October 5, 2006
Boy Meets Mom
I have a teenager in the house and he’s driving me nuts. Alexander, all of 13 this year, weighing in at a hefty 180 pounds, and looming tall at five feet and five and a half-inches, has suddenly become someone I don’t know very well. It’s unnerving.
I hardly even noticed the transformation until it was staring me right in the face. Over the summer months, he grew taller, bigger, and unexpectedly broke into a booming baritone. I miss his squeaky Mickey Mouse voice. These days, I have to tilt my chin up to look into his eyes, where once I had to bend to seek his eye level. When he drapes his arm over my shoulders, I reminisce on the comfort I provided him as a little child; it’s his turn now, he seems to say by his actions. How I miss my little boy.
Then there are the mood swings. I’ve never had any problem with his behavior, but, of late, we seem to be getting into tussles more often. Even the simplest things tend to make him sullen and introspective, with a strange knit in his eyebrows seemingly permanently etched. Emotional tug-of-wars run the day, with this new person testing and challenging the limits of my parenting. I’m getting tired of negotiations at every turn; even when I put my foot down, he weasels his way into more discussions, questioning common logic and reasoning like a true skeptic. Heck, sometimes, I think he enjoys just seeing me squirm. Oh, dear, I don’t remember having this much trouble with adolescence.
And the way he sleeps! He sleeps in a moving car, takes long naps when he comes home from school, and sleeps in late over the weekends- if there is such a thing as a sleep guzzler, he is it. On the other hand, we’ve noticed him going to bed later than usual (our mandatory bedtime is ten in the evening). Even when he lies in bed with absolutely nothing to do - no television, no books, no music, and definitely no handheld gaming consoles, it still takes him forever to drop off to sleep. Eleven or twelve, when we’re lucky, though some nights it can be torture watching him stare at the ceiling till one or two in the morning. I try to keep him company on those nights, checking in on him surreptitiously every now and then, only to see him tossing and turning. I am almost tempted to invite him to the family bed, like we used to do when he was a little boy and he’d had a bad dream. Then I see his hulking frame and I think better of it.
I poured these concerns to my youngest sister one day. Jasmine has always enjoyed an extraordinarily close relationship with my sons and, to this day, Alex considers her one of his two best friends (the other being my younger brother Jeff). I must have been particularly distraught that day, tired from caring for my autistic son Alphonse and drained from my run-ins with smart aleck Alex. And so, she handed me these snippets from her online journal, some vignettes of my son’s growing-up years to remind me how much of that little boy is inside him still. I share these with you, with her permission.
**********
sometimes i kick donkey
I spent the weekend hanging out with Alex.
Being the kickass aunt/godmother that I am, I tried to relate to that lump of eight-year old cuteness in the manner most boys his age are alarmingly accustomed toé senseless violence.
Armed with water guns, we chased each other like lunatics, stealthily seeking cover behind the furniture.
We built pillow forts and declared rubber ball war on each other. Tickle torture befell the poor sod (mostly him... I rule!) whose fort was first to crumble.
During less active moments, I was repeatedly lectured and eventually quizzed on the finer points of the Pokemon universe.
But I think I endeared myself most to Alex by playing video games with him. Or, more accurately, by acting like a total moron while playing Counterstrike.
Everyone agrees that my aim is good, but my hand-eye coordination borders on miserable. So every time I got to shoot some enemy butt, I went spastic.
Like when I made my first kill. We had been playing a while, and I was beginning to think I’d never hit anything. "Take that, you sorry ass****! HAH!" I shouted euphorically as the first sad CG bastard fell prey to my frantic and directionless shooting.
"Uh oh...Ninang (Godmother) said the ’A’ word," Alex clucked worriedly.
Thinking quickly, I covered up with an emphatic "Did not!" Ooooh yeah, I’m smooooth, baby!
"Did too!" he argued.
"Did not!" I said firmly.
"Did too!" he said again. "I heard you!"
"Dem’s fightin’ words, sonny! I soooo did not! I said ’donkeyhorn’... Really, I did!"
"Erhm... Okayyyyyyy... Suuuuuuure you did," the little bugger said as he rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the game.
"Really did not," I muttered under my breath. Mature, yes I am!
But after that little argument, I did my best to sanitize my language with each kill. With practice, I was able to hone my skills enough to appease my virtual bloodlust. I got to whup some serious enemy... erhm... behinds. Yeah, I did. Blasted a lot of those sorry muthaf... fuzzballs! I shi...nsplint you not.
Close to bedtime, with his caveman killing instincts tamed by the video game bloodshed, Alex and I settled down to read H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine.
As sleep flickered behind his heavy eyelids, he snuggled up close to me and, in the vaguest of whispers, asked me to sing him to sleep.
"What would you like me to sing to you, sweetie?" I whispered back.
"’Not While I’m Around,’ please. Or ’Solla Sollem.’ Or ’At the Edge of the World,’" he yawned.
Aaaah, show tunes. My wussy pansy-ansy influence on the boy, as my brother likes to call it. Testosterone-calming influence, I prefer to call it.
"Nothing’s gonna harm you, not while I’m around / Nothing’s gonna harm you / No sir, not while I’m around..." I began, softly singing him his Sondheim lullabye.
"Thank you, Ninang. You kick donkey" he whispered earnestly as he drifted off to sleep.
Yeah, sometimes I do, don’t I?
**********
"in the name of the nut, i command you to follow me!"
These past few months, my nephew’s violent tantrums have been at a minimum. Luckily, the little spells Alphonse does have are usually fleeting and not quite as aggressive as before. In fact, he’s been quite amiable lately, if still a little unpredictable.
To soothe his volatile demeanor (and to reward his good behavior), Alphonse’s Special Ed teacher occasionally motivates him with little treats... like tic tacs or cashews. As a rule, we use this Pavlovian trick only when absolutely necessary. (Mommy’s Note: This was before Applied Behavior Analysis entered our lives and positive reinforcement became the rule of the day.)
Last week, something triggered Alphonse to go on a rampage. While half-crying and half-laughing, he sent whatever was within his reach flying in all directions. He pulled pictures off of the walls and flung books all over the room.
Still not satisfied, he turned his attention to his mother. Teeth bared, he lunged at her, tugging at her shirt and pulling her hair.
Upset by the baffling display of aggression, Alex rummaged around for a treat to mollify his younger brother.
He found a bag of cashew nuts.
With a triumphant smile, he slowly stood up and began to fashion a cape out of a towel.
Then, with a booming voice reminiscent of Kenneth Branagh in Henry V (one of his favorite movies.... my influence again, ahem ahem!), Alex called out to Alphonse.
As though rallying the troops on Saint Crispin’s day, he raised a cashew high up into the air as though it was a sword. Then he shouted, "In the name of the nut, I command you to follow me!"
And follow, Alphonse did.
**********
a heart full of love
Alphose was taken to the hospital yesterday. Still very much in his oral stage, he had eaten katol, a toxic little coil used to repel mosquitos. Where he got it, we haven’t the slightest idea.
It took several nurses and physicians to subdue him long enough to draw his blood.
Forcing him to ingest activated charcoal was another long and drawn out battle in itself, this time taking a team of nurses, doctors and orderlies.
Alex was understandably upset. "I wish I was the one who had eaten the coil, not Alphonse. If anyone should die, it should be me," he said, his voice grave and full of sadness.
"Don’t say that. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault. Alphonse will be all right," I replied.
"But he swallowed poison! Are you sure he’ll be okay?" he asked again, bleary-eyed.
"The doctors are giving him something to counteract the toxins. He’ll be fine. I promise," I said.
"I hope so..." he said, his voice trailing off.
A few hours later, my sister called us up to report that the toxins had been excreted from Alphonse’s system.
Alex beamed, sighed with great relief, and smiled.
I smiled back at him, hastily brushing off tears. Once, when he was very little, Alex wanted to buy a new brother. But now, his eight year-old heart is so full of love he’s willing to give up his life for Alphonse.
Would that we could all love and be loved in that way.
**********
True, for all the strange things my son has become these days, I still see glimpses of my little Alex. Jasmine’s journal entries reminded me of that. Just the other week, he woke up in the middle of the night and I felt him standing over me with a coverlet, whispering, "Mama, you forgot your blanket. You might get cold." With a quick kiss, he tucks me in, tussles my hair, and leaves quietly. My little baby, always so thoughtful of my comfort, is still inside that strange young man.
Moreover, his relationship with his disabled brother has strengthened with time. A few years ago, when he was deathly afraid of his brother’s devastating outbursts, he would cower in fear behind a table while waiting for Alphonse’s anger to subside. These days, he deftly heads off these tantrums with some physical roughhousing his brother enjoys. And when we need extra brawn to restrain his brother temporarily, his big, strong arms, so firm and yet so gentle, come in really handy. These are the tradeoffs, it seems.
I wonder how long this will last. The confusion. The uncertainty. The emotional rollercoaster. Every day is an occasion for change in all of us, though for adolescents like my son, change is no longer an opportunity. It has become a requirement. However difficult this transition will be, I hope he knows that one thing remains true in all of this: no matter how far away he wanders, the ties that bind us will always be thick and strong. He need only tug at his end and I will know.
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