“Damn it,” Mother says still watching the blinking sign, “we’re never going to find the Mennonite Church before dark.”

I remind mother that the lady who handed out the flyers on Fifth Avenue said it is on 15th Street. Mother doesn’t hear me. Instead she walks into the street. A truck slams on its brakes and barely misses her.

“Come on girls. Cross the street,” mother says.

I grab Heidi’s hand and feel the man on stilts looking down at us. Way down. Mother then hits the truck a few times with her hand and yells words we are not allowed to say. The men in the truck ignore her but I can’t. Her blue eyes shine against her high cheekbones and platinum blond hair which is down to her waist, and tied in a braid. Steam comes out of the manhole and Mother stands in the center of it all like an angel, rising out of the mist. My family and I cross to the sidewalk and the druggie girl peeks an eye open. I bet she sees a blur of us. Mother tells us to keep walking. Inside a gate, there is a garden trying to survive in the winter wind. Piles of trash rest next to bag of unopened fertilizer. Religious statuary, a Raggedy Anne doll, stuffed animals, scraps of electronics, are piled onto a rectangular wooden base form. It’s like a forty foot toy tower.

“Think the Swiss Family Robinson lives there?” Heidi says.

“It looks like the Tower of Babel from the Bible.” Mother says.

Through the barren trees, a skinny man builds the sculpture. He looks at me for a moment. Then he climbs up on the structure like an acrobat. Picking up a piece of rock with silver flecks, I tuck my new found treasure inside my jeans. This is the first time I have done something meaningful for a long time. As we walk to the end of the block, I look back and promise to return to my secret city garden.

Before writing for Glamour, Huffington Post, Narrative, New York Press, St. Petersburg Times, Smith, and Slate, Heather Kristin was home-schooled with her twin sister in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Her unpublished novel BROOKLYN TO BOMBAY was a finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. An essay she wrote appears in the anthology LIVE AND LET LOVE which was featured on Good Morning America and The Chelsea Lately Show. Recently she was honored by the State of New Jersey General Assembly for her dedication on women’s issues and is thrilled to be returning for her fourth year as a mentor for an at-risk teen at Girls Write Now. Heather is currently writing a memoir.
 

I was responsible. I was at fault for the biggest blackout in the nation’s history.

Like all of us foraging through the city that day, trying to coax a cell phone into operative mode and spending five bucks on bottled water, I just wanted to get home. I needed to pull together something for my parents, if not simply prepare a big apology for the unbearable circumstances. See, they tip the Richter scale of “proper” and I always feel the need to rise to their level. Mom hates subways (rats!) and Dad likes to eat at the Four Seasons (only the best!). Don’t get me wrong, they’re excellent people, and they in fact struggled through penniless days in the Bronx, where they met forty years ago.

But how was I to impress them with the sophisticated New York life I’ve achieved when my apartment was sweltering and I couldn’t even produce a glass of water?

Twenty-three flights up. Dad’s gonna throw a fit.

By 9pm, my folks still hadn’t made it to my building and I was sweaty, tired, guilt-ridden and bedraggled. At 10, I resigned myself to sitting atop the concierge desk, chatting with passing residents, laughing with the staff, eating pizza and drinking beer by candlelight, awaiting my parents’ angry arrival.

Then it was 11, five hours after they had supposedly landed at JFK. I decided to hike up to my apartment in hopes that they’d be there soon. As I was saying goodnight to my new friends, I saw a silhouette that was unmistakably my mother’s.

“Alex, thank God!” she yelled as she ran toward me, arms open for a hug.

I apologized for the blackout. “You must be so hot and uncomfortable,” I said.

“Darling, we’re just happy to see you. We could care less about the damn blackout. We were here in ‘77. Now that was a mess.”

“Dad, are you all right?” I asked. “Let me grab your suitcase! I have flashlights! And lots of Evian!”

“Al,” said my father, “relax kid. We’re just glad you’re safe. Are you hungry? There’s a cookout across the street and your neighbors invited us for beers and weenies.”

“It looks fun,” my mom said. “It looks like the old days.”

“Awe man, I’ I’ll go to the store to get some more,” I said. “OK, here is three dollars, get the decorations, and buy yourself something,” said Cooklyn. “OK ’I’ll be right back,” I said.

And that’s exactly how we were. My aunt was one of the coolest people that once lived on earth. I remember one time I asked her for a piece of candy, although my grandmother told me that I couldn’t have any, Aunt Cooklyn still gave me the candy. I loved her for that. Two days later, after we decorated the Christmas tree, my aunt was rushed to the hospital. My family and I didn’t think any thing of it, because this was becoming a normal routine. Whenever Cooklyn got real sick, we called the ambulance, and she was rushed to the hospital. But this time when she was rushed to the hospital we were in for the shock of our lives, because this time she wasn’t coming home with us, (her family) she was going to heaven. As hard as it is to admit, she is in a much better place. Aunt Cooklyn had contracted H.I.V ten years ago, which later turned into A.I.D.S.

