Red

Lately, I’ve been wrong, I think. About my approach to the Red. Bailey’s “special” nature has given rise to an assortment of challenges for us as parents, and there isn’t a day that goes by that the latest manifestation of his condition doesn’t send us into an emotional free-fall. I’ve never shrugged and scratched my head over a child more than I have with this boy.

At the very heart of my dilemma is a single burning question: do I, as his father, treat him differently because of his background and his diagnoses?

Is it fairer to Bailey that I give him preferential treatment? Or will that lead to a harder life for him once he is grown?

The facts of Bailey’s condition often collide with people’s perceptions of Bailey’s condition. A perfect example is how school administrators took his early diagnosis of mental retardation and ran with it, opting to throw him exclusively into a classroom with children who were clearly MR. In this manner, Bailey started school – his very introduction to learning – by modeling children who were fed, who could not speak at all, and who had to be changed. After we met him for the first time, on the drive home, I turned to Corrine as I drove and said “There’s no way that boy is retarded.”

As it turned out, we were right. We advocated for his inclusion in mainstream classrooms where he could be among children his own age. And the immediate effect was like watching a hatching chrysalis. Everything about Bailey grew: his vocabulary, his confidence, his sociability.

Lately, however, he’s regressed, the absolute reasons for which escape us. We have our suspicions and we’re taking steps to eliminate certain elements from his life that seem to be the cause of distress for him.

But it doesn’t resolve a lingering doubt that I have about my parenting approach to him. I am tough on Bailey. I enforce the same kinds of restrictions on him that I do his younger siblings. I can be harsh at times, even.  Gabrielle and Griffin respond to this. They learn that there are consequences to poor behavior and (for the most part) learn from the experience.

But they also respond to my love, too. As most children will do, they both soon forget a particularly harsh lesson learned, and are climbing up into my lap.

With Bailey, not so much.

He repeats the same offenses again and again, and creates all new kinds of ways to act out. Meanwhile, my overtures of kindness and love waft by him like a kind of ineffectual breeze.

So maybe it’s time that I give in and surrender to the notion that while he is not retarded, he certainly is different. That his type of personality, combined with the mess of jumbled history he has been forced to endure, requires a separate plan for him.

I am not afraid to say I have failed, or that I am wrong. I am afraid of the dark, however. And right now, it’s suffocating me.

Clown

I used to write a column for a newspaper I worked for, back along. In it I indulged readers in an obviously exaggerated accounting of my life, much of which had to do with members of my family.

Now, let me just say that I readily admit that I tread along the edge of a knife. While what I wrote certainly caused some in my family to blush, I was always cognizant of feelings and privacy and the such, so I deliberately did two things: I stretched the truth to the limits of its elasticity and I made sure I said nothing that would be hurtful, mean, or degrading.

It was, after all, a column of humor. Please insert quotations around humor if you've read these past columns and now find the use of that word to be a dubious claim.

Here's a quick life lesson. I wrote from a desire to talk about my life, but found that I could not be honest. Not really. Think of those who use humor as a way to deflect. This was a lot like that. There was no way in hell I was going to wrote "seriously" about my life the way I (secretly) wanted. The serious parts stayed buried in the richest literary soil from which healthy stories could be grown.

I danced in that garden wearing a big red nose and a pair of fat shoes.

Critics

Lately I've been thinking about writing again, for the first time in awhile. Discouragement about the value and quality of my work means that I've excluded myself from continuing. I've given myself the excuse of not soldiering on because __________ and because of _____________ which logically led to _____________...

ad infinitum

There's a way to work through this, I know it. I can't not write. I've established that by the sleeplessness, the constant nagging desire to be writing. So that means I have to write. Which means I have to find a way through this equally persistent nagging self-doubt.

I read projects of mine that are in various stages of completion and I'm encouraged by how strong the writing is. There is a kernel of value there, I just need to pick a project and plunge in.

I feel like the petulant child in constant search for validation.

Lately, I've been involved in a local production of Damn Yankees and I may have stumbled onto the solution to my writing doubts.

If you've ever performed before a live audience you know how harrowing it can be. Before you, from your perspective, is a room filled with critics. People naturally are grading your performance. Current and wannabe actors sitting in rows of theater seating who are looking up and thinking "I would do that differently" or "He's flat" or "He's rushing his lines."

