Fear

During the heady days of the Clinton administration, when our worst national nightmare was consensual adultery, before 9/11, before the drumbeat of global warming, during that first flush of enthusiasm for the internet, we had two kids.

We arrived at the decision to have them almost wordlessly. I was making foolish amounts of money, my wife could negotiate a three day work week, and I figured that if I turned out to be a shitty parent, I could hire good people to help me.

The first Fear is birth defect. You’ve gotten a bit…old. Will you abort a defective child? Won’t you? Without making up your mind either way, you pass that hurdle. Now, it’s the birth. Will the child make it through that passage unscathed?

The next fear is bonding—will you feel what you are supposed to feel? Will the mother experience crippling post-partum depression?

Your child is born, you look into it’s eyes, you realize  your life is forever changed, though you have no idea at that point to what extent. You feel what you are supposed to feel. In fact, words doesn’t do the feeling justice.

The fear recedes. Childhood illness. Childhood cancer. Car accidents. Abduction. A lifetime of studiously putting thoughts like this out of your mind stands you in good stead now.

Then you’re watching your preschool son twirl in a skirt fashioned from  dozens of plastic grocery bags. Twirling and twirling and twirling. And the Fear surges up in your throat, becomes a small knot of pain in your chest.

The fear tells you, “supress this. Or he will be destroyed.” Think what they did to you because you had thick glasses and liked comic books.” Dear God.

If you grew up in the 60s or 70s, the fear has a lot of oomph. Perhaps like me, there wasn’t a single out of the closet gay student, from K-12, in sight. But the ones that looked or acted gay, what happened to them? What did people do to them?

What did you do to them.

You wait for the other shoe to drop. Daycare is…Ok. Preschool is OK. Every moment is a gift, as you dread the approach of Kindergarten. Maybe he’ll stop. Maybe.

He doesn’t. You talk to teachers, school officials, therapists. You brace yourself for impact.

If you are lucky, you find that the world you grew up in has truly vanished. You walk through the hallways and school, see groups of kids sitting in circles on carpeted floors; look at the art on the walls, sniff the hallways for the smell of fear and despair. And you don’t sense it.

But these are little kids. In a k-8, you see fully mature seventh and eighth graders barreling past your kindergartner, texting on cellphones. The girls look like they’re in their mid 20s. The boys look younger, but they’re still too big, too gangling, laughing too loud, shoving each other.

So, he’s a little kid. You can handle that. But what happens at puberty? And if something happens…could you ever forgive yourself for your decision not to stick your kid in a costume?

Somewhere, somehow, the knot loosens. You meet the parents of other special needs kids, who are supportive. There’s a cadre of parents of special needs kids; adoptive kids; aspergers kids; we talk and smile and nod at each other.

And at some point, the knot fades, the Fear recedes. Oh, it will come back, you know, it will be with you until they put you in the ground, but it becomes just part of the background mental static of being human. Global warming, conservative revolution, bioterrorism, the mushroom cloud, Mathew Sheppard, at a tolerable remove.

Because, if you’re lucky, your kid is brave. Kind of…fearless. If he can do it, so can you.

You stare down millennia of oppression. You count the years since Stonewall, from” I have a Dream to Barrack Obama.” There’s no turning back. We are what we are.

Hold on
You have gambled with your own life
And you face the night alone
While the builders of the cages
Sleep with bullets, bars and stone
They do not see your road to freedom
That you build with flesh and bone

Peter Gabriel

“You can’t enslave a free man, the best you can do is kill him”

R.A.Heinlein.

The quote is true for women, too; and everyone in between.Your kid is not a slave to fear. You won’t be either. Together you will make  your mark on the world. You will change the world.

You just hope you can change it fast enough.

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