The first time my family and I had discovered that Cooklyn was sick was when she was laying on the couch, she was crying that her stomach was hurting. She went to the doctor’s office, and the doctor had told her that she had been infected with H.I.V for ten years. When Cooklyn returned from the doctor, she was living with her mother at the time, (which is my grandmother), and she told my grandmother the news she had gathered. At this point, everyone that was living inside of the household began to act funny toward Cooklyn. Inside my grandmother’s household lived my cousin Tyreka (20 years old), her son Tysheem (3yrs old), my grandmother and aunt Cooklyn. My grandmother (Dama) began treating Cooklyn different, because she did not know anything about the disease. Tyreka treated Cooklyn different, because she was young, uneducated, and very cruel. Tyreka did not want her son Tysheem around Cooklyn; she was scared that he might contract the disease. Tyreka did not want to use the bathroom behind Cooklyn, because she feared catching the disease in any way. As Cooklyn realized the treatment she was receiving from her family, she began to express the way she felt toward them. Things had gotten a little better when Tyreka moved out and got her own apartment. This left Aunt Cooklyn and Dama alone together. My cousin Kejo moved in to assist Dama with Cooklyn.

Cooklyn was becoming very sick as time went on. The family could do nothing but prey. One more thing, Cooklyn has a child, Nudy. He is incarcerated, and someone in the family had to break the news to Nudy, telling him that his mother was dying. Finally Dama wrote Nudy a letter informing him of his mother’s health. Meanwhile Nudy did not think that his mother’s health was as serious as it was.

On exactly December 24, 2001 at around 12:00 a.m, Cooklyn was rushed to the hospital; about 12 hours later at 12:53 p.m., Cooklyn was pronounced dead. At the hospital it smelt like death and I was scared. No more Cooklyn, just memories are all I have of my wonderful aunt.

R.I.P. Aunt Cooklyn, Christmas Eve (December 24, 2001)

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This essay was written as a part of a HREF=”http://www.Mapsites.net” TARGET=”_new”>Mapsites.net workshop.

**

This essay was written as a part of a HREF=”http://www.Mapsites.net” TARGET=”_new”>Mapsites.net workshop.

Rounding the corner in front of the address, I got my first look at the scene; one clean city block facing the park, loosely strewn with five or six disheveled men, none of whom looked like they belonged there, all holding cameras, all looking around warily. I was detected immediately and for a short while, watched closely. With a camera bag around my shoulder as well as a camera, I slowly went through the pointless process of trying to blend in. I checked the exits — there were two, the front and a side service exit. I spoke sparingly with other photographers, asking them how long they’d been there, reading their levels of territorial hatred, their press badges and their equipment choices while we talked.

Two Englishmen from Splash were there and hovered furtively near an SUV parked at the curb. One wore a camera and the other wore a grey and pea green tie.

"I’m the wordsmith," said the tie, and then he chuckled.

The one with a camera wore hungry and pained expressions. Talking looked like it hurt him. I asked him what it was like working for Splash and he said it was all right; there were hard times and good and, ya know, in this business, you’ve got to take them all. He seemed like a nice guy with a short time to live. His eyes were quick in their sockets and unusually watery, as though he had recently been crying.

There was one grey pirate-like man dressed in black who seemed nonplussed yet alert. He looked like a pro, like someone who had seen it all, and was not particularly impressed. He was a little intimidating and something about his demeanor seemed to simmer. Sure enough, he turned out to be Steve Hirsch, from the New York Post. I had seen many good Steve Hirsch photos in the past but this was the first time I’d met him. I praised him for some recent work. He had taken a running shot of one of the three Chinese siblings who were arrested and then released in the mysterious murder of a bouncer, Dana Blake. (Blake was in the process of physically removing a man named Johnathon Chan from an Avenue B night club — Chan had been smoking, in violation of the recent city-wide ban — when he was set upon by Chan’s brothers and one other knife-wielding Philipino man. Blake was stabbed in the groin and died eleven hours later.)

Steve had taken a great photograph of Chan leaving his attorney’s office shortly after being released.

"He said, Don’t take my picture, and you know what I told him? Fuck you," Said Steve. He grinned. I was delighted.

We were standing at the corner so we could see both exits. We waited a long time, maybe two hours. A Swedish video guy from Reuters piled out of a cab with a giant video camera and "sticks" (his tripod). He had a friend who lived around the corner who came by and brought him coffee. The Swede had been all over the world and I liked his humble manner.

Keith arrived.

"Who are you shooting for today?" asked Steve.

"Getty," said Keith. "They called me at 9:00 and said how soon can you get there and I said, I’m leaving now."

"So what took you so long?" asked Steve.

"I stopped and got coffee."

Keith was good at affecting the image of a lazy photographer but I’d seen him run very fast before. He’s probably a good guy but he has the annoying habit of testing his flash constantly on anyone who is standing near him. It is almost a nervous tic, though he ostensibly does it to make sure his flash isn’t too hot.

He takes three pictures, "chimps" (examines the digital pictures on the back of his camera), adjusts his flash, and then takes three more. He’ll squeeze off twenty or more frames this way, every quarter hour. It’s endless. I suspect he’s also collecting images of other journalists and in a way this is a brilliant method of doing it. Steve Hirsch was his subject this time and stared blankly back in to the camera.

"This is no way to live," said Keith eventually, imitating someone. He grinned and lurched off to go speak with the English guys by the SUV.

Around 11:30, a black Suburban with tinted black windows pulled up to the front of the building. It looked as though it would park, then it pulled forward as though it were going to drive away. Just then, Michael Douglas stepped crisply out of the building and made straight for the SUV. I was in a bad position, behind him and tried to scamper past him but he cut me off.

"Thanks for coming out guys," he said and leaped in to his car. It must have taken him three seconds to get from the building to the car and by the end of those three seconds, I think I had a series of seven photographs of the back of his head, and one partial profile of his nose and eye. I had fucked the proverbial pouch. Hirsch and Keith and I think the Splash guy too, had gotten around so that they took shots of him from the front as he approached his car.

After Douglas was chauffered away, there were a lot of excited tourists who wanted to know what was going on; all the photographers were chimping fiercely.

Keith let out a loud and angry explative and then scampered off. I knew I’d fucked it up and was filled with dread, but if Keith missed it too, then I was not alone. A photograph of Douglas alone wasn’t really the money shot, but it would work in a pinch.

All the other photographers disappeared in search of a Starbucks from which they could wirelessly file their photographs. I was left with the Swede from Reuters and his friend and we decided to wait for Douglas to return. A still photographer from Reuters arrived. His name was Chip and he talked very earnestly about different kinds of personal protective body armor with the Swede and the Swede’s friend.

"A jacket lined with steel is only effective until you get shot at close range at a perpendicular angle, then it shatters. Steel is best suited for glancing shots, but ceramic protection is better for direct perpendicular hits. The plastic protective jackets are also effective but they’re exceptionally bulky and it hasn’t been proven outright that they’ll stop a bullet at point blank range from a Kalashnikov."

Chip was voluble. He was an authority on many things and had been shot in the right leg by an Israeli soldier in 2001. "The bullet missed my femoral artery by a centimeter and a half." He knew exactly what would have happened had his artery been severed. Listening to him, I started feeling vaguely ill. He was interesting but he didn’t stop, he didn’t pause. There was no Chip off-switch.

Then the real paparazzi arrived in a beat up rental which they left running in front of a hydrant. They looked haggard and acted as though they were on some kind of cheap meth-amphetamine; definitely unwashed, but colorful. Wow. The real papparrazzi are unbelievable. One of them — a pathologically outgoing man with long hair and fives days’ growth of beard — described a plan he had for tracking celebrity’s cars.

"Look, how expensive can it be to get one of those tracking devices that you slip under someone’s car? I mean, they have the technology; we have all these frickin’ expensive cameras. Can’t we get the tracking equipment too?" he asked.

Everyone liked his idea.

The three paparrazzi debated whether or not they should go to New Jersey where Douglas and Zeta Jones had another house. Cell phone calls were made. Someone said something profane about "Welsh women who go for the money," and then they took off.

The Swede and his friend left. The Swede had to go the UN to cover Hans Blix and he seemed happy about it. I was left with Chip. He mellowed out a little and we got on fine. Fortunately, Michael Douglas reappeared and I got him on the return.

The English guys were back by then and one of them shouted in a desperate voice, "Michael, is she all right?"

"We’re doing great, thanks. Couldn’t be happier," he said as he nimbly returned to the safe-haven of the building.

I saw Steve Hirsch and someone else (Keith?) get their shots from down low. Their cameras were nearly touching and their flashes went off simultaneously. Douglas had to goose step around them.

* * *

Now it’s the next morning and I’m expecting for the phone to ring again. From what I can tell, the money shot, the new baby shot, hasn’t been made yet. There are a lot of hungry photographers still out there, waiting.

We’ve been doing this before we let him watch any video ever since we sat down as a family to enjoy the harmless-seeming “World of Butterflies,” unaware that it would end in an extremely graphic five minute montage of birds devouring butterflies that would send our son into a mild state of catatonia.

Fortunately, “Timmy’s Potty” was no “World of Butterflies.” It was just a bland little story about a boy learning how to use his potty. It had a horrible, horrible theme song, but my wife and I are used to horrible children’s music. The only thing that troubled us about the video was the fact that Timmy, the boy in the story who was learning how to use his potty, looked very young. In fact, Timmy looked more like our ten month old daughter than our three and a half year old son.

My wife and I spent quite a while discussing how our son would feel about this. Would watching this little Timmy kid learning how to use a toilet upset him in some way? Would it make him feel immature or unduly pressured to get on with his own toilet training? We decided that it wasn’t a big deal and it didn’t prove to be one. Our son watched Timmy’s Potty a few times and didn’t seem to even register that a child who was much younger than he was learning a skill that he doesn’t possess. Mostly, our son just liked the horrible song and the scene, early in the story, in which Timmy uses his potty as a house for his stuffed animals.

Our son tried this himself a few times, then moved on to other games. Soon after that, he lost interest in Timmy’s Potty and probably not too long after that, Timmy’s Potty got stuffed under our bed, another relic of our failed efforts to toilet train him.

Our son is not the only three and a half year old who’s still wearing diapers, but he seems to be one of very small group. Most of his friends were toilet trained sometime during their second year. According to the experience of many of our fellow parents and most of the books on this subject, there’s usually a “window” in that year, during which toddlers get interested in the toilet, start wanting to watch their parents go to the bathroom, want to talk about how it all works, and find it enjoyable to sit on those little plastic potties. Supposedly, if you act during this window of child interest, you won’t find much resistance to getting rid of diapers. The child will want to toilet train and will therefore do it willingly and feel good about it. And then, I guess, the child will go on to have a happy and healthy life.

Unfortunately, our son went through his “window of interest” just as his younger sister was about to be born and we’d been advised that this was a bad time to toilet train, window or not. New siblings often inspire “regression,” we were told, so if we trained our son right before his sister’s birth it would not last–he’d want his diapers back as soon as she showed up. And, indeed, when his baby sister arrived, our son regressed like crazy: he wanted to get in her stroller, in her crib, wear her clothes, resume breast feeding and generally, just act like a baby. It was fine with us. We were very worried that he’d resent his new sister and we were more than willing to let him sit slack-jawed and drooling like a newborn if that made him feel comfortable with her. And we were very glad that we’d ignored the window and not wasted our time toilet training him.

The problem is that almost a year has passed since my son’s window of interest closed, and he’s shown no further inclination towards giving up his diapers. Whenever we ask him, he always says he’s “not ready.” So we’ve waited and waited, hoping that some bright day he’ll announce his readiness, meanwhile watching all of his friends toilet train and wondering if we were doing something wrong. Then, this past November, our son started having very regular bowel movements once a day, almost always at the end of his nap; never at school, never outside our apartment.

My wife and I knew this was considered to be a sign of readiness to toilet train, and when we realized it was happening, we talked to his teacher about it. She said that he’d probably ask to be trained if we gave him a little more encouragement. So we took him out to buy his own underpants and started talking to him about how his friends at school wear underpants and use the toilet, and how we use the toilet, how his grandparents use the toilet, and so on and so on. We talked and talked and talked. We read a ridiculous book called “Everybody Poops” a thousand times and a lot of slightly less ridiculous books a comparable number of times. We bought a new plastic potty, even though we already had a plastic potty, thinking that a new one would instill new interest. We put it in the middle of our living room and let our son decorate it with magic markers and animal stickers. Our son bore all of this patiently and with good humor. He liked his underpants and the books and all the talking. He enjoyed decorating his new potty. He was even willing to sit on the potty with his clothes on and pretend he’s going to the bathroom. But that was it. Any suggestion that he take off his diaper and actually go to the bathroom in the potty was firmly rebuked.

Months passed, other suggestions and encouragements were made, including Timmy’s Potty, but our son remained unchanged. Finally, my wife decided that we should do something more active. She read a couple of books on the subject and formulated a plan: for two weeks, we would tell our son that we knew he was ready to toilet train. We’d say that we would be able to help him, and his teachers would be able to help, and he would definitely be able to do it. Instead of asking him if he was ready, we’d tell him–in a variety of ways, subtle and not so subtle–that we knew he was ready. And then, when the two weeks of preparation and encouragement were over, we’d take off the diapers and put on some underpants. He’d still wear a diapers during his naps and at night, but other than that, he’d use the potty. If there were accidents, fine, accidents were to be expected. We’d just change his clothes and show him his potty and say that next time, maybe he’d like to use it.

During the two week preparation period, we didn’t talk about toilet training incessantly, just every so often, whenever it seemed appropriate. We tried to be sensitive to whether or not our son wanted to talk about it himself. We tried–but it really didn’t seem to matter. Our son simply didn’t want to talk about it at all. Whenever we’d tell him that we knew he was ready to use the toilet, he’d get this kind of frightened look on his face and respond, in a quavering but insistent voice, that no, he wasn’t ready. If we asked him why, he’d say, “I love diapers.”

This was almost too much to bear, but we kept going forward, trying new and unsuccessful ways of broaching the subject, motivated, I guess, by a fear of backing down too easily. However, as the two weeks wore on and our son continued to show fear, not interest, in toilet training, we decided to modify our plan a bit. Instead of beginning the training on a Saturday morning, we thought we’d start it on Friday afternoon after his nap. This would mean that the first period of his diaperlessness would only last a few hours: from around 5 p.m. when he gets up from his nap until 8 p.m., when he goes to sleep for the night. He usually stays home during these hours and plays with his toys and it’s a comfortable time for him and we thought this might ease the transition into his new routine.

When the appointed Friday arrived, my wife took off his diapers and offered him a selection of underpants. He started screaming and crying. My wife called me at work and I told her to just wait it out. Our son, like almost every other kid, has learned to use tantrums to get what he wants. He’ll often have a very dramatic initial reaction to things he doesn’t like and then calm down if he realizes we’re not affected by his outburst. The trick is to not be affected. I reminded my wife of this and she said that she felt it was fine to ignore a tantrum over something minor–like say telling him he can’t bring all of his stuffed animals to the dinner table–but that this was more serious. A bad toilet training experience can leave emotional scars. I told her I was pretty sure he’d calm down.