The actor knows this. The solution is to focus on a fixed point at the back of the room and project to it. In this way you acknowledge there is an out-of-focus blob of people there and that's it.

So it must be for the writer, I believe. The potential reader is the envious wannabe, let's say. The potential readers are all those others who you know can turn a better phrase, craft a better story. By focusing on him or her, you're giving credence to your own delusional assumption that they are reading your material and ripping you apart. Instead, I need to focus at the back of the room. A fixed point that blurs the reader, and therefore diminishes their importance while not completely eliminating them from the equation. (Let's face it, we need the audience to feel that edge of fear that propels us on. As it goes with writing.)

I do believe in the quality of my writing. I think it has a place somewhere, that there are readers who take from it something of value. And I acknowledge at the same time that there are people known to me and unknown who are superior writers.

I applaud them here, and then put them out of focus.

Equate This

Of late, I have been doing a lot of math.

My oldest announced recently that she is expecting in July, therefore making me a grandfather for the first time.

There's that. Please add five years to my age.

I turned 44 last Saturday.

There's that, as well. That's another year added (duh).

My oldest son and oldest step-daughter are both graduating high school in two months, each finishing in the top 10 percent of their class, and each headed to college in September.

There's that, too. (Five more years there)

My wife began taking college classes to become a certified midwife, fulfilling a dream she's had since before her first marriage.

Anyone I know who decides to follow a dream takes 5 years off my age. It's a pride thing. It makes the heart feel a little younger.

The girl we've been foster-parenting will more than likely be reunified with her mother in a couple months. I can't express to you here what my heart says about this other than to equate it to how I felt when I watched E.T. die while Elliot sobbed.

I fear there will be no magical bicycle ride to make it all better. For her sake, I hope I'm wrong. With all humility I can say that what we give her is better. There. I said it.

This will age me by ten years, easily.

I'm in my local community musical Damn Yankees, which premieres in three weeks. I play Applegate, a.k.a "The Devil." I love the part. I get to sing a solo with a walking cane and just enough soft shoe choreography to make me not look moronic.  I love being back on stage. I love being Satan. What does that say about me?

Doing what you love for no other reason: that's five years back for me.

My wife and I have decided that our adopted son, Bailey, will no longer be allowed to visit his biological aunt. It seems she's been telling him stories about how we "stole" him from his real mother (whom he's never met). Not to mention the fact that each time he visits her he comes back a behavioral miscreant who needs to be reprogrammed to act human again.

This is a wash. On the one hand, we're closing the door on the last remaining biological family member who ever showed love for the boy. On the other hand, we're closing the door on access to a part of his life that, according to his physician and therapist, causes him more regression and confusion than he can handle.

I went ahead and spent a goodly amount of cash for a home digital recording studio so that I can begin composing music. I haven't done this for nearly 20 years.

Doing something everyone else thinks is irrational: give me back five years.

My oldest son, for his 18th birthday, decided to get a tattoo.

Add five.

The tattoo turned out to be the title of my first (and so far only) published book. He had it done in a graduated blue on his arm. It looks fucking awesome, man.

That's 10 back for me. 

Recently my two youngest, in the span of ten minutes of each other, hugged me and said they loved me, something I hope I never get used to because the surprise of it is like finding a one-hundred-dollar bill in a back pocket just when you need it most.

With everything I perceive to not have, I realize I have in abundance that which I need.

Getting back to things

It's been too long.

Time to reconnect, to get back to the thing I love most, and that's writing.

This is a small step, but a step nonetheless....

Griff, Gab & B

Before The Judge

We took Bailey to court Thursday, as part of a required hearing related to his case. It was not related to the adoption process but rather just another stop in the legal process for a neglected child. The state mandates that the Department of Health and Human Services meet on a regular basis with the court system to ensure he is getting adequate care at the hands of the state, who is legally his guardian.

Bailey can say he knows more about legal proceedings than the far majority of 6-year-olds he meets. Not that he would say anything, or that he even understood where he was. He was merely enamored with the district attorney's bow tie. Bailey has a neck tie and wears it all the time. The bow tie was, to Bailey, the best friggin thing he's ever seen, and insisted we buy him one.

Bailey wore a dress shirt beneath a sweater, a pair of blue jeans, and his favorite shoes, the ones he always puts on the wrong feet in the mad rush before leaving, even if he's the only one in a mad rush to leave. Corrine cut his hair a few weeks back, trimming away the hedge-like scramble of red hair from his ears and neck and eyes. Whereas before he looked hip, modern and cute, he traded up for handsome.


We drove to Augusta, to the district court office building that resembles somewhere you'd pay your phone bill. Nothing austere or courtly about it, actually. (As a reporter I used to cover criminal and civil courts and the buildings I entered were grand, gothic-looking structures that I was certain were built that way to make criminals pee themselves.)

We were met there by Bailey's ad litem, Bailey's case worker, the DA/bow tie man. We were led down the center aisle of the court room and directed to sit in the gallery in a pew. In fact, the entire room had a churchy feeling to it. The judge's dias was raised like a pulpit. The judge wore a flowing robe. I prayed that I didn't have to go pee. Corrine and I sat on either side of our red-head, to snatch him if he made like he was going to rush the judge. Or go for the bailiff's gun. Both of which are quite possible with Bailey. Fools may rush in. Bailey sprints like a bastard, at everything. Food, children, tractors, parades, beds, chickens.

The judge entered and we were commanded to rise, and Bailey obeyed. The judge then commanded us to be seated, and Bailey obeyed. And then Bailey announced his revelation that the judge had a "real tie" (not a bow tie like the DA.) Thank God Bailey doesn't speak English. Although it did sound like "He's a Guy!" not "He's got a tie!"

Either way, the judge did not hear him, or chose to not hear him, which judges are apt to do. I once covered a case in which a defendant called the entire proceeding a "shit storm" and the judge didn't even blink, showing the kind of restraint I am famously not known for. I would have convicted him on the spot.

Corrine was as nervous as I was, I think. Nervous that Bailey would act up, or that the case worker would suddenly say he was no longer available to adopt, or that the judge was going to know the registration on our van was six months expired and would arrest us. Hey, they hold sway for a reason. They're judges. Come on.

Bailey did not act up. In fact, the judge began by commending us for taking Bailey in. I got all choked up. I got all choked up even before that, when he looked up from his bench at us and said "Mr. and Mrs. Turner?" We've NEVER been called that before. It's always "Jesus Christ, it's you guys" or "Here comes trouble."

But he did, on the record, commend us. And he then spoke briefly with Bailey, asking if he was in school "Aye!" and in what grade "Aye?" and if he liked school "Aye!" Bailey, in case you missed it, is an Irish pirate. The judge didn't seem to care, either. Irish pirates apparently are not illegal in Maine. Maybe because they only plunder their noses. Well, OUR Irish pirate does anyway. And boy he finds gold EVERY TIME.

And so, Bailey got high marks for courtroom behavior. The judge didn't even have to use his gavel on him (which I was disappointed about actually. A judge HAS to use his gavel, doesn't he?)

But in reality, I could not help but feel very sad at the whole ordeal. Bailey will probably never know what he has gone through. Our mission in life is to do our best to blunt the boy's bitter past, hoping that the neglect he suffered through becomes so distant that any thought he has of it feels more like a bad dream. Yes, he is paying for the sins of his biologicals, as we call them. He can't speak, for starters. Well, not very well, anyway, but we're working on that too. But the fact that he has to go to court every so often means someone somewhere really fucked up big time. These meetings before a judge are just perfunctory really, to make sure Bailey is getting what he did not get. That he is no longer in the situation that he found himself when he was an infant: abandoned, abused, neglected.

The levity of this was brought home with the judge's parting words. He thanked us for making his day. We were his first case, and to be able to jot in the case file that Bailey was moving ahead with "good people" meant that in short time he could stamp "DISMISSED" on the file. An ironic word, if you think about it. The final legal stamp that this boy gets also sums up the very reason he was brought to court four years ago in the first place. He had been dismissed then, too, by his mother. Back then, the word meant abandonment, pain, and confusion.

Now, the word means inclusion, love, and hope.

PS: When the judge first read the docket number, he also read Bailey's full legal name, his biological name, the one he hates. He shouted "Bailey Turner!"

And he didn't even get arrested. Irish pirates rule.