Monday, November 29, 2010
The Little Black Dog
The sun in a Siren. Seduction. Late November promises snow not sun. I bundle cushions, blankets and towels under my arm and become like a coastal mutation of a Sherpa. I haul my home away from the inn and to the sea.
Off the main road, I plod into wet sand, past drifted tree trunks, past mounds of salted seaweed and up a dune. I’m fifteen feet up on a small mountain of wind blow wild grass where I pile each layer on top of next, towel first, then a pad, then a round sitting cushion and then a wool blanket. I drop myself down on this nest. Meditation posture.
The sea rolls and recedes, white foam spray rises and falls, a symphony of action with no end. Wind blows, clouds smear the horizon in long gauzy sheets and the sun lifts over my right shoulder.
The center of perfection.
For a moment, just one and then thoughts rise to cover the view.
Yesterday I attended a conference at my son’s school. He has special needs. He has a condition that makes him an audio learner, verses one who learns from reading and writing. He asks questions. He needs to talk. He needs the teacher to repeat, again and again, what is expected and still he might not remember, especially if the teacher is impatient. He is very sensitive that way. His heart is ten times bigger than other people. He wears that heart around his neck for all to see.
It’s not his fault.
It will take years, if ever, to bring him into line with the rest of the world that sits still at their desks and prints perfectly and nods yes when the teacher says yes and no when the teacher says no and colors between the lines.
He’s a wonderful kid.
Mr. Charm.
Four of his teachers love him and understand. But one. One teacher, she doesn’t get it. She needs him to be the kind of learner she needs him to be. She counts the number of questions he asks, rather than listening to the questions. In conference, she made a point to say this. “I count the number of questions you ask and you are doing much better. In three hours, you ask just five rather than twenty six.”
He sinks low in his chair. Humiliated.
This woman doesn’t get my child despite the fact that I have explained to her, again and again. No child left behind. My son is smart. He is doing his best. Love him.
But she doesn’t.
She has a tight jaw and sharp eyes. She is a busy woman with no time for my busy inquisitive son. He’s annoying. He’s outside her lines.
Sea and sand and sun and sky. I see none of what is before me now. My view has gone dim from what I saw yesterday.
I pull out my iphone and tap my way to a program for email. I am going to write this teacher a letter. I am going to let her know how I feel. I am going to get him moved to a different class, I am going to organize my thoughts.
A two inch by two inch screen rises and below is a two by two keyboard. And electronic piece of paper is before me and my fingertips fly as I try to fit a lesson of what is true and right into letters and sentences and paragraphs. Teachers are here to teach, not harm. Compassion is requisite. Who does she think she is to humiliate my child?
A knot forms under my ribs, in the general region of my liver. The center of the will, I have been told. The knot, like a fist, rock hard and still I type. The woman’s humanity is nowhere near a place I can truly touch. Her insecurity, her sorrows, her limited understanding of the world. I don’t finger my way closer to her but travel further away.
The yap of a small black dog snaps in my direction. Yap yap yap.
The dog is at the base of the dune, far away and annoying.
The dog advances up the incline, yap, yap, yap and I drop the iphone drop to my knee.
The dog plants twig thin legs wide in the sand and quivers as it barks. It is one of those cross between dogs. Pomeranian with Boarder Terrier? Miniature Pinscher mixed with Japanese Chin? Toy Fox Terrier mixed with Eskimo?
Yap, yap, yap.
I search the beach past this annoying little beast, where the hell is the owner and here she comes with a leash dangling from her hand.
She calls out Sparky? Sparkles? Sparticus?
The little dog advances half way up the dune and is going nuts now. A full rant of yaps and the woman does nothing. She has white hair under a cream-colored stocking cap, pink earmuffs that cover her ears and white mittens over her hands. She is zipped and tugged into a turquoise velour-jogging suit, flesh in rolls as it presses against the fabric. The mild expression on her face is like someone compacted into box of cotton.
“You need to stop your dog,” I say.
Yap, yap, yap.
“If I come closer, he’ll just run away,” the woman explains from where she stands.
Yap, yap, yap.
The dog is now fewer than six feet from me. A leap away.
“Lady, you need to stop your dog,” I say again.
She stumbles up the incline but her balance is dreadful and with each step in the soft sand, she must stop to right herself. Her arms wave at her sides as if she navigates the high beam.
And the dog continues to bark and move towards me.
Finally, I push off the cushions and stand against the stupid little dog. I become a bear. My iphone flips off my lap and into the sand.
“Get that damn dog away from me,” I yell.
The woman leaps for the animal but it makes a little yelp, turns and runs down the dune and away. The woman toddles after it and then they are both gone.
My heart is fast and tingles of adrenaline rush to pin points on my skin.
I sit down again, try to go back to where I was before.
iphone!
I dig for the phone, dust it off and poke around at the now blank screen.
My letter is lost. Gone. All those collected thoughts and my great big plan to defend my son, gone and that's when I start to cry.
I'm mad at the teacher, yes but what is going on here anyway? What’s the bottom line and now I’m really crying, because I can, because I am alone on the beach and no one is here to make me stop—not the dog, not the muffled lady, not even my iphone.
My son suffers today and every day because he came six weeks early and moments after he was born I let the doctors take him away to the Intensive Care Unit when he didn't need to go and now it's proven that a baby separated from the mother suffers trauma in the brain. That is what happened to my son. I've read the studies, over and over again and even though the doctors call it “empirical” meaning it hasn’t been proven scientifically—I know the truth in my heart. My son, my son, I failed my son. I was trying to be good, I was trying to follow the rules, I was trying to believe the doctors knew better than a mother but I was wrong, the doctors were wrong and now my son...my son pays the price.
A terrible weight is on my back and won’t go away like that damn yappy dog—all day long and into the night. When will I ever forgive myself for what I have done?
Silence is all around, a whipping wind blown off the sea and nothing changes here—nothing. The waves still rise and then slip away, the endless dance of motion in response to the position of the moon and the sun moves in the sky, above my head now—twelve o’clock in the sign of Scorpio—the great stinging creature that likes to stay hidden and when it comes out it stings. Under the Scorpio sun, alone on the beach I am just a small woman, as tiny as a grain of sand and so is my sorrow. It’s not unique. All around this world, women tear out their hair for the suffering of their children. That is the plight of a mother. That is my fate and when its all done, it will be my son’s wife who will do the same for her own.
It’s life. I know it and in that knowing I wipe my face with the back my hands and just sit there in the wind for the longest time.
1 Comments:
I really like your Memoirs in the News section of this blog Jennifer. I'm still in the process of researching your website. I respect your work immensely.
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