In the background I could hear him yelling “Give me a clean diaper!” between agonized sobs and choking noises. He was really having a fit and I was glad I wasn’t there to witness it. But, after a few minutes, as I’d predicted, he quieted down, picked out some underpants and asked for a cup of juice. By the time I got home from work, he was playing happily and wanted to show me his underpants. He even seemed proud of them.

I felt that things were going reasonably well. Getting rid of the diapers was a first step–and to my mind the biggest step. For a few hours after he’d gone to bed, I felt optimistic. My wife, however, was concerned that he hadn’t gone anywhere near his potty, and didn’t seem inclined to. He’d had a bowel movement in his diaper at the end of his nap, as usual, and then spent the three hours in his underpants holding urine in his bladder, waiting for us to put his nighttime diaper on. My wife thought the fact he’d controlled himself for that long was a problem. I disagreed. I expected that the next day, when he’d have to wear his underpants for a much longer stretch of time–7 a.m. until 3 p.m.–he’d either have an accident or use his potty, and that things would kind of proceed naturally from there.

But things didn’t proceed. My son put his underpants on in the morning without protest, but he continued to try his best to control himself and wait to go to the bathroom until he got his diapers back at nap time. He quickly became remarkably good at this, going hours and hours without urinating, even squeezing his penis through what I guess were difficult periods. He had a few accidents but they did not deter him–he just asked for new clothes and then refused all suggestions that he try using his potty, still insisting that he wasn’t ready. Soon, he stopped having accidents, and then, on the third day of our toilet training experiment, he stopped having his regular bowel movements. He was, my wife and I decided, probably constipated from worry. Or maybe all the effort he was making to control his bladder was having some kind of effect on his bowels. We didn’t try to figure it out any more than that. We just stopped the toilet training. We gave him back his diapers and put his underpants the bottom drawer of his dresser and told him that he can get them out whenever he’s ready. He seemed totally uninterested and hasn’t mentioned the word “underpants” since. By the next day, his regular bowel movements had returned and he’d stopped clutching his penis.

My wife and I talked to the social worker at my son’s school. She told us that we’d done the right thing. She said that our son will eventually be ready to toilet train and when he is, he’ll let us know, and he’ll do it happily and be proud of it. She said the reason we can’t imagine this ever happening is that he’s not ready yet.

I thought about pointing out the flaws in her argument, saying that just because you can’t imagine something happening does not assure that it’s going to happen–rather, most things you can’t imagine happening are, in fact, never going to happen. But I decided against it. Instead, I sat there silently and smiled and held my wife’s hand and felt good about our decision to abandon the toilet training. I have no idea when or how our son is going to get trained. I assume that he will, but at the moment, I don’t really care. I just want to leave my son alone for a while. I am embarrassed about the way I have treated him in the last few months. It pains me to think of the hours we’ve spent together hovering over a potty, my face screwed up in a fake smile, watching him there, listening unhappily as I try to say in a disinterested voice: “Would you like to practice going poop?”

Even now, writing it down, I feel sick.

So when my wife Melanie called me from a payphone to tell me she had just come from the doctors and that she knew, well, I was surprised to find that I felt a little faint. I realized that in an instant, in the mention of one word, everything would be different. That a little generic baby face, along with a whole gender specific slew of problems and worries (and colours), were hovering before me, and that bassketball or ballet class was the least of it. I literally felt like I was going to pass out, and while I used to feel that way all the time, it’s been a few years and I wasn’t used to it anymore.

“It’s a BOY!”, she said.

And that’s when I knew that the whole thing had been a lie; I had always wanted a boy. Secretly and desperately. At the risk of losing my ACLU card, I wanted a boy to go to baseball games with, discuss the finer points of boy-type things, and most importantly, hang out with. Because after living my whole life with women: various girlfriends, wives, and not to mention my mother, I wasn’t sure that I’d be any help to a girl – I sure as hell hadn’t been much of a help to any of them. At least with a boy I could draw upon my own experiences, (or lack thereof), think about what I would have done, and then caution my son to do the opposite. Little did I know how lost I was gonna feel anyway, and that my advice on how to hit the curveball was going to be of little help to either of us those first few precious hours.

Melanie has a terrible delivery. We don’t see the baby for over twelve hours after he’s born. Late at night they wheel her into her own room. We sit around and wait expectantly. Then they wheel Jack in – tears of joy, hugs, cries, salutations. We smile at the nurse. The nurse smiles back serenely, and says ‘See you in the morning!’. Jack looks dazed. We pick him up. We smile at each other. A warm happy feeling takes over the room. ‘So this is what being a parent is all about’. I am pulled from my reverie by an oddly grating sound. A whimpering, which segues shortly into a full-on cry. Warm happy feeling exits. Uneasiness sets in. I look at Melanie because I know that all her genetically engineered mothering skills are going to kick in any time now. Unfortunately, she is looking at me with the same dumb, hopeful smile that says ‘Surely you know how to handle this. Now panic has truly taken over: we are lost, we are not ready, there has been some sort of a mistake. Recriminations follow -’this is your fault, do something, make it stop. And it went like that for about the first five months.

