A Different Kind of Normal (18 page)

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Authors: Cathy Lamb

BOOK: A Different Kind of Normal
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Please, not Damini, not the triplets.
Not Tate.
Please, God, not Tate.
 
On a rainy afternoon Tate played basketball on our court for three hours. He came in for dinner. He would not acknowledge me.
My sweet, kind boy had turned into a cauldron of anger.
He worked in his Experiment Room that night for two hours. When I tried to give him a hug, he pulled away.
“Not even a hug, Tate?”
“No. My brain waves are not feeling it.”
“Tate, you’re hurting me and you’re being vindictive.”
“I don’t have a vindictive bone in my body, Mom. I’m not feeling it for hugging you. I love you, though. It’s almost too late. All the guys are already practicing after school. The coaches are watching. I know they’re picking teams in their minds. I’m a junior, Mom. Two years. That’s all I have left of high school.”
“You—”
“Me, what, Mom? You are always interfering, always hovering over me, always overprotective as if I’m a baby, as if you think I can’t handle anything on my own. You won’t let me do what I want, what I need to do. I can hardly breathe I’m so mad. You say you’re keeping me safe, but I am hating this, Mom. I am hating my life.”
I was miserable.
He was miserable.
I called my mother at one in the morning. She was up. She always is. She sleeps about five hours a night. I tell her it’s because she’s hungry, being that slender. She says it’s because she’s still enjoying the cocktail she had before bed.
“Throw him out in the world,” my mother said.
“Throw him out in the world? Are you kidding me? No.”
“Throw him out into the wide, wide, wonderful world of high school basketball then.”
“No.”
“My darling daughter, you’re suffocating your son and you need to stop it.”
“I am not suffocating him.”
“You are. You absolutely are.”
“Mom, you know he is not a normal kid. He is a kid with a shunt in his head. Do you get that if he’s hit hard enough on the head, he could have serious problems? He could die?”
“I know. But it’s unlikely.” For once all flighty and raunchy comments, that dry humor, was gone. “Even Ethan said so.”
“Unlikely isn’t good enough.”
“It’s all we all have. We all take risks. Getting in a car is a risk. Scuba diving is a risk. Skiing is a risk. It’s improbable he’ll be hurt, even with the problems he’s had.”
“What about the kids on the other teams? What about the fans? You’ve heard it almost every time we’re in public: Retard. Martian head. Two heads. Cockeyes. Frankenstein. Bobble-head.” I felt tears spurt up. “Freakoid. I’ll sit there and I’ll watch his face shutting down, closing up like he does when he’s humiliated or attacked, and that excitement will ebb away. We’re playing other kids in other communities. They’ll make fun of him. They’ll be rude, they’ll yell mean stuff from the stands, they’ll chant. They’ll yell, ‘Crooked eyes.’ Maybe they’ll come after him after the game. . . .”
“Jaden—”
“He’s tough, and he uses humor to deflect a lot, but he’s sensitive, too. I can picture him running onto the court, excited that he’s being allowed to play, and the audience getting quiet and staring and laughing and snickering. . . .” I put a hand to my tears, thinking about people attacking my son.
“Is that why you’re really not letting him play? That you don’t want him to be hurt by the fans?”
I couldn’t even speak for a moment, my throat constricting so tight. “No, I am worried that he’ll become critically hurt, but do I want Tate to endure more teasing than he has to? No. Of course I don’t.”
“Your wanting to protect him is hurting him more than hearing ignorant, pubescent, zitty, awkward teenagers with elf ears saying cutting things to him.”
“That’s not true.” My shaky hand could hardly hold the phone.
“It is true.”
“You’re wrong. My job is to protect him.”
“That’s my job, too. I’m his Nana Bird. But he is furious with you, Jaden, and your relationship will go downhill for the next two years unless you let him play. He may grow to hate you and anything that happens on that court—even if it is self-esteem smashing—will pale to how he’ll feel about you the rest of his life for not letting him at least try out.”
“He wouldn’t do that to me.” Right?
“He doesn’t want to. But he loves basketball, Jaden. Loves it. Could something bad happen? Yes. But sometimes you have to risk the bad happening to let the rainbows in. This is his rainbow. Let him dance with the rainbow.”
“I hate dancing,” I muttered. I jiggled my legs to rid myself of stress.
“That’s because you never learned how. You haven’t danced for years, Jaden. The dancing was beaten out of you when you were young. I understand how it happened, but you need to dance, you need to let him dance.”
“I don’t want to dance.”
“You’re still young. Dancing should be in your life. Tate’s young. He needs to dance his own dance.”
Sometimes my mother can be darn poetic.
“Let him play,” she said. “Let him play.”
Later I made hazelnut chai tea and stared out my window at the moon. It was getting dark much earlier, the skies heavier, cool winds blowing. Soon all the maple trees lining the drive would be bare, their branches intertwined sticks outlined against a white or gray sky. There would be rain, probably snow, definitely icy mornings.
How many times had Faith stared out this window and watched the weather, the snowflakes, windstorms, rain, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, troubled, anxious, worried?
Miserable?
TATE’S AWESOME PIGSKIN BLOG
Here’s another photo of my uncle Caden. His arms are the size of tree trunks. He’s six foot six and yeah, the dude has a ponytail and he looks as if he could rip apart Halley’s Comet with his own hands. He was a professional wrestler, now he’s a single dad of four kids and owns Witches and Warlocks Florist.
 
Here are photos of his flowers. Yep, he made a zebra out of black and white carnations, and that tequila bottle flower arrangement is six feet high. The boobs in this photo were made out of pink flowers for a woman who beat breast cancer. He made them three feet across and a foot tall with red rosebuds for the you-know-whats, and the lady loved them. “She’s gotta celebrate,” he told me. “She’s gotta celebrate in a huge way, too.”
 
