A Pilgrim’s Digression

I’ve always meant to use this space to record some of the family moments I might want to recall later in life. Right now, I just need to use this space to write more, period. So today’s post will do double duty.

Lately, Brendan has reminded me of the famous soliloquy from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the “Seven Ages of Man” speech.

Schoolboy by Albert Anker (1831-1910)

“Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.”

Brendan is going through this phase–at least I hope its a phase–where he doesn’t want to go to school. Indeed “whining” pretty much does describe his attitude.

This reluctance to go to school started some weeks ago, but reached a sort of culmination last week, when he tried to get out of going to school because, he said, his stomach hurt.

Lynn took him to school anyway, but later in the morning, I got a call at work from the Principal saying that Brendan was in his office complaining of an upset stomach.

I listened patiently to the Principal’s concern that Brendan might be coming down with the flu–although he had no fever–and at an appropriate point, I interrupted him and told him about Brendan trying to get out of going to school that morning.

“He’s not sick,” I said. “He just doesn’t want to go to school.”

“Well that does change things,” the Principal said. “Why doesn’t he want to go to school?”

I reviewed several possibilities with the Principal. One, Brendan was having difficulty with his arithmetic, a problem compounded by me, a math incompetent, who had tried unsuccessfully to help him. My “help” had actually resulted in him getting a bad grade on a math assignment. Brendan had expressed some worry and frustration about this matter, even after I promised I wouldn’t help him anymore, but would leave all math homework assistance to his mother.

Brendan has also been going through some separation anxiety issues, lately. For several months now, he’s been reading the “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books. I think he just completed Book Nine of the series. As readers of those books might know, the Baudelaire children are orphans, their parents having been killed in a fire deliberately set by the evil Count Olaf. The death of their parents is only one of many mishaps that befall the children, but that one event in the books awakened a primal fear in Brendan that his own mother could die.

I am rather amused by the fact that my death doesn’t concern him in the least, but I take his fear of his mother’s imminent demise very seriously. His fear that she will die has led to considerable anxiety as he parts from her each day to go to school. Last Thursday night, as he lay in his bed ready to go to sleep, I had a talk with him about it.

It turns out that when he goes to school, he imagines all sorts of bad things happening to his mother after she leaves him. He has killed her off in a variety of ways, none of which are, unfortunately, far-fetched: she has died in a bad car accident, she has been killed by robbers, she has died in a fire at work, she has contracted cancer and died (all in one day apparently), and she has died in a building collapse.

Because these deaths are within the realm of possibility for each of us, every day (except for maybe the death by cancer within an eight hour period), I found it very difficult to reassure him that his mother was going to be there for him at the end of each school day, for decades to come. How do you reassure your child that his mother won’t die some horrible death, when in fact a horrible death is always a distinct possiblity?

The way I approached the situation–and almost any situation involving my son–was to tell him a story from my childhood. I don’t know how much of an impression these stories make on him. Maybe he’s already at an age where his parents’ nostalgia is trite and boring. But story-telling is just about my only tool in the toolbox.

The story goes like this: when I was his age, in the nineteen-eighties, I was horrified by the thought that we could all die in a nuclear holocaust. I was particularly afraid of losing my parents and grandparents. Does he know what a nuclear bomb is, I asked? Yes, it turns out he does know what a nuclear bomb is, but just to be sure, I explained that it was a bomb that would wipe out an entire city and more, incinerating every living thing for miles.

Now, I can already anticipate your response, Dear Reader: how is that helping, to tell the kid that there is a weapon out there that will wipe out millions if it explodes?

Patience, Luke.

I explained to Brendan that my fear was not entirely unrealistic.  There was a possibility of nuclear war.  There still is a possibility of nuclear war, for that matter.  At the time, my fear was based on a TV movie my parents stupidly let me watch,  The Day After.  But really, it was just a movie, just as the Lemony Snickett books are just books.  It’s fiction.  It’s a story made up to excite and maybe even scare you a little.  But it’s still just a story.

I also pointed out that nearly twenty-six years had passed since I’d seen the movie and feared my parents would die, but they were still alive now, today.   What might have happened, didn’t happen, and I worried about it for nothing.

This seemed to calm him down somewhat.  But then again this week, he has been trying to get out of going to school by pleading that he is sick.

I’m beginning to think I misjudged the whole episode and he really just doesn’t want to go to school.  I went through a phase like that at about his age.  I even tried to fake illness more than once.  It never worked, and my parents were far less sympathetic to my behavior than I am to my son’s behavior.

As my wife put it, “I’ll bet your Mom beat your ass when you didn’t want to go to school.”

I remember one time, I actually chewed up saltine crackers and spit them into the toilet to fake sickness.  I remember going into the living room, holding my stomach and groaning, and saying, “Aw, Mom, I just threw up.”

She didn’t believe me.  “Go look in the toilet, ” I pleaded.  “I threw up.”

“I don’t need to look,” she said.  “I know you’re a liar.”  And so she sent me to school anyway.

I’ve told that story to Brendan, but maybe I need to remind him of it, before he tries a stunt like that himself.

I now suspect that this whole episode comes down to the fact that school is getting harder for him.  He is still a top achiever academically, but it won’t get easier from here on out.  I remember all too well the troubles I had in 3rd grade, particularly in math, which would never be easy for me again.

Hopefully, with the kind of guidance I never had, math won’t be the huge roadblock for him that it became for me.  I’ll never forget the night that third grade year when my Dad tried to help with fractions.  It didn’t take long for him to throw up his hands, yell at me for being unteachable, and leave me to cry at the kitchen table because I was so, so stupid.

I know that won’t happen in Brendan’s case.  I’m leaving the math tutoring to his mother from now on.