Of course this is a time of hyper sensitivity. My wife was attempting to breast feed and having trouble at first. While one might think this would be a fairly easy proposition – stick kid on tit, watch him go! – it turns out to be anything but. Jack wouldn’t eat, Jack wouldn’t sleep; he basically just screamed a lot. Being a parent in those first couple of months is a lot like being in an abusive relationship. They treat you bad, you assume it’s your fault, you must be doing something wrong. They scream at you, piss on you, puke on you, and you love them all the more for it. Meanwhile, since they can’t yell at the child, Mommy and Daddy yell at each other. Add in sleep depravation, frayed nerves, confusion, and barely hidden contempt, and you’ve got a fairly volatile mix. I remember telling my wife one morning after an especially bad few nights of no sleep to just pack her shit and get the fuck out. Looking back I can’t really remember why; in fact, I don’t think I knew then. I was just so freaked out.

I do believe that somewhere along the line someone installed a checks and balances system into the parenting relationship. From the moment Jack was born, Melanie would flip out over the slightest thing to do with Jack. Do you think he’s too, hot, cold, feverish, hungry, thirsty, overdressed, underdressed, big, small, slow, other..?’ To which my response would always be the old father’s standby, passed down through the ages: He’s fine.

There was, however, one notable exception: One morning, shortly after his circumcision, I went to change his diaper and was shocked to discover blood on his penis. Now up till this point, I had told Melanie to just calm down when she wanted to take Jack to the doctor every five seconds. But this was different; this was his penis! Get the doctor on the phone now…get her down here…my son’s penis is in danger, we must protect the proud Cushman line!’.

I am proud to say that Melanie, myself, Jack, and, perhaps most importantly, Jack’s penis have all made it through ten months of non-stop excitement. So things are working out just fine.

November 29, 1998
Carol Suskind, Principal
Fielding Elementary Day School
Lower Manhattan

Dear Carol,

As you are probably aware, my son, Luke is a student at Fielding, in Debra’s 4/5’s class. Last week, I found Luke huddled in a corner outside his bedroom, crying. When I asked what was wrong, he said, “I was so homesick today. I was so homesick.” It is unlike Luke to cry like that all alone. He looked very scared. After a bit of prodding he told me that two boys in his class, Billy and Jim, had threatened to give him a good pounding that afternoon in yard. I said him that if anything like that ever happened again, he should tell his teacher, Debra, and left it at that.

Then, yesterday Luke mentioned that Billy’s parents had given Billy a Swiss Army knife. Billy told Luke he was going to bring the knife to school. Luke said Billy was sitting next to him at lunch, when Billy said, “Raise your hand if you hate who you’re sitting next to.” Billy held up a metal fork. Want to fight, Luke?” he said. “I bet my fork can go through you.” Luke said to me, “I was so frightened. I really freaked.” When I asked if he told Debra, he shook his head, “She was on her lunch break.”

Luke was concerned that Billy might bring the new knife to school and cut him. I assured Luke that Billy wouldn’t bring the knife to school, there was no way his parents would let him. I suppose this was naïve. Today Billy brought in the knife. Luke said that when Debra saw the knife, she told Billy to put it in his cubby. This struck me as odd. The common sense response—or so it seems to me—would have been to take the knife away.

I understand that it’s somewhat ridiculous to be worrying about knives in kindergarten. And Fielding Elementary seems the last place on earth where any real violence would occur. On the other hand, five-year-olds are only just learning to take responsibility for their actions, to understand that their actions have a real effect. I don’t want anybody—particularly my own son—getting hurt.

Best regards,

April 27, 1999
Notes for meeting with Carol Suskind, principal,
Fielding Elementary Day School
cc: Carol Suskind

Last week Luke’s teacher, Debra, called to schedule a meeting with herself, me, and Fielding’s behavioral specialist, Nadine. Debra’s tone was casual. She said Luke had made some drawings she thought we should take a look at.

I was a bit anxious going into the meeting—I had no idea what to expect—but since I am always on the lookout for tips on parenting, I tried to view the whole thing as an opportunity. After dropping Luke off as usual, Debra led me down to Nadine’s office. The office was in the school’s basement, and was the size of a closet, with no windows. Debra introduced me to Nadine, who immediately asked, “Are you claustrophobic?” It seemed strange for an opening line. I felt as if she were judging me in some way, as if this were a test. “No,” I answered, slowly. She said, “Okay, so we can close the door.”

Nadine pulled out a folder, arranging 5 drawings side-by-side on her desk. The drawings, she said, were Luke’s. They showed two figures lying on their backs, with stakes in their heads. In place of eyes, there were little x’s, as if to imply that they were dead. Next to the figures were the names Billy and Jim.

The drawings didn’t look like anything Luke had ever done and my stomach twisted at the sight of them. There was a side of Luke, I realized, that I didn’t know, or that I’d refused to see. I was overcome with shame and horror.

