Thirteen years ago right this instant, I was in an extremely large room on the maternity wing of Misericordia Hospital alone save fora tiny occupant held lovingly within a small bassinet.The only thought I had running through my head was, "A boy. How am I supposed to raise a boy? How do you teach him to be a man when you only have a vagina? What about girls? And police? How do you teach a boy to be a man in Philadelphia?"
My Fannie had been my first glimpse into the miracle of motherhood. Miracle being the operative word. She was the child that never should have been, yet there she was, all of three years old, healthy and tiny and wonderful. Until three months before, I'd never conceived God would bless me a second time. Yet there he was, healthy and quiet within my womb. It had been a complete surprise when the doctor told me that not only was I pregnant, I was seven months pregnant and due on Christmas day.
Three months later, barely able to believe I'd actually achieved the second miracle of my life there I was looking at it. Right there in all his pale and silent glory. He was such a quiet child, waking only to eat or when dirty before drifting back to his sweet little dreams. He was perfectly formed, took one push to make it into this world, five days early and beautiful. That's the only term for him. Beautiful.
Fannie had named him after I'd taken her alone to our bedroom three months earlier and asked her how she'd feel if God gave her a little brother or sister. Fannie had looked straight into my eyes with the most confident and serene smile she was famous for at the time and said, "I'm going to have a little brother and his name is going to be Aaron Michael and I will love him very much, mommy."
So there I was alone with the little boy God gave me and I was terrified.
Months went by and he did something amazing. When he was four months old, Aaron Michael spoke to me. "Ma Ma Hun-gee" , by the time he was six months old, Aaron was running around the perimeter of his little crib. My son was amazing!
I found out from the doctor that Aaron wasn't supposed to be walking, let alone running, and that if I didn't get him off of his legs for a few months, they were going to bow out more than they'd already started and would have to probably get broken and reset.
So began our years of hell. If his grandparents hadn't encouraged his mobility by letting him toddle on weak legs when they got their hands on him, if his father hadn't told me, "What do the doctor's know?", if his uncles from his father's side hadn't kept telling me in front of the little boy, "You just don't want him free because you hate him. Why do you hate your son?", if I had been stronger, strong enough to stand up to the pressure of my hubby's family, if skies were purple and seas were orange...but regardless, that simple 'few months" turned into a good year, year and a half of my son, when he was in my care, sitting in a swing or in his high chair reaching out for me, talking to me, wanting me but unable to be held longer than the idea of running came to him again, Aaron on my lap being comforted but prevented from putting weight on his legs, with my hands gently pushing and pulling the bows out of his legs, causing him pain and making him expect pain from his mother's touch, Aaron. Never bonding as he wanted, in the gentle way I give to all of my children for the amount of time he wanted.
Time passed and finally he was developed enough so that his legs could support his weight, the bowing had gone away with constant stretching and pulling and loving. He could move freely. He could run. Finally my little boy was normal. Was moving. Was happy.
It would be three more years until Aaron learned to walk or even crawl. It never occurred to his little mind to slow down from running. He ran everywhere, his legs even moved when he slept, as if he dreamed of running. Our days passed along in visits to IHOP and Pizza Hut, visits to New York, between my house and his grandparent's house until his father moved away from his parents and chose to move in with us. Aaron was so sweet and kind and fast and smart! He was happy.
Years went by and Aaron started school. All of that sweetness and kindness left during that first year in Kindergarten. His grandparent's blamed the teachers while they weren't physically involved in his schooling, his father denied anything was wrong, kept telling me, "You just don't know how to relate to the boy when he's not ill.", it was actually a combination of my big sister, big brother and mother telling me, "That is YOUR SON. If you don't fight for him, who will? You have a mouth when you're talking to me, use it to fight for him." So by the time Kindergarten was over and my son still couldn't spell his name, couldn't write his name, couldn't be enthusiastic about anything, I went from fighting the system and his grandparents and his father to screaming in frustration and ignoring them all and just focusing on the school system, pulling Aaron behind me.
His teachers didn't help the situation. Many of them had taught Fannie first. She being the 'rock star' of the school. Talented, polite, cute, nice, helpful. Aaron started school with expectations of two Fannies in stead of Fannie and Aaron. The people who met my unique and gifted son were unimpressed and disappointed when he behaved "average" instead of outstanding. Some teachers to this day will look at me with something like sympathy on their faces and say something like, "Aaron is CERTAINLY different from his sister, isn't he?" and My reply is always, "Isn't that great? God sure knows what he's doing!"
Through the years, the teachers who knew my Fannie, put their expectations on Aaron and left him hanging out to dry when he proved too 'the opposite'. He tried so hard until he stopped. Aaron put too much pressure on himself to be just like Fannie that he lost a bit of himself until he decided being Aaron was enough for everyone who loved him.
The students made things worse. Fannie had some enemies when Aaron entered Kindergarten, schoolyard stuff really. The enemies attacked my son, she fought for my son, he became a target because of who his sister was, she became a deadly assassin to protect him as my rule was the same as my parents, "I love you. I'll love you even when I have to beat you to literal death for not protecting your baby brother." Fannie, like Carl many years before, won fights because she never fought. She attacked to the death and moved on. Aaron felt some relief on the playground, not much, once they beat him into an asthma attack where he almost could've...but he didn't and he maintained his eternal optimism.
Home with my son, his father, our other children was a complete contrast. At home, Aaron has always been a bit flighty, a tad bratty, caring, generous, kind and way laid back. The only trouble he gets into is the average, "I wasn't paying attention" brand. He's optimistic and responsible and my precious, even when we butt heads.
Aaron is also my temper child. He and I are almost identical twins inside our skins. You would think, