Raising Blaze (29 page)

For his part, Blaze is, amazingly, eager to return to school. He assures me that it was “
that
school” that was the problem and he is sure the next one will be better. Déja attended one of the two schools I am looking at and Blaze tells me that he wants to go there, that “you’ll see, Mom, it will be good at that school.”

Although I don’t want to pressure him, I feel I have to tell him that the next school he attends will probably be the last one if it doesn’t work out. If he can’t manage to get some basic classroom behaviors nailed, he will have to stay home with me
forever
.

“I’ve seen you work for me and Papa and everyone else,” I tell him. “You can do this if you put your mind to it, Blaze. And I will help you as much as I can.”

“I know, Mom,” he says. “I know you will.”

“We can’t go through what we went through at the beginning of this year again,” I tell him. “I can’t take it and neither can you. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he says. “Mom, can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“You’re the best mom I’ve ever had.”

Today we’re going to visit the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla. Blaze has been looking forward to this outing for weeks. We’re going with Michelle, the mother of one of Maya’s violin students, and her two kids—Sabrina, six years old, and Terence, eight. Every Monday afternoon while Sabrina has her lesson in Maya’s room, Blaze and Terence play board games and toss things around Blaze’s room. They seem to have a good time. Blaze adores Terence. I’m not sure what Terence thinks of Blaze. He seems like a pretty serious kid but he enjoys making Blaze laugh.

Michelle, a woman of exceptional kindness and grace, has taken Blaze out before; once to see a movie over the Christmas vacation and once with Maya and her own kids to see a play. She’s the kind of mother I could never be. She works at her kids’ school, takes them to an astonishing variety of lessons (violin, piano, and baseball, to name just a few), plans elaborate educational outings, designs art projects, sends them to enrichment summer programs and on and on. I get tired just thinking about it. I’m a little envious of her and vaguely guilty that I’m not nearly selfless enough to expend the amount of energy she seems to have in abundance. Blaze is absolutely mad about Michelle and her entire family. I am convinced that he would find Michelle a perfectly acceptable mother were I not around, which I
find highly amusing because, among her many virtues, Michelle is overwhelmingly
normal
.

Terence appears at the front door at the appointed time and we find out that Sabrina won’t be joining us for this adventure because she was badly behaved and is being punished for throwing a fit earlier in the day. Blaze is fascinated and wants to know all the details. What did she do? How long is she going to be punished? Who is with her? Is she alone at home? Michelle explains that her dad is there with her and he’s the one who decided she should be punished in the first place. Sabrina’s dad doesn’t tolerate bad behavior, Michelle tells Blaze. To me, she says, “Not like me. I always cave in the end.”

“Mothers,” I comment. “That’s our job, isn’t it? To cave?”

After a twenty-minute drive we approach the aquarium and Blaze says, “I can’t wait to see all the fish. And I’m not going to be scared. No, sir.”

“Why would you be scared?” I ask him. “They’re only fish.”

“Yes, but remember that time we came before and I was scared because it was dark?”

“Yes, but you were only about three or four then,” I say.

“Yeah, I’m a big boy now,” Blaze says. “A
big
boy.”

“Yeah, you’re like eleven or something, aren’t you?” Terence asks. He’s been busily sketching rocket ships in the backseat throughout the drive.

“I’m thirteen,” Blaze tells him.

“You’re thirteen?” Terence asks, disbelieving. “
Thirteen
? Are you sure?”

Michelle looks over at me, smiling, and I smile back. I’m wondering how this outing is going to turn out and I’m experiencing the first hint of trepidation.

In the entrance, there is a giant tank filled with sardines swirling around in a slippery mass of silver flashes. Blaze doesn’t want to look
at the sardines, he’s already darted off into the main tunnel leading through the aquarium.