Nadine said that, although Luke was extremely bright, his behavior was not up to the first grade (which he’s supposed to attend this fall). “His murderous, annihilating drawings,” she said, “are not appropriate in this school.” Luke would not be welcome back this fall unless I agreed to take him for a psychological evaluation, the most extensive possible, which would run upwards of $2000, and which would include a neurological exam.

My heart was racing and I began to blubber like an idiot. I reminded Debra of our fall parent-teacher conference when she said Luke was having a fantastic year. Debra shook her head. “There were problems then, too.”

I asked Debra if she thought that the drawings might have something to do with the situation with Billy and Jim in the classroom, then cited specific examples of Billy and Jim hitting Luke and calling him names. “Well that’s funny,” said Debra, dismissively, “because Luke doesn’t even spend that much time with Billy and Jim.” I repeated what Luke keeps telling me, that these things tend to happen when Debra isn’t around. Nadine, the expert, interpreted this as further evidence of Luke’s deeply afflicted imagination. “Luke has a problem with boundaries,” she said. She was of the mind that he was letting himself get hurt or else imagining things. “We need to help Luke feel safe at school,” said Nadine, condescendingly.

I reminded Debra of the hundreds of drawings of smiling creatures and airplanes that Luke has made throughout the school year, of Luke’s four-year old classmate, Brian, whose mother keeps telling me, Brian wants to draw like Luke. I told Nadine about Luke’s composure this past weekend at the first chess tournament of his life, when he won a trophy and walked up on stage in front of 300 kids to accept it. Debra merely shrugged. “That’s true,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like Luke.”

That I had always liked Debra only intensified the burn of her betrayal. I could accept that Luke had made these drawings, but she had to accept that there was another Luke, who was mild-mannered and sweet. “I suppose it doesn’t help,” I said indignantly, “that the Columbine killings happened three days ago, and that the profile on the murderers bears a vague resemblance to my son, in that the murderers were highly intelligent, liked games, and shied away from conflict.” Nadine and Debra exchanged glances. Then Nadine gave her final assessment, “These drawings are the cause of great alarm.”

I asked how I should tell Luke to defend himself against Billy and Jim in particular and bullies in general. At least drawings aren’t violent, I argued. “Or are they?” Nadine stood up. The consultant would help me with all that, she said, adding that she happens to offer the type of exam she’s suggesting on the side. “We’ve done everything we can,” she said, washing her hands of me.

I had an important interview/luncheon uptown and it was all I could do to put my napkin in my lap and speak coherently. After the interview, I headed straight for the park where our babysitter usually brings Luke and my younger son, Sam, on the way home from school.

Luke was sitting with the sitter on a bench; I rushed up to hug him. Then Luke said, “Mommy, a terrible thing happened to me today in yard. Billy and Jim pushed me on a bike until it crashed. Jim pushed me off the bike onto the dirt. He tipped the bike over. Billy was there, too. They threw a tire at me. Then they threw the bike at me. They trapped me with the bike. Then Billy went and got a broom that had mud on it and started hitting me with the broom.”

As with the previous incidents reported by Luke, Debra was not present when this happened and it occurs to me now that this is a pattern. The incidents probably have been occurring precisely because Debra’s not there and the class is under-supervised. Luckily, this time, an assistant saw the whole thing, and, when Debra returned, the assistant’s account matched Luke’s. Luke appeared reassured by Debra’s handling of the situation. On the way home from the park, he said, “Debra’s going to make a report.” Then he squeezed my hand, and smiled. “I’m so happy,” he said. “I love my pants. I love myself. And I love my life.”

I have spoken with Keith, my husband. We both feel that we have been treated unfairly, and that Nadine’s use of the words “murderous and annihilating” to describe Luke’s drawings shows a lack of perspective. We suspect her (over)reaction has more to do with Columbine and violence in American schools generally, than it does with Luke and us. We agree that Luke’s drawings express his increasing helplessness and rage. And we want to help him. But since the trouble is taking place in the classroom, we believe it should be addressed in the classroom.

We are entrusting you with our child. And we are, frankly, appalled by the suggestion that Luke’s getting hurt in school is somehow his fault, that he’s brought it upon himself.

We look forward to meeting with you and discussing this further.

April 27th, 1999

Our meeting with Carol is set for the day after tomorrow.

April 28th, 1999
(Diary entry)

This afternoon, when I picked Luke up at school, Wendy gave me a meaningful look and her eyes immediately welled, “Luke had a great day,” she said. Luke had finished his handwriting book and she sent it home with him, like an apology.

April 29th, 1999

Carol is a moron. But she said she’d look into the situation and get back to us.

May 6th, 1999

In school today, Jim told Luke to say “shit, ” then Jim told the teacher. When Luke was discussing it with me later, he asked me please to tell him all the bad words, so he won’t say another one by mistake.

I cannot know what Luke is doing when he’s not with me. I keep hoping he’s okay.

May 24th, 1999

At today’s follow-up meeting today with Carol and Debra, Nadine was not present, at Keith’s and my request. “I know you have asked that Nadine not be present,” said Carol, stating the obvious, as usual, “but let me begin by saying that Nadine is a highly qualified professional.” Carol went on to list Nadine’s credentials, none of which dazzled either Keith or me.