Here’s a photo of my cousin Damini, dancing.
 
She was adopted by my uncle Caden when she was four from an orphanage in India.
 
She is wearing a silver sparkly dress made by the designer, Cattrell Five, which my Nana Bird bought for her.
 
See that prosthesis? She lost her leg in the orphanage when it was infected after a snake bit her.
 
Sometimes she takes it off and chases a particular boy with it. I’m not going to say anymore or she’ll call me a “farting fruitcake,” and come after me.
 
BUT HERE ARE DAMINISMS, DAMINI’S RULES FOR LIFE:
1.
Sometimes you have to swing a leg to make a point.
2.
Every time you eat, be grateful you’re eating.
3.
If you are a stupid person, please shut up.
4.
Be nice to animals. In your next life you might come back as a slug, remember that.
5.
Plant the same flowers as your ancestors did, then you have a true family garden. We Bruxelles each have one; the tradition started a long time ago by my great, great, etc. super duper brave grandma, Faith Stephenson.
6.
Learn how to make Taco Soup because it is delicious, and read a lot of books because they are delicious, and if you don’t read how do you learn anything?
7.
Watch the seasons change, that’s what my aunt Jaden says, and I think she’s right.
8.
I wear short skirts with ruffles, sequins, and fluff because I love them. I’m not gonna hide my leg. Don’t hide anything about yourself.
9.
I know what it’s like to sit in a dark room in a crib alone and feel as if no one loves you. Love a lot of people for a happy life.
10.
Tate is a pain in my keester.
When Damini and I hang out together in public, we receive a lot of odd looks, and sometimes mean comments. I’m bigheaded. She has only 1.5 legs.
 
We don’t care.
 
So that’s Damini.
 
Here’s a photo of her on a skateboard. Here’s a photo of her skiing. Here’s a photo of her bicycling. Here’s a photo of her chasing me with her mouth open wide enough to catch a goose.
 
Here’s a photo of your brain’s neural pathways. Damini, I don’t know if you have any neural pathways. Could be all you have up there is a green Cyclops monster telling you what to do. . . .
 
Everybody, send me your list of ten Daminisms. You know, the stuff you know about life, the rules you live by, what you know in your own noggin, that kind of thing.
Tate and I spent almost two hours reading the entries.
His blog received 400 hits that day.
 
I took Tate to play chess with Maggie Granelli on Saturday.
“Hello, Maggie Shoes,” Tate said. “I’ve come to beat you. I will give you no quarter, I will be merciless, I will be thorough in my attack, and then I’m going to have some of that lemon cake on your counter, okay?”
“Greetings, Bishop Tate. Today I am feeling lucky. Your demise on this chessboard will please me greatly. And have all the lemon cake you want.”
They began. Tate won both matches. There would be no pity wins.
Maggie’s roses still have a few blooms. Pinks, reds, yellows . . .
Her time is shortening.
 
There are many reasons I became a hospice nurse.
One was because of Grandma Violet. Violet was a healer, as was her mother before her. People all over our town, for miles out, came to see her, from the time she was seventeen years old. She used herbs, massage, meditation, a little sterilized acupuncture to “release the evils,” and she used her Silent Spells.
She used “talk healing,” too, where she sat and listened, her red curls bopping around, her hands holding her client’s.
Every summer Brooke, Caden, and I came up from Hollywood and watched Grandma Violet work. Her patients cried, they talked as if no one had listened to them before, they told her their aches and pains, in both body and heart. She listened, she soothed, she healed.
She did not hesitate to send them to a doctor when needed. For example, when Davis Castille crawled to her on his knees because his appendix had burst, she called an ambulance. “I want you to take it out, Violet,” he pleaded, pale white. “You do it. I don’t trust them damn doctors. Stealing my money, that’s what it’s about, all for a bad stomachache.”
When Lizzie Hasten’s son’s arm had split to the bone from a tractor accident, same thing. “Get out your sewing kit and sew him up, Violet!” Lizzie said. “He wants you to use red thread to make him seem manly, isn’t that right, Reggie?”
When Ruby Black had shingles, she came to Grandma Violet for the “magic herbal tea.” Grandma Violet made her a cup before driving her to the doctors. “It wasn’t the medicine that cured me,” she told anyone who would listen. “It was Violet’s magic herbal tea.”
The magic herbal tea was soon in great demand.
“What I do, dears,” she told Brooke, Caden, and me one summer, her blue eyes huge behind her glasses, “is help to heal the heart and the head, the passions, the pain, loss, grief, frustration, disappointment, and anger. All of those emotions will cause your body to fail in one way or another. Joy lifts the spirit and sorrow weighs it down. Joy gives health, sorrow brings illness.” She held our hands in hers. She smelled like a blend of nutmeg and vanilla. “And I do a few Silent Spells, to help things along, spells I learned from my mother and her mother, all the way back to Faith and Grace, and their mothers, the twins Henrietta and Elizabeth, immensely talented witches.”
We nodded, still in blind awe as children at the thought of our magic, chanting, spell-throwing witch-ancestors.
I wanted to be a healer, too.
I became an emergency room nurse first and worked to heal people who were sometimes on the brink of death. Most of the time we saved them, sometimes we didn’t. That job certainly gave me nerves of steel and a deep background in trauma. But I also understood grief. I lost Grandpa Pete before Grandma Violet; my father, Shel, on that terrible night; and Brooke to drugs. Your own grief helps you understand others’ grief, therefore you’re in a unique position to help.

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