Terence reads every plaque and seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the marine creatures we pass in their lighted boxes. Michelle asks him to find certain fish in the tanks and identify them and he complies with ease. Blaze, on the other hand, skips from tank to tank seldom stopping long enough to take a good look at anything. I have to tell him to stay with us one, two, three times. Michelle tries to be helpful.

“Blaze, take a look at the halibut,” she says. “Look at the face on him.”

“Look at the California king crab,” I add. “Reminds me of you.”

Blaze wanders into the kelp forest and we follow. He’s starting to lick his hand and touch it to his forehead. All the other hideous tics he picked up over the course of this wretched year have disappeared since Blaze has been home, but this one remains for some reason. I can’t get him to stop. I watch him touch the railings where a million people have left a million viruses and then put that hand in his mouth. I can’t stand it.

Through gritted teeth I tell him to stop or he can forget ever going on another outing like this again.

“I can’t help it,” he says, “my hands are dry.”

“Then why didn’t you put lotion on them before we left the house?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

I’m desperate for a minute. I can’t let him continue to lick his hand but I don’t have anything that passes for lotion in my purse. It occurs to me that Michelle probably does. She produces the perfect size bottle of hand lotion from her purse at my request and I slather up Blaze’s hands in front of the nurse shark tank. We’ve avoided a major freak-out, at least for the time being.

Although Terence shows no signs of tiring and methodically studies every tank, Blaze looks as if he is barely controlling an urge to flee and starts weaving dangerously through the clots of people lining the tunnel.

“Maybe we should go outside,” Michelle says.

There’s an outdoor piazza between the fish tanks and the museum section of the aquarium and we walk outside into the chilly March air and take in the view. The Pacific stretches out in cobalt glory below us, tiny diamonds dancing in the pale sunlight. Blaze skips around the cobblestones but Terence sticks close by, asking questions about how far away the city is and how can you tell, as he looks through the telescope at the pier.

“How’s your writing coming along?” Michelle asks me.

“It’s tough finding time for it right now,” I tell her, “with Blaze being home and everything. But he’s going to be starting at a new school after the spring break, so I guess, if it works out, I’ll have more time then.”

She looks over at Blaze as he makes his circles around the piazza. “Yes, that’s got to be difficult,” she says. She doesn’t elaborate on what she means but I hear what’s unspoken in her words. I have a moment of abject self-pity. Yes, it’s all difficult. It’s difficult raising this kid who will never be normal and who, at thirteen, is so much less mature than Terence, five years his junior. I’m thinking that, just for one day, I’d like to see what it’s like to have a life like Michelle’s, where things are what they ought to be—husband, two kids, family car, school—and days follow a predictable pattern. These are the things I will never have. Blaze was right, he
is
a big boy. Too big to run around like this without attracting notice. I’m disappointed in him and in myself and I’m very tired. I feel the edge of a major depression approaching and I want this outing to be over so that I can go home and stick my head in the sand where it belongs.

We visit a few more sights in the aquarium and then it’s time to go.
Michelle wants to take us to lunch. “Where would be the best place?” she asks.

“Any place with french fries,” I tell her. “That’s probably all Blaze will eat.”

We settle on Friday’s, nearby, guaranteed to have french fries. The hostess asks us how many children’s menus we need and Michelle says, “Only one, right? Blaze doesn’t need a children’s menu, does he?”

I smile at her, feeling a surge of gratefulness for her consideration. She’s assuming that Blaze, at thirteen, would feel insulted being offered a children’s menu and crayons at his ripe old age and she’s trying to respect his feelings.

“No, it’s fine,” I tell the hostess, “we’ll take two children’s menus.”

At the table, Blaze is not content to sit quietly while Michelle and I talk. Terence seems deep in thought again so Blaze starts asking Michelle a series of questions.

“So, Michelle, do you listen to Fleetwood Mac?” he asks.

“I used to,” she says. “A long time ago.”

“They’re a good band,” Blaze says. “You know that song ‘Dreams’? It’s about how sad a person gets when there’s nobody around to help.”

