Shipwrecks of our understanding

Hey Sam,

your teachers have recommended you get tested - for ADD, ADHD, ODD, Dyslexia, etc. I wasn’t there when they said the words, your Mum relayed them to me after a parent teacher meeting that I couldn’t attend. They say they’re not concerned with your progress, they’re just suggesting it because they want to support you the best they can and the school gets funding when a kid is diagnosed, which means they have more support to give to those who learn differently.

I understand that, really I do, and I’ve never been worried about your progress at school. But hearing the words, even though they came to me second hand, had an effect.

Monday, 7.55am. 20 minutes before school departure. Wrestlemania has commenced.

I’ve revved you up and now you’re bouncing around me on the bed like a bean. A jumping bean. Something that Willy Wonka might have cooked up. I’m calling for you to stop, even though I’m the one responsible for your excitement. That’s because I’m looking for the telltale signs of one of the acronyms.

I’m trying to get you to concentrate on some sight words as your eyes appear to roll around in your head and you leap and throw your lightweight frame around the sheets. You’re still hoping the game hasn’t finished, but I’ve decided it has and I’m watching for the signs of a deficit of attention, such as an inability to focus, constant fidgeting, acting without thinking, excessive talking, being unable to sit still - especially in calm or quiet surroundings.

Yes I’ve googled, of course I have, but the signs are there when I look for them, glimpsed between the locks of strawberry blonde hair that we’ve been letting grow. I am the stillness at the centre of a whirlpool of excitement. I sit on the bed, pretending calm.

I tell you to focus, to look at me, but your eyes run across the room instead.

And I’m suddenly singing under my breath,

I want you to be you.

It’s a song by Captain Kirk, aka William Shatner, from a surprisingly good album he made with Ben Folds of the five folds fame. The songs are catchy, funny, ironic (at least I think they are). The one that hums inside me now is about accepting someone for who they are, with all their idiosyncracies. But, really, it’s about all the things Shatner can’t stand.

Spit out the gum, it doesn’t work.

Focus Sam, I say again. Your eyes are rolling around like they’ve weighed anchor. You’re adrift.

Now a nursery rhyme takes over my internal jukebox.

See how they run.

In the descending chaos of our room I lose you. You aren’t lost but I lose you. They named it a disability, the thing you should be tested for, an ability not properly made, a boy not properly put together by parents who don’t know what they’re doing. Trying to craft a golem out of mud, but mud that is sliding down collapsing hillsides, filling houses, burying the simplicity of us together, wrestling on our bed.

I’m the one who’s lost, not you.

Did you ever see such a sight in your life?

I try to call you back but it’s me who has wandered off. I can’t see you anymore and I feel the fear rising as I’m caught in the storm. I am calling you to come back, like someone searching across rocks for a shipwreck that never happened, though they swore they heard the splintering of wood through pouring rain and crashing waves. There I am, hunched in the darkness, flaring a torch through the salt spray, seeking wreckage that just isn’t there.

Because you’re not broken Sam,

but just for a moment,

a morning,

a few days maybe,

I started thinking you were and I racked my brain for the things we’d done wrong as we raised you, where our searchlight went out.

Where we let you run against the rocks.

That’s us travelling through the southern states of the US just before Donald Trump was elected president. We were visiting friends and performing in North Carolina but in this photo we’re on the road to New Orleans. At the time we were confused by American politics, gun laws and the inequity between one state and another, but also equally confused by our food options along the highway. We ended up in Hooters as you can see and your Mum and I had a beer and some chips (fries). For you we ordered a glass of milk.

And that’s when the well stocked waitress told us they told us didn’t have any.

Your Mum couldn’t come to terms with that, she was shocked. No milk at Hooters - it seemed like an oxymoron.

We probably shouldn’t have been ordering milk in the first place, because now we know your little body doesn’t tolerate dairy and that’s why you were so fussy eating when you were younger. That and you seem to be gluten intolerant too. Or maybe the dairy is ok and it’s mainly the gluten that’s the issue, we’re still evaluating that. Either way it sucks for a kid, who has to miss out on birthday cake at parties, chocolate and ice cream. Generally you’ve taken the news pretty well and we’re lucky there are so many options out there for dairy and gluten intolerant kids these days.

Maybe we should have fed you less dairy when you were younger, and maybe we should never have taken you to Hooters either because its bad role modelling. I would like to point out at this stage that it was your Mum’s idea and, besides, it was a choice between Hooters, Crispy Creme and a Taco Bell. There were no healthy options on the highway, just a bunch of bad choices.

Sometimes, to be honest, parenting feels like that. Heck, life feels like that. We’re navigating the fog of our understanding, trying to see by stars that have been obliterated in the gloom. We peer ahead and try to make out vague shapes in the darkness. Rocks rear up out of the fog at the last moment, when it’s too late to turn.

We’re occupied with presentiments of disaster. We anticipate their onslaughts, plan for them, build light houses on cliff faces that thrust their searchlights through the gloom.

I don’t know where you’re heading or what will happen to you along the way. I want to. I would do anything to guarantee your happiness and success but I am limited in my vision and inability to see through the fog or to cover every cliff face with light. I can’t think my way through this, in the same way I can’t answer your Mum when she asks why Hooters do not stock milk. I don’t really know. It’s as simple as that.

See how they run.

Back on the bed it’s now 8am, 15 minutes before school departure. I take a breath and bring myself back. Your eyes settle and focus on me. They tend to do that when I am focussed on you, not sweeping the waves or trying to confront a future that hasn’t yet risen out of the darkness. You might have ADD, but I don’t think so. You’re the child who can sit for hours acting out stories in your imagination, or sir down to draw while we have long and boring meetings that seem endless to all of us.

If anything maybe it might be dyslexia that’s the problem. I don’t know. I don’t even really know if we should be using a word like problem. You learn differently, that’s what your teachers are telling us. Yes, that’s true, you’re different, but then look at the bunch of artists and misfits you’ve been modelling behaviour off all your life. People whose lives evolve around their imagination and ability to engross themselves in a world that is entirely constructed out of thin air.

You’re just like that, like us. You’re the boy who gets dressed up every dinner time to serve the family in a minimum of two imaginary roles in a restaurant that exists only in your head. One of those figures is ‘the waiter’ who is lovely, polite, and very attentive. The other is the ‘little gentleman’ who is part of the family being served by ‘the waiter’. Occasionally when I am busy in the kitchen, being ‘the chef’, you will also play the surprisingly gruff voice of ‘the father’, ordering food.

That voice isn’t mine, it’s deep and sounds a bit grumpy. That’s not me as far as I know, but maybe it’s the voice I have when I tell you to focus, to stop being yourself.

I want you to be you.

Your eyes focus on me and I realise I’m the one bouncing around. When I stop and look you’re right there. Smiling as always. So many gaps it’s like a graveyard of teeth. You’re right here, sitting, fully focussed, waiting for me. You’re not running over the walls, not steering for the rocks. You’re not a problem, not broken, there is no wreck for me to find.

You’re just you, sometimes the little gentleman, sometimes the waiter, always the trickster, the happiest boy in the world, sailing through life. You’re here, always here, waiting for me to join you in the improbable beauty of this moment.

Waiting for me to stop shining my light off into the darkness.

Love,

Ragnar