A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(26)
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I’d wanted to be a mother since I was a child myself. Tom had lost both of his parents when he was a child, and despite the loving care he received from the family members who raised him, he felt the loss of his mother and father acutely. This strengthened his own resolve to be an active, involved, and present parent. My own 1950s childhood looked like the traditional postwar life depicted in the television shows of the day. Although the world had changed significantly (and I worked four days a week, instead of staying home full-time, as my mother had with her three kids), that close-knit, suburban family model was the one Tom and I followed in raising our own children.
We were confident parents, especially by the time we had our second child. Anxious by nature, I never stopped fussing over choking hazards and good manners. But I’d been babysitting since childhood, and I’d spent the majority of my career teaching both children and adults. My graduate degree had required me to take courses in child development and psychology. Naively, I believed the combination of knowledge and intuition honed by experience was sufficient to stand my own children in good stead. At the very least, I reasoned, we’d know where to turn if we encountered problems.
Our confidence as parents was supported by what we saw in our children. As a small child, Byron, our first, was a joyful whirling dervish. He reminded me of Lucille Ball’s character in I Love Lucy, always getting up to (or into) something. Byron was the kid who whizzed out of the restaurant bathroom, straight into the waitress with the loaded tray. He was the kid who hooked a plate of potato salad so it crashed into his own face, pie-fight style, while demonstrating an armpit fart—and then did it again with a bowl of oatmeal the next morning during a breakfast reenactment. It was pure boyish tomfoolery without an ounce of malice in it. Even Tom was usually laughing too hard at Byron’s antics to get mad.
After Byron’s energy, Dylan’s willingness to sit on the floor and play quietly was a revelation. Both boys were active and playful, but Dylan sought out sedentary tasks that required patience and logic, and after his always-on-the-go brother had outgrown snuggling, Dylan would still slow down for a book or a puzzle or a cuddle with me. Our younger son was observant, curious, and thoughtful, with a gentle personality. Curious about what was going on around him, patient, even-tempered, and quick to giggle, Dylan could make the most routine errand fun. He was up for anything—a social, affable child, who loved to do stuff.
And he was smart. Dylan’s giftedness emerged early. Shortly after he learned to hold objects by himself as a baby, Dylan went through a brief spell of crying at night. We tried everything we could think of to comfort him, and then took him to the pediatrician to see if the problem might be a physical one. The doctor checked him over carefully, and then advised us to put Dylan to bed with safe toys and soft books so he could entertain himself if he woke up. That night, we heard Dylan wake and make quiet sounds as he played with the toys and looked at the books. When he was finished, he went back to sleep. He’d just been bored.
As a teacher, I marveled at his precociousness. Maybe it shouldn’t have mattered so much to me, but he learned so quickly! In third grade he fell in love with origami, an interest that lasted until his adolescence. (A short while after he made his first paper crane, we hosted two Japanese exchange students in our home. Dylan was disappointed to discover the girls didn’t know much more about paper-folding than I did.) Over the years we collected a lot of origami books, and Dylan mastered the most complicated designs, ones with seventy or eighty folds. He moved fast, and his pudgy fingers couldn’t always get the creases razor-sharp, but these were nonetheless little works of art. I still see his handiwork in the homes of our friends, and when his fifth-grade teacher paid us a condolence call after the tragedy, she brought one of her most treasured possessions to show us: an origami tree, decked with tiny origami ornaments—a Christmas gift it had taken Dylan hours to make.
As a toddler, he was fascinated by snap-together construction toys; as he grew older, he spent countless hours building with Legos. Precise and methodical, he loved to follow the printed instructions exactly, meticulously building ships, castles, and space stations, only to dismantle and build them again. Dylan had a bunk bed in his bedroom, and Tom placed a large sheet of plywood over the lower bed so Dylan would have an out-of-the-way spot to work on larger and more complicated structures over a period of days. Byron preferred freestyle construction, and his imagination was the source of some wildly creative projects. Dylan was the opposite. Occasionally concerned he was too focused on perfection, Tom and I would talk to him about how it was okay to substitute an alternate piece if he couldn’t find the exact right one.
Similarly, we saw his competitive nature emerge when the four of us played board games together, like Monopoly and Risk. Losing was humiliating for Dylan, and his humiliation sometimes turned to anger. Of course, it’s as important to know how to lose as it is to win, so we continued to play games as a family until Dylan learned to control his temper. He also played Little League baseball, where he learned the importance of sportsmanship. As we hoped, Dylan’s need to win leveled out as he matured. Looking back, however, I wonder if we were inadvertently encouraging Dylan to suppress his feelings, under the guise of learning appropriate play.
Since I’d been a real scaredy-cat as a child, I was impressed by how free of ordinary childhood fears Dylan was. He wasn’t afraid to go to the doctor or the dentist, as I had been at his age. He got his first haircut with a big smile on his face. He wasn’t afraid of the water, or to be left alone in the dark, or of thunder and lightning. Later, when we started going to amusement parks, Dylan could be counted on to pick the scariest rides. Sometimes he had to ride them alone while we waved from below because no one else had the courage to join him.