“I never thought about it that way,” Michelle says. “I guess I never really listened to it very carefully.”

“Stevie Nicks sings that song,” Blaze goes on. “She’s singing to somebody she knows who won’t help her.”

“Hmm,” Michelle says and looks over at me, eyebrows raised. Blaze goes on some more about various other songs he’s heard and what they mean. He gets to Billie Holiday and starts telling Michelle about what a tragic life she had and that’s why all her songs sound so sad. Terence looks at Blaze as if he’s speaking Greek, but he’s listening and so is Michelle and we’re all involved and we’re all thinking about our own associations with what he is saying.

I let Blaze continue on his riff and I remember that this is what I love the most about him. Whenever I start feeling like it’s all hopeless,
that we’ll never be normal, that our lives will be spent navigating social situations and trying to figure out what’s appropriate, Blaze will pull something like this out of his hat. He taps into my feelings and worries with a sort of sixth sense and responds by demonstrating his sensitivity, his ability to find a common level with whoever he’s with and hold his own. His conversations may seem tangential, but they make sense and they are thought-provoking and always, somewhere inside them, there is a deeper meaning. His conversation with Michelle is about more than pop-song lyrics. He is picking up on her mood, on my mood, and on the dynamic between all of us at this table.

Blaze leaves the topic of music and moves on to Michelle’s husband. Does he often hand out punishments to the kids? What does he do for a living? Michelle tells him that her husband is a lawyer. Blaze wants to know if her husband ever finds himself in any dangerous situations.

“Gee, I hope not,” Michelle says.

“What kind of law does he practice?” I ask Michelle.

“Personal injury,” she says.

Michelle drops us off at home after lunch and I try to regroup and figure out what we’re going to do for the rest of the day.

“That was great,” Blaze says. “I love the aquarium.”

“You didn’t seem to be loving it so much,” I say. “You were running all over the place for most of the time.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You know I don’t like to stand still in one place.”

“I sure do know that,” I tell him.

He waits a few beats before he asks me, “Mom, do you wish you had a husband?”

I stare at him for a few moments, lost, not knowing what to tell him or even how I can respond honestly when I don’t know the answer to his question.

“Well?” he asks. “Do you?”

“Hold on a second, I’m thinking,” I tell him. “That’s a difficult
question, you know.” I ponder it for a minute while he waits and then I tell him, “I guess sometimes I do wish I had a husband. It would be nice, sometimes, to have a partner in life. But I don’t really think about it that often.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a good thing?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’d fight with him, if you had a husband. That wouldn’t be good.”

“No, it wouldn’t, but if one goes as far as to marry someone, one would hope that one wouldn’t be fighting all the time.”

“Maybe you could have one sometime,” he says.

“Maybe,” I tell him. “Maybe someday.”

Blaze gets up and goes off to another part of the house and that’s the end of this conversation for now. It’s been just enough to make me start thinking about most of the decisions I’ve made in my life. I sit, limp, for several minutes, pondering my future. What’s in it for me, I wonder, and what’s in it for him? How do we end up? Alone and weird forever? The depression I felt moving in earlier seems to have come closer now. I can sense it, heavy and dank, just a few thoughts away.

Just then, Blaze bursts in through the front door and stands before me. He’s been in the garage, working out on the elliptical exercise machine I bought to keep myself from turning into jelly. He’s shirtless and shoeless, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants.

Flushed and triumphant, he says, “Hey, Mom! Remember Lord Capulet?”

“What?”

“Lord Capulet, you know. Remember him?”

“Yeeees…?”

“Okay, just checking! I’m going back to work out some more now.”

Then my tall, skinny, olive-skinned, beautiful, smiling boy darts back out the door and I just start laughing. It’s a deep, helpless, tear-rolling laughter that goes on and on. I laugh until my heart and mind
are clean and then I laugh some more. I am happily breathless by the time I finally stop.

