A Father's Love (35 page)

 

 

DESPITE THE LEGAL saber rattling from Brazil even since Sean has been home, I refuse to denigrate the character of his mother, grandparents, or the Lins e Silva family or speak evil of them to him. As he grows older, no doubt, he will discover the truth for himself. For now, I'll often remind him when we are out someplace, “Oh, we used to go here with your mom,” or “Your mom always loved that restaurant.” I bring things up with Sean only if they are good memories of his mom. There's no reason to remind him of the sadness we endured because of her. In fact, we had only good memories when we all lived together as a family, a point that Sean remembers well.

I did find it almost humorous that, after the Ribeiros went to such extreme measures to make sure that Sean was dressed in a Brazilian soccer shirt when we left Brazil, my son had no real desire to play the game once we were home.

Bernie Aronson called one day shortly after we were back in New Jersey. “How's Sean doing?” Bernie asked. “How's he acclimating? Do they have a soccer team at his school?”

“Bernie, you're not going to believe this,” I said. “Sean really doesn't like to play soccer.”

Bernie cracked up laughing. For Bernie, it was the ultimate irony.

 

 

SEAN AND I established three foundational principles for how we conducted business in our home, how we would deal with every situation: we were committed to being honest, kind, and humble.

One time when I was reiterating these principles to Sean, he said, “Wow, Dad, that's completely opposite to how I have been living these past few years.”

I smiled, but held my tongue. I refused to allow myself to slip into any negative comments about his grandparents, his mother, or the family of Bruna's Brazilian husband.

 

 

DURING THE SUMMER of 2010, Sean expressed a desire to learn how to ride a bicycle. Most of his friends got around the neighborhood on bikes, but Sean had to walk. He came home from Brazil saying that he could ride a bicycle, but when he was at his friends' houses and they were all riding their bikes or scooters, I'd get a call from a parent saying that Sean had a headache or wasn't feeling well.

I'd rush over to pick him up only to discover that he wasn't sick. He was simply humiliated that he was nearly ten years old and had never learned how to ride a bike.

When we got home, we had a talk. “Son, I want you to be honest with me and tell me what you can do, what you can't do, and what you want to do. I'm here to help you to do those things that are appropriate for you. I'm here for you. You're a ten-year-old boy, and if you want to ride a bike, I'll help you.”

Pop-Pop bought Sean a bike for his tenth birthday, so throughout the summer, once a week or so, we had practice sessions out in the front yard. Sean wouldn't go anywhere else, because he was too self-conscious about his inability to ride. Our driveway, however, is a half-moon and doesn't lend itself to good bicycle practice. There's not enough of a straight area to travel before the wheel has to turn to the right or the left.

In August, the week before school was to start up, we worked on the bike out front again, but Sean wasn't doing so well. “Okay, let's take a different approach,” I said. “Let's go over to the school grounds, where there is a long, straight, flat field to ride on.”

“No, Dad, I don't want to go over there. The other kids will see me.”

“It's the week before school, and the last place most kids will be is at school. Let's go. We're going to get out in that field and we're going to ride this bike.”

It was a really hot late summer day, so we tossed a case of bottled water into my Jeep and carefully lifted Sean's new bike into the back. We drove over to the school yard.

The grassy fields at the school were perfect. The ground was solid but had a nice layer of soft, low grass, in case Sean fell. For about two hours, I held on to the seat and handlebars and ran with him as he pedaled. “Feel how you lean,” I encouraged him. “Okay, get ready. I'm going to let you go on your own.”

“No, Dad. Don't let go. No, I can't.”

“Yes, you can. You're doing great. Okay, here you go.” I was certain by this time that he would be able to ride a short distance before falling, and it was important that he knew he could do it. I let go of the seat and handlebars, and Sean rolled forward about five or ten yards before losing his balance and toppling over. He looked like a little fawn taking his first steps before slipping and falling.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes, I'm fine,” he responded.

