Laura Dennis

I breathe in the greasy perfume of fried chicken and corn fritters. I’m a kid all over again, letting maple syrup dribble onto my chin before wiping it away with the back of my hand. Even though I still rub my sticky hands on my old jean shorts rather than get another napkin, time has transformed me into a grown woman helping my own kids reduce a bucket of chicken to a pile of clean-picked bones. We should by all rights be full, but homemade ice cream beckons. We unstick our legs from the bench’s peeling paint and head for the glass-walled parlor. My mother and two daughters go on ahead while I follow the therapist’s instructions and coach my son, affectionately nicknamed B by those of us who love him best.

“Now, honey, it’s cold in there. And loud. Those machines make a lot of noise. And there are so many kinds of ice cream, more than you’ve probably ever seen.”

“Really?” he says, a hint of challenge in his voice.

“Yes.” I inhale hard, hold the breath, release it slowly. “So it might be kind of overwhelming. I know when I was a kid, I never knew what to choose. I was sure glad I had my parents’ help. So I’ll find a few flavors that are super yummy, and you and me, we’ll each pick one and have them put a scoop of it in a cup. Then we’ll go back to outside to eat. How does that sound?”

Silence. I stop walking, wait until I hear a slightly flat “okay.”

“Alrighty then. We have a deal!” My voice is bright, full of “pizzazz,” just as the latest in an ever-growing succession of therapists recommends. I’m doing it. This is the “high-structure, high-nurture” therapeutic parenting that is supposed to be the key to our family’s success. If we start now, while my son is still young, it will become second nature and he will blossom and thrive. That’s what the therapist says, anyway. More than four years after the diagnoses that still look to me like an unholy game of Scrabble–RAD, ODD, ADHD–we have yet to solve the puzzle. If there is even the slightest chance she’s right, I’ll listen.

Mom and the girls have already paid and are busy collecting napkins and spoons. I can’t see what they’ve ordered but am not especially concerned. My mother is the model of moderation, even on this nostalgically indulgent day. I reflect on what to offer: too many choices will cause mental overload, while too few will trigger his hard-wired sense of deprivation, a direct and enduring result of his birth family’s neglect. I scan the thirty-plus flavors, categorizing them as I go. He can’t abide certain textures; caffeine sends him over the edge; the myriad flavors and smells he deems “yucky” will make him gag. Eventually, we step up and order–Swiss Chocolate Almond for me, White Mountain Raspberry for B–then gather spoons and napkins of our own. As we exit, we scan the shelter for the others. I’ve barely spotted them when B’s body stiffens into an angry board, rage streaming from his hunched-up shoulders to and through his balled-up fists.

“What…?” I don’t get to finish my question.

Torn for a microsecond between fight or flight, his amygdala has chosen flight, sending him straight into the drive-thru lane that lies just beyond the door. Brakes squeal as I catch the hem of his Sponge Bob tee. Another near miss. How many have there been on this trip alone?

As we resume our now grim march toward the picnic shelter, the moaning starts. I look for a minute, perplexed, before I see. One sister has gotten a rainbow sherbet cone, the other a dish containing bubble gum vanilla that features pieces of real, honest-to-God bubble gum. Neither cone nor neon-hued gum were on our list. The deprivation script has been activated, telling him he’s been robbed. The moan escalates into a growl. I know that sound, its accompanying frigid glare. The ice cream will melt before it does. Again I breathe deeply, one, two, ten times. My mother and daughters follow my lead in adhering to the therapist’s script, ignoring both sound and stare. It seems to work, until...

“BITCH!”

Slack-jawed stares. It doesn’t help that we’re visiting my hometown, where my family’s a bunch of somebodies. Two decades, 700 miles, and three state lines are not enough–I fear half the people sitting at those faded red tables know exactly who we are. Not that it matters. A pint-sized fourth-grader screaming that word would make most people gape in horror. At least I hope it would.

“That’s enough,” my mother says in her sharp yet quiet way. “Let’s go.”

We all follow obediently, even B. My mother doesn’t get angry easily or often. When she does, you mind.

Once buckled in, she and I in front, the kids a row or two behind, Mom and I have a conversation comprised solely of meaningful glances. We’d planned to take the kids to the lake, the one I’ve loved ever since I myself was small. Like the restaurant, it’s the kind of thing I dreamed of passing down to my kids. But what about B? He’s still a simmering pot of rage. What would the therapist say? Should I call her? No. I already know. She frames everything in terms of choices. B has made a poor choice that must not be allowed to dictate the family’s day. Exercise is the best remedy for a meltdown and there’s a giant playground at the park. Besides, it’s only a short drive away.

“Should we?” I say out loud.

“It’s up to you,” Mom replies, her voice faintly tinged with the hope that we can get this outing back on track.

I put the key in the ignition, start the car, put it in drive. As we exit the parking lot, I turn on my right blinker, then my left, before settling on the right.

A few minutes later, we’re at my beloved lake, the one shaped like a “y.” We used to go there on elementary class trips, plunging in still-too-cold water that turned us blue. The cross-country team would sometimes practice there, straining to lift our soggy old running shoes up and through the watery swells. I wanted to be a lifeguard there during my summers home from college, but settled for the next lake east instead. I got married in a chapel on its shores, returned after the divorce to let it debride my broken heart. The mere glimpse of it through the windshield quiets me. We were right to come.