During the three weeks since our last meeting, Carol said, the school has had Billy and Jim “shadowed,” meaning that an adult has observed Billy’s and Jim’s activities more or less constantly during the day. Since there was no evidence of any trouble, they have deemed that the situation between Luke and Billy and Jim “not a problem.”

As for Luke’s neuro-psychological exam, Nadine who “is very qualified” still felt strongly that we should pursue it. “Luke seems to have a problem with boundaries,” reiterated Carol.

Keith was irate. He said, “What if we refuse?”

Carol looked at him and chuckled smugly, as if Keith’s anger shed further light on Luke. “You mean,” she answered, “will we let Luke come back this fall? Well, I guess I’ll have to think about it. I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Then she looked at me. “I don’t think it will.”

I mentioned that I’d been asking Luke about the situation with Billy and Jim, as well. That Luke, too, had been saying things were better. Luke had also said that Billy had been away in Germany for ten days. I asked about Nadine’s lack of professionalism in her judgement of Luke’s drawings as “murderous” and “annihilating.”

“Let me say once again,” droned Carol, “that Nadine is very quailified. In the 15 years she has been with Fielding, nothing like this has ever occurred. Nadine was extremely effected by the incident at Columbine. If Nadine were at this meeting,” said Carol, “she would be apologizing to you in person.” Carol asked that Keith and me “find it in hearts” to forgive Nadine.

She was treating us like children. “Forgiveness is one thing,” I said. “But you’re asking us to trust Nadine’s judgement. Talk about lack of boundaries.”

Carol smiled. “I know how difficult this is,” she said. “I have a son, too. But please remember: we only want what’s best for Luke.”

May 25th 1999

Today Luke came home from school and asked me what “duh” meant.

May 28th 1999

Luke’s drawing of a magnolia branch is in the school’s year-end art fair. Everyone keeps coming up to tell me how much they love it.

June 3rd, 1999

At the class picnic, Billy was fighting with another boy who was bigger than him. The boy punched Billy and, instead of hitting the boy back, Billy turned to Luke, who was sitting on the ground nearby. I was sitting on a park bench with the other mothers. Luke noticed me and started to come over. Billy grabbed both of Luke’s cheeks and stuck his thumbs in Luke’s eyes, throwing his head back. As Luke’s head returned upright, Billy punched him between the eyes.

I rushed over to Luke and together he and I went after Billy, who ran straight to the teacher, Debra. I let Debra handle Billy, while I comforted Luke.

Eventually Debra and Billy came over. Debra said to Billy, “Tell Luke what you just told me.” Billy mumbled something. Debra said, “Billy wants to tell you it was an accident. He didn’t mean to hit you. He meant to hit the other boy instead.”

The other mothers offered sympathy and stories of similar run-ins with Billy. One had checked out ten books on bullies from the public library. She suggested starting a support group. I prefer to crawl under a rock. I didn’t know when I became a parent that I would have to relive all the horrors of growing up. It occurs to me that I am no better at handling this now than I was at ten.

June 4th, 1999

I have taken to walking around with a sheet of paper and a pen. I can’t sleep. I can’t move Luke to a new school, either. This is Manhattan. I have made a slew of phone calls. If you don’t apply in kindergarten, there are no new spots until middle school, unless someone leaves. Would Luke be better off in public school with a high student-teacher ratio and less supervision? I know these are the lessons of life, I just don’t know why he has to start learning them this early.

June 5th, 1999

Among the smiling creatures and airplanes in the year-end stack of Luke’s drawings, I see something strange: scribbly figures with frowning faces. The drawings look frighteningly like the ones that started all this trouble. I am scared. They are so different from Luke’s other drawings, it occurs to me that my son might be schizophrenic.

In the park, I stuff the drawings back into Luke’s backpack, so no one will see them. Later, surreptitiously, I take another look. I can’t decide whether to throw them out or to keep them as documents of this phase in Luke’s life.

“What’s this?” I ask Luke finally, when I am studying one of them, yet again. “Oh, says Luke. “That’s Brian’s drawing. The ones with the spikes, the kind of scribbly ones, those are all Brian’s. Because he’s only 4 and he can’t draw so well.”

I separate all the scribbly drawings from the stack. Luke confirms that they are all Brian’s. He says Brian gives him lots of drawings because Brian loves him so much. I call Brian’s home. “I have a whole bunch of Brian’s drawings,” I say. “I guess he gave them to Luke.” Brian’s father is delighted. “Brian thinks the world of Luke,” he says. “He really looks up to him.”

I am beyond vindication. I’ve started seeing a shrink.

October 1999

The psychologist who evaluated Luke said the lack of structure at Fielding was making Luke anxious. She suggested a school with more “limits” and intellectual focus.

February 2001

Luke is still at Fielding. So far, we have been unable to move him. People are having their second children, and, instead of moving to the suburbs, they are buying bigger apartments. There are still openings, however, in kindergarten.

This year’s perennial interview question: Would you consider sending Sam [Luke’s younger brother] to our kindergarten, even if we have no place for Luke?

I can’t help but feel that on some level I have failed Luke. That I keep failing him.