Disembodied Voices in the Dark

 

It’s Summer vacation and Little Dude and I are off the chain and running wild.  We’re staying up late, having people over all the time, eating ice cream after 7pm, watching TV shows at bedtime, the other day I even ran with scissors…it’s complete madness over here.  I love it.  I’m already kind of dreading the beginning of school.

I’ll miss Gabriel’s constant company when he starts 2^nd grade in a few weeks.  He’s a charming little fellow and since he’s my only child I’m never really overwrought with Mothering.  He has reached an age appropriate level of independence and enjoys spending a little time alone as long as he has some way to entertain himself. 

What’s more than that, I’ll miss seeing my boy so relaxed all the time.  It wasn’t until this break started that I realized exactly how stressful school is for him.  

Every day I go to Gabriel’s class to pick him up from school.  In the beginning of the year I would ask him to tell me about his day and he would respond like a world weary teenager.

Me:  Hey, Kid.  How was your day?

Gabriel:  It was fine.

Me: Just fine?

Gabriel: Yeah.  Fine.

Me: Well what did you do?

Gabriel: I dunno.  School stuff.  Math maybe.

Me: Well…who did you hang out with during lunch?

Gabriel:  I dunno. Some girl. She has a head.  
Me: Was it a nice day?
Gabriel: It was a day.

I was mildly concerned about my then 6 year old's lack of enthusiasm.  First grade is supposed to be a magical wonderland of learning and socializing with tiny peers.  I remember running home to my Mother and telling her every detail of my busy day at that age.  Frankly, I was slightly appalled at what seemed at first to be well…apathy.

And then in the middle of the year it truly dawned on me; at school my boy is pretty much all by himself, in the dark, bobbing around in a sea of voices.  He comes home mentally exhausted from trying to process hundreds of things that happened that he didn’t understand.

Person 1:  Hey!!! What did you do that for??

Person 2: Oh, man.  It was an accident, I’m sorry.  Here let me help you get that.

What just happened? You don’t know. You didn’t see it.

You may assume that someone bumped into someone else and the bumped one dropped something. But you don’t know for sure, and you don’t know what they dropped.  Could be anything; a brief case, a picnic basket, the gold leash of a very quiet tiger.  You just don’t know.

So many conversations start with the phrase: Look at this.  So many things happen that people see and then start talking about. Gabriel must really struggle to make sense of the non verbal interactions that go on around him.  All the time.

I decided to lay off the questions and started asking him just one thing after school.  I ask him to tell me his best and his worse from the day.  This is no problem.  His bests diversely vary, but his worst is usually some variation of ‘the kids were loud’ or ‘someone was yelling/crying’.  Sometimes I ask him who was yell/crying and most of the time he doesn’t know.

After school he walks in the house and makes a beeline to his key board.  I toss a juice pouch and a snack at him and he's gone.  Transported to a place of beautiful melodies, crystal clear chords, patterns that are simple, yet gloriously perfect. Finally, something the Little Dude can control and understand completely. 

After a while, he resurfaces and it's obvious that that the music helped him decompress. He's ready to start part two of his day.  That’s when we’ll do homework and hang out. He’ll rarely go back and mention anything that happened at school. It's over as far as he's concerned.

Low and behold, now that it's vacation and the pressure's off, it’s all coming out. My child is finally telling me about his day.  From six months ago. 

I've been hearing random things; a kid was mean to another kid, a day when the teacher was yelling, one time when the kids were screaming like maniacs in the gym, a day when his lunch was amazing, one of the teachers uses the same fabric softener we do.  

 I’ve been hearing juicy little tidbits of gossip, and about all the long list of  games they play and songs they  sing at school.  ‘Barbie Girl’ is on that list and Gabriel thinks that's a great song.  Almost as good as the Beatles. That is a fact I try not to dwell on.  

In a few weeks he’ll be going back, and second grade brings it harder than the first.  He’ll also have extra lessons three days a week after school, possibly four if we can manage to squeeze in music class.*

It will be stressful and he might revert to a less communicative state.  I’ll miss that, but I stand firm in my decision to send him to school with sighted kids.  Nothing that he’s learning in school is as important as the lessons he doesn’t realize he’s learning…how to be the blind guy in a world of people who can see. Life is a full contact sport, if you want to get good at it you have to play it.

He is developing skills that will help him deal with people, ask for help when he needs it, ask what’s going on around him. He has already taught himself how to cope with the stress of it all.  He’s learning how – not only to drift- but to swim through that sea of disembodied voices around him.

* Yeah, you’d think piano but no, he really wants to learn to play a trumpet or a trombone.  I also try not to dwell on that.