magician pulls the rings apart.
The other tricks follow suit. None of the children are surprised or amazed when the magician pulls brightly colored paper out of a little girl’s shoe or lifts a pair of red silk shorts from a previously empty bag, or wads up tissue in his hand and throws it back out as thin white
streamers that cover the whole audience. As I watch their faces, I realize that none of these things are out of the natural order for these kids. This is not to say that they don’t like the magician—they love him and they love his brightly colored objects, his collapsible wand. They laugh, they applaud. They pay
full
attention. The real magic, it occurs to me, is in their understanding that there
exists
real magic. If not magic per se, then certainly belief of some kind. And pure belief or faith seems to defy the presence of rationality. Can one really explain why one believes? And isn’t there real magic in pure faith? This is what I see in the faces of the children and what makes me unsure, for a moment, if I have any right to be instructing
them
. They are so clearly providing lessons for me.
It is this magic, I know now, which often sustains Blaze. His ongoing fascination and belief in the tooth fairy is just one example. Blaze has always been tickled by the whole concept and has written her long notes explaining what has happened to his teeth, where they fell out, and so on. Once he stopped losing his teeth, he wrote her a note pleading with her to leave something anyway, explaining that he couldn’t do anything about the timing of this frustrating tooth business. He quizzed me repeatedly about the particulars of the tooth fairy. How did she get around? What did she do with all the teeth? How big was she? What did she look like? When these discussions started getting really involved, I tried to subtly imply that the tooth fairy might not actually exist. Blaze’s reaction was equally subtle.
“I know that, Mom,” he said. “But she
does
come.”
I could just as easily
give
him a few quarters or a packet of M&M’s (the usual tooth fairy treats), but he doesn’t want that—he wants the magic of a tooth vanishing in the middle of the night, replaced by sweet rewards.
I don’t blame him for believing. I too believed in the tooth fairy even after she “forgot” to take a tooth of mine one night and, after I com
plained bitterly the next day, left me a note (in my mother’s handwriting, oddly enough) about how busy she’d been. Still, I held fast to my illusions. I lost more teeth and they were traded for strange, magical gifts in deepest night. A silver tiepin with a diamond stud, a plastic ring, a miniature book.
When Blaze started losing his teeth, I was less creative about what I put under his pillow—mostly candy he liked and quarters he could use to play video games. I felt strangely guilty about removing the envelopes in which he’d carefully placed his teeth and his name (“So she knows who it’s from,” he said) and replacing them with treats, as if I were doing somebody else’s job.
I’ve kept almost all of Blaze’s teeth and all of the notes he’s written to the tooth fairy. I felt strange about this too. What if he found them? Would it rattle his faith? No, I think now as I watch the magician pull some other improbable item out of his bag. He would assume, I am sure, that the tooth fairy herself gave them to me for safekeeping.
I turn my attention back to the magician who, although sweating profusely, seems surprised and pleased at the warm reception he is getting and the high level of attention being fixed on him.
There are a few exceptions. Four-year-old Anna has an enormous fear of crowds and public events so she spends the entire session screaming at the top of her surprisingly capable lungs. A few of the kids turn to look at her with knowing looks on their faces. Each one of these children is intimately aware of the fact that, in some way, each is a square peg. When they look at Anna, they understand that whatever is behind her screaming defines her particular square shape. They don’t let it distract them in the least.
There is also Jonah, who doesn’t venture outside the confines of his own head very often and must have an aide assigned to him at all times. Jonah flails out and hits me first and then Sam, broadside, across his back.
“No, Jonah,” his aide says, in a tone that implies this is by no means the first time he’s spoken these words, “No hitting.” I change my seat, but Sam just flinches a little and doesn’t even turn around.
Anna’s sobbing increases in volume and her body starts to go rigid, so the preschool teacher lifts her up and pats her back soothingly until Anna quiets ever so slightly. Jill’s teacher, who is sitting next to me, sees this interchange and shakes her head. She clearly has other ideas as to how the Anna situation could be handled.
“See, if that were me,” she whispers, “I’d just ignore that behavior and remove her from the group.” She studies my expression and reads my reaction to this. “But I guess there’s a long history with her, isn’t there? You’ve probably tried a few things already, haven’t you?”
“Definitely,” I answer. “A few months ago, we couldn’t even have kept her in the same room. This is actually an improvement.”
“Right,” says Jill’s teacher. “You just can’t tell.”
A little later, when Jill laughs with unbridled glee, I turn back to her teacher and say, “I just love her, she’s so sweet.”
“You see, there it is,” the teacher responds. “She
is
a darling, but she has a problem with appropriate laughter. We’re working with her on that.”
Appropriate laughter. This phrase suddenly depresses me. I am struck again by how difficult it is to navigate a world where we have to be mindful of when laughter is appropriate. The mechanism that allows these kids to accept the magician’s tricks as natural and Blaze to continue believing in the tooth fairy is the same one that signals their need to be taught how to laugh appropriately. I sigh out loud. I wonder, as I have so many times before, how Blaze and all these children are going to survive with their own magic intact after going through the minefield of what is, today, normal and appropriate. The standards are always changing, it seems, and around here normal has become an arbitrary concept. Most days, the world seems completely mad to me
anyway. Where is the line between normal and abnormal? Who is qualified to draw it?
The magician is a huge hit, much to his own delight. As he packs up, promising to come again, he is besieged by applause and thanks. After he and the other classes leave our classroom, we gather in a circle to have story time before our kids go home.
Just before they leave, the teacher takes a poll. “What was your favorite part of the magic show?” she asks and goes around the circle. Every child has a distinct, relatable memory. What makes this so astonishing is that these kids sometimes can’t remember their own names and often have trouble answering yes or no questions, let alone those that ask why or what.
“The shoe,” says one child.
“The red shorts,” says another.
“The rings,” says a third.
From her spot on the carpet, Anna, her face and eyes red and puffy from crying, says, “Paper in the sky.”
This too is magic. And for a moment, it reinforces my own faith in magic, in these children, and my faith in Blaze. And, just now, a moment is all I need.