“Great, let's try it again.” We did the same routine, with me pushing him while he pedaled. “Here you go,” I called. I let loose of him, and he rolled a little farther before losing his balance. “You're almost there,” I encouraged him. We kept doing this until we had gone through about the entire case of water, and by the end of the day, Sean was able to ride his bike home from the school, with me following a short distance behind him in the Jeep.

When we pulled into our driveway, Sean was glowing with a huge sense of accomplishment. It was a good lesson for both of us. For him, it taught him that if he didn't give up, he could accomplish what he wanted to do. For me, it was a parable of our entire life together, with me pushing him a bit, helping him do what he wanted to do, and then letting go and enjoying the ride as he navigated on his own.

At first Sean attempted to downplay his happiness at being able to ride. “I shouldn't be so excited. It's no big deal,” he said. “I should have learned a long time ago.”

“No, Sean, you can be proud of that,” I told him. “You need to be taught things, and I'm glad to help you. You didn't know how to ride a bike, but now you do.”

Now when somebody comes over to the house, Sean will casually say, “I think I'm going to ride my bike later.” I smile with satisfaction.

“Let's ride our bikes over to your friend Jake's house,” I suggested one day. We rode through the neighborhood, about eight houses down to where Jake lives. After that, when Sean came home from school, he'd often ask, “Hey, Dad. Can I ride my bike down to Jake's house to see what he's up to?”

“Absolutely.”

It is a shame that Sean wasn't taught to ride a bike while living in Brazil, but in some ways I was glad, as it was one of the father-son milestones that I had looked forward to and that they weren't able to steal from us. I'm grateful that I had a chance to teach my son how to ride a bike, just as I had dreamed I might when I first saw him in the hospital a few hours after he was born. Thinking of him taking those first tenuous rides is still a very emotional experience for me.

 

 

ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER, 1, 2010, Sean and I launched out into the Atlantic Ocean, heading to one of my “secret spots,” looking for just the right location to fish for bluefin tuna. It was a dream-cometrue day for a couple of fishermen, as we saw every sort of marine life imaginable. We saw whole families of whales around us the entire trip. We also watched enormous feasting basking sharks, some of which were thirty feet long, swimming back and forth under our boat. We saw porpoise dolphins near our boat, too, swimming so close that Sean and I could reach out and touch them. There were sea turtles and tuna and more. It was almost as though we were in a giant aquarium.

Sean flipped out his lure, let a line out, and caught his first bluefin tuna, all by himself. We pulled the fish aboard, and Sean was beaming from ear to ear as he stood next to the huge fish while we took his picture. I was so proud of him, and happy for him, but even more than that, I was excited for him for the great sense of accomplishment it afforded him. On the way back to shore, Sean was exhausted after fighting with the fish. He sat down on one of the marine beanbag seats on my boat, and within a few minutes, he was curled up like a bug in a rug, fast asleep. We snapped some photos and later posted them along with the one of Sean and his fish on the Shore Catch Web site daily fishing report page. Sean was thrilled to see that he had “made the page.”

I realized that so many of the experiences that had been stolen from us during the time Sean was abducted we were now getting to enjoy together after all. It was almost as though God were restoring to us double what we had lost.

In October 2010, we took a family trip to New Orleans to attend the wedding of my cousin George. George had traveled to Brazil twice along with me, hoping to reunite Sean and our family. New Orleans was still struggling to recover after Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill. But the people had done a great job, and the waters looked clean as we headed out to sea to do some fishing early one morning. This was the first time the two cousins, Sean and Coltrane, who is less than a year older than Sean, and Grandpa Goldman had ever had the opportunity to do something like this together. As I watched the three of them interact, I recalled afresh that not only had I been robbed of Sean and Sean robbed of me for six years, but his cousins had been cheated, too, and my dad had been robbed of his grandson for that long. Dad was now nearly seventy-eight, and those six lost years seemed exponentially important.

