John

Figurine

Christmas for me this year was much more about giving than receiving.  Quite a change for me.  However, one of the most meaningful gifts I received was the figurine pictured on this page.  It came as a total surprise from Mary Ann, and it felt as if time stopped when I opened it.  It was hard to breath and tears came to my eyes because the small statue captures wonderfully the relationship I share with all of our children, but especially with John.

I took a knee a lot when the kids were younger, because I felt uncomfortable towering over them.  Moreover, I had a pretty good idea Russ would be taller than me some day, and when I am old and feeble, I am hoping he will take a knee with me.  What goes down, stays down I guess.

Because John grew more slowly, and required more attention, I know I dropped down to one knee, or bent to a catcher’s position more often than with the others.  It was important to me that I bring myself to his eye level, and that I be able to look in his eyes when we talked.  In his earliest years, it was a way to better understand what he was saying, something that my second-language training helped me to do fairly often.  Sometimes John would repeat and repeat and repeat, and because I couldn’t find the context, I would look at him helplessly and feel terrible that I was contributing to his potential poor feelings about himself.  More often, I got it the second or third time and off we would continue playing, or running, or whatever.  This communication was important, especially after reading The Sound and the Fury in which the young retarded character is essentially doomed because of his isolation.  I wanted John to know that there would always be a place to come to feel less alone and separated, a place where we would make every effort to understand him, to do more than accept the surface value of what he said.  Since he learned sooo slowly to speak clearly, he often said relatively little, and it became all the more important to pay attention to the words he produced.  Getting down on one knee, looking him in the eyes or putting my ear next to his mouth was an intimate way to reassure him that what he said was important and that I wanted to hear him.

The heads touch in this figurine.  I read in that simple peaceful gesture a reminder of how much John and I lived in each other’s head.  I found it fascinating to try to put the world together as John organized it; his logic, his cosmology were both different than mine but not wrong.  He lived close to the center of his world, and he lived close to the center of ours.  The world was a place from which he derived as much pleasure every moment he could.  That is a way of life to which I aspire.  John wasted little or no time in subterfuge, except to sneak snacks out of the kitchen:  He would pull an ice cream cup in each hand from behind his back and say “Just one, Dad!”  It was irrefutable logic.  He sweetly recited the house rule as he marched down the hall with more than his share.  It was impossible to argue with him because there was no duplicity, little guilt, no attempt to defy.  Just the glorious pleasure he felt in both knowing the rule and having more than one ice cream.  He truly had it and us figured out.  Sometimes I would insist and he would put one back, pleased to have pleased me.  Then, when we were busy in another room, he would hotfoot it back to the kitchen to get his second ice cream.  I would know this because I would find two plastic cups in his wastebasket.

Finally there are the arms.  Each figure has an arm around the other in a casual fashion as if this is an everyday thing.  That is certainly how I remember John.  Not a day went by without a hug, without some physical contact.  I am not a person who seeks a great deal of physical contact with others, so John’s willingness to hug and touch filled a need for me.  It began, I am sure, when he was a tiny little guy whose lungs were not strong enough to stay clear, so I would hold him and nebulize him.  This was a process of putting a liquid in a machine that created a medicated steam that he inhaled.  After a certain amount of minutes when the steam was all gone, I would put him on my shoulder and use a hollowed bit of soft plastic to pound on his back and loosen up all the junk he didn’t have enough strength to get rid of by himself.  I loved doing this, and welcomed the chance to hold him while doing something good for him.  The figurine creates a circle in which both learn from one another, where trust is complete.  It helps me remember a relationship beyond value that I feel privileged to have experienced.  I am so sorry he is gone but I am so joyful to have had so many occasions to take the pose represented in the figurine.