Only Blaze can do this for me. Only Blaze can make me stop on a dime, turn away from self-pity and find the strength to keep pushing on. He has read me again, this child of mine. He has sensed my darkness and shown me the brightness within him. He has reminded me that I wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t trade him, wouldn’t trade any of this for a “normal” life. I chose this life, he is telling me, and he chose me. We have come to this place together. Today, like so many times before, Blaze has turned me around and shown me the view from over here.

And this is a beautiful view.

S
hortly after Blaze suggested that we restage his birth, I put the idea to my family. Every one of them seemed quite taken by it and we discussed various ways to implement it. My father was especially eager to replay the entire scenario. In a concerted effort at authenticity, we tried to round up the original players for the big event. This was difficult because, while everyone was present in varying degrees the night Blaze was born, my three sisters and my brother now had obligations, jobs, and responsibilities that made it impossible for them to be in my living room at the appointed time. I didn’t want to wait until we could all gather together because I wanted to act on Blaze’s idea as soon as possible and I didn’t want it to escalate into a huge psychological event.

With all of this in mind, my father and mother arrived on a lazy fall afternoon and prepared to venture into unknown territory. I was nervous. This time around, I really wanted it to go the way Blaze wanted it to go.

I ordered a pizza.

Blaze was excited. When I looked over at him I could see that he was already halfway there, heading back to that place between floating sleep and conscious awareness.

I began by placing a pillow under my shirt and sitting on the couch. Blaze sat off to the side, unborn, watching. My father narrated.

“Now, Blaze,” he began, “when you were born, you came out gasping. Let me show you how.” My father sat down next to me on the couch, leaned over, and put his head in my lap. When I looked down, it was my father’s face I saw staring up at me.

“Uh, Dad,” I interrupted, uncomfortable, “this is getting a bit too Freudian for me.”

“Yes, it is,” my father said warningly, “but you’re going to have to transcend your own neuroses for a minute and focus on what we’re doing here.”

I conceded reluctantly and my father demonstrated how Blaze panted at birth. I waited, anxious to get that part over with. Blaze watched, entranced and soundless.

“Now this time,” my father continued, “you’re going to come out when you’re ready and you’re going to take a deep breath and cry really loud. Okay?”

Blaze nodded in assent.

“Okay,” my father said, “here’s Mommy getting ready to have you. There you are inside her tummy.” I made some noises indicating that I was in pain. It was no joke—I was having visceral memories of labor. “It’s time to come out,” my father said, “but wait until you’re ready.”

I made more noises. I started to sweat. I turned to my mother. “Why didn’t you tell me it was going to hurt like this?” I asked her again. I never was satisfied with her answer the first time around. My mother looked at me somewhat disdainfully and said, “Don’t start with me now.”

“Mommy’s in pain,” my father went on, “and she wants to see you. Are you ready?” Blaze shook his head. I was finally starting to get it. He would never be ready. He didn’t want to come out then and he didn’t want to now. Minutes passed as I continued approximating labor.

The doorbell rang.

For the first time ever, a pizza deliveryman had arrived early. My father huffed, annoyed by the interruption, but Blaze didn’t stir and
didn’t lose one iota of his concentration while the man was paid and sent on his way and the pizza was deposited on the kitchen table.

“Mommy’s still waiting,” my father picked up. “Are you ready?”

It seemed to me that Blaze might stay in his nether state indefinitely so I started “pushing” and pulled the pillow out from under my shirt. He’s just going to have to come out and face it, I thought. Again.

“Look!” I shouted. “Here he is!”

Blaze moved over to me and placed his head on my stomach. When he looked up at me, I was startled by what I saw in his eyes. That look was exactly the same as it was the moment he was born. Once again, I could feel the tears starting.

“Cry,” I told him.

“Cry!” my father shouted.

Blaze made a scratchy, strangled sound.