Dad was always excited to be with the boys. During the summer of 2010, Sean and I took a trip to go tubing down the Delaware River. Joining us were Dad, Leslie and her family, and Wendy's youngest son, Jesse, who was a year older than Sean. Once we arrived at the river's edge, the kids couldn't wait to jump in and start floating down the river in their inner tubes, so Dad jumped right in with them. I knew that it was physically taxing for him, but he wasn't about to miss this experience with his grandsons.

Afterward, Dad looked exhausted but happy. “So what did you think of it?” I asked him, nodding toward the tubes.

“I got another one off my bucket list,” he said with a hint of a smile. He recognized the fleeting quality of life on earth, and he didn't want to miss living a day.

His own mother, Phyllis Goldman, Sean's paternal great-grandmother, had passed away while Sean was still in Brazil. She had lived in a condo on the beach, and Sean and I had gone to visit her a few days before the abduction. We had just recently seen
The Lion King
at Disney World in Orlando, and Sean was really fascinated with the “circle of life.” That day while we were at Grandma's, Sean took a stick and drew a large circle in the sand. “Look, Dad, the circle of life.” He drew little stick figures inside the circle to represent the elephants and the giraffes and the other animals. I could never have imagined that in a few short days, he'd be gone, his normal life interrupted for nearly six years.

Grandma Goldman was as sharp as a tack until the day she died. She had looked forward to being reunited with her great-grandson, but she took her last breath without ever learning the results of our quest to bring Sean home. While we were happy to jump-start life again, there are some losses that can never be reclaimed. But the circle of life goes on, and now it is Sean's and my turn to grow into men of integrity, men who will continue to embrace and express a father's love.

 

 

THE TRANSITION HASN'T been totally smooth, but it has been marvelously without major incidents. When Sean and I first returned home together, I wanted to give to him and do for him whatever he wanted. But I knew that wouldn't be good for either one of us. I tried to evaluate, without obsessing over every little point, what in his behavior was a typical ten-year-old trying to get away with this or that, and what in his behavior was a direct result of his abduction, caused by the influence of his captors. I realized that I needed to assert an “authority with love” approach.

During the first weeks, I was waiting for him to say he missed Brazil or wanted to go back and I gave him every opportunity to do so, but he never did. I was emotionally prepared not to discount his feelings and to embrace him no matter what. I sometimes brought up subjects that may have made him feel uncomfortable, but I never pressed any one issue. I didn't want him to close down and box up his feelings. He hadn't been allowed to talk about me in Brazil, and I didn't want him to feel that sort of repression here. I let him know that it was okay to talk about his mom, his half-sister, or his grandparents in Brazil, or even João Lins e Silva. “Sean, you can love whomever you want,” I told him. “Don't feel that you have to keep your thoughts and feelings inside. Express them. My feelings won't be hurt. I will always love you and do what I can to bring joy to your life.”

The first issue where we experienced conflict was homework. We did (and still do) a lot of that together and we discovered that I'd probably do pretty well on
Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
When Sean and I worked on homework, I took the approach that my dad had taken with my sister and me. Homework isn't just filling in the blanks or answering questions; it's understanding what the answers mean. At times Sean got very frustrated and angry, telling me that I was making him do more work than he should. “It's only homework, and it's okay to get it wrong,” he'd say. He got unusually combative, and in some ways I wished that he'd say something more than just about homework, that he would open up. But he was merely angry that I was creating more work for him. He spoke to me disrespectfully, and I told him to go up to his room and cool off, and that he shouldn't talk to me or anyone in “that tone,” which I described as one of degrading arrogance. I knew instantly where it had come from. It wasn't the usual way a ten-year-old would argue. When Sean calmed down, we talked again about our three main operating principles: to be honest, kind, and humble.

He had a tendency to say things or to behave in a superior manner. That, too, I realized, was a learned behavior we'd have to work on improving. I also saw the sweet little boy who was at times very uncomfortable in his own skin. “There is no need to act a certain way to impress people, Sean,” I would say. “You don't have to brag or build yourself up. Just be a kid. If you say you're great at something, eventually you will have to show your skills, and people will see the truth. So just be yourself and always tell the truth.”