The air echoes with four resounding thuds as we slam the doors to my family-friendly white crossover SUV. As I raise my key fob to press “lock,” there comes a fifth, same-yet-different sound, more like a dull thwack followed by a crunch. It’s the sound of yielding flesh. Mine. My right cheek, to be exact. From my crumpled position on the ground, I try to figure out what hit me. A rock? A wayward frisbee? A greedy gull in search of a snack? The answer is none of the above. Tiny stones grind into my shin as a salty, metallic taste drips into my mouth. Realization dawns. It was my son’s fist. I hear my mother’s calm, authoritative voice assuring the clustering bystanders that all is well, no need to call for help.

A voice in my head protests that all is most certainly not well. Then I understand.

They want to call the cops.

This is all it takes for the voice to vanish, quelled by the onlookers’ (probably) good intentions. Although my son’s alarming bursts of violence help explain why I’ve given attachment therapists so much say in our lives, this is one place where we do not see eye to eye. They say I have to call the police whenever he attacks me. I disagree. No matter how bad things get, that is the one thing I cannot, will not do. There are only two possible outcomes. One is that I will be blamed for his behavior. After all, what kind of parent can’t control her child? Courts could intervene, force me into molds meant to make me a better mom. The other option is worse. My children were all born in India. My ancestors hail from Northern Europe. The law will not see a mother working through a difficult moment with her son. It will see an angry brown boy who has hit a white woman. It won’t matter that he’s still small, that his behaviors stem from a PTSD-induced surge of adrenaline, a product of the abuse and neglect he endured before entering the orphanage at an unknown age (the staff guessed he might be two). Versions of this story existed long before we grew our family through adoption. It has rarely, that I know of, ended well.

I pull myself into a sitting position. “It’s all good. Thanks.”

Mom helps me up as the world wobbles back and forth. I look around, gut fluttery with panic.

“It’s okay,” Mom says. “He’s over there.”

I crane my stiffening neck and see him racing about in a game of tag that his tween and teenage sisters, themselves now full of poorly concealed fury, will never let him win. I turn back, limp toward the familiar shore where I lower myself onto the wooden retaining wall. Time evaporates as I slump, listening to waves wash over stones. Slowly, my vision starts to clear. I see boats, fishermen, the docks of nearby cottages. Restless now, my spirit leaves, flying to the far end of the lake some twenty miles away before continuing to points beyond, hoping to rejoin another self. A self from sometime before. A self who could not in a million years have imagined that this is what life would be.

Reckless speedboats disrupt the waves. I stretch my legs toward the rocks below then make my way to the water’s edge. Cool splashes remove the bite of gravel, dilute the mucus and the blood. I long to immerse myself, clothes and all, but resist. I turn to find my oldest daughter waiting on the wall, spare napkins wadded in her hand. We huddle side-by-side while I dab distractedly at my wounds.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

It is a question with no right answer. Yet as I contemplate the rippling waves, one comes.

“No. But I will be.”

“What about B? Is he going to be okay?”

Her question stings more than any gravel, aches more deeply than any bruised bone. I know what the therapists would say. Kids with attachment disorder can heal. They’ve seen it with their own eyes, can point me to family testimonials. Still, I don’t see them here, those therapists, picking at flecks of their own blood. I see only this blue expanse before me, my children visible in the corner of my eye.

I wait.

Maybe the water's song will answer.

The Top Ten . . .

10 Things I Learned from “A Reporter Remembers” by Ruth Dennis*

1. It’s never too late. In 1943, my grandmother was at Cornell studying English and journalism. Then life happened. In 1955, she became a reporter all the same and wrote until she died.

2. We’re in this together. My grandfather promised her she would one day write. Turns out they did this as a team. Not everyone will be married to their teammate, but that doesn’t mean they have to go it alone.

3. Life is both-and. I imagine that for my city-born grandmother, nothing felt further from becoming a writer than going to live on a farm. Yet time and again, my grandparents’ agricultural knowledge lent their stories insight and depth.

4. Show you care. Decades after the events they covered, my grandparents still knew their newspaper staff, government officials, and many others by name. And because they took time to sit down and talk, people wanted to read what they had to say.

5. Push back. My grandparents were once on the verge of being banned from a public meeting. As they packed up their things, they thanked the leaders for giving them the next day’s headline. They were invited to stay.

6. Tell the whole story. “Sometimes an official made a damn fool of himself and yet his point was well-taken–we had to report on that and not expose his ludicrous remarks–often out of context,” she once said. What if everyone followed that advice?

7. Know your limits. My grandparents covered everything from human interest stories to Hurricane Agnes and the flood of ‘72. My grandmother drew the line, however, at looking for a severed head in the woods.

8. Sometimes there is no story. Once my grandmother interviewed a man who had attended his county fair every year for 80 years. She wanted to do a feature, but all he had to say was that he came “because it was there.” She let it go.

9. Feedback is your friend. My grandmother had been writing for decades when she said “I still get angry at editors who dare to cut or change my copy. And then I re-read and know why they did.”

10. Your job is to tell a story well. “I hope that we never get too busy, too wound up in our own selves, that we miss these stories. A reporter may never win a Pulitzer prize, but can enrich her or his life by asking, listening, and learning.”

*These observations come from/were drawn from an unpublished speech written by the author's grandmother, Ruth Dennis.