“Louder,” we urged him. “Take a deep breath. Louder!”

It took Blaze three tries to let out a wail. I could see the struggle within him and was awed by the strength it must have taken for him to get to that level. We held our breaths, waiting to hear evidence of his. Finally, he burst out with a long, solid cry.

“Good, Blaze,” my father said. “Good.”

Instinctively, Blaze snuggled close to me and I cradled him as if he were a newborn once again. “How did that feel?” I asked him.

“Good,” he said. “It felt good.” He was grinning widely. I’d rarely seen him look so happy and contented.

We were all very pleased with Blaze’s reaction and the fact that he seemed so reenergized. We were also completely wiped out. I couldn’t help but think that our exercise was the sort of thing that had
don’t try this at home
written all over it.

We ate pizza together, all of us unusually quiet and subdued. The big smile on Blaze’s face never wavered, but he was mostly silent, drifting through that long-ago place from where he’d come. It was similar to when he’d been born, but different in a very important way. Back
then, Blaze was physically present, but barely with us in spirit. He was an active participant in his life now and willing, in a very real way, to give it a go. I could only hope that whatever healing had come from his rebirthing would be enough to sustain him into the future.

My parents went home shortly after we finished eating, citing emotional exhaustion. Soon after that, Blaze started wheezing and became asthmatic. Once again, he was struggling for the breath he’d been denied at birth. It was only then that I realized how very important the event had been for him and how important it had been for me.

But he was breathing and, finally, he’d had his chance to cry out loud.

I had been given an extraordinary luck with this boy, I thought then. Twice, he had shown me the life and intelligence in his eyes. Twice he had given me a glance right into his soul.

When I was about seven or eight years old, I read and loved a series of Finnish fantasy novels in which the main characters are funny-looking creatures called Moomins. In my favorite story, the creatures find a magic hat that transforms everything put into it. Moomintroll, one of the main characters, hides under the hat and emerges as an unrecognizable version of himself. None of his friends know him in this form and everybody starts to treat him like an imposter and an intruder. In despair, Moomintroll beseeches his mother to tell his friends that he is the real Moomintroll. His mother looks deeply into his eyes and it takes her a minute because he really does look entirely different. Finally, though, she sees her child in his eyes. As soon as she acknowledges this, Moomintroll is transformed back into his usual form and his mother assures him that, whatever happens, she will always know him.

The story made a huge impression on me when I was a child and I never forgot this scene although it would be years before I really understood its practical implications in my own life. This is the way it is for me and my son. I will always know him. And I believe that he chose to come to me for that very reason.

I know that Blaze’s birth was traumatic. Anyone who was there could have testified to that. Although I wished it could have been easier for him, I assumed, at the time, that all births must be traumatic. It’s the nature of the process, after all. Who, in his right mind, would trade an existence of swimming in protected warmth for the cold, bright gravity of the world?

What I didn’t understand then was what it could mean, on a deeper level, to have been born strangled. Perhaps if I had known that such extreme birth trauma could pose lifelong problems, I could have done something sooner to counter the effects. Perhaps I would have done nothing. I will never know.

I do know that I’ve searched for meaning in other places: with psychiatrists, teachers, counselors, advocates, and doctors over the years. Along the way, I’ve filled out countless medical history forms for Blaze, all of which ask about his birth. The questions are always the same:

Was the pregnancy normal?

How long was labor?

Complications?

Cord around neck? How many times?

Did baby need oxygen at birth?

Apgar scores?

There are answers to these questions, but none of them reveal any true meaning. In the end, meaning is found in faith. Blaze has taught me about faith and about so much else. In that first moment in the delivery room, and now, and in countless moments in between, Blaze himself has provided the answers—answers to questions that never get asked, but should be—answers I’ve been increasingly unwilling to share in the uncompromising glare of science and medicine:

Did your baby look at you at birth?

Did he show himself to you?

Did you see his soul?

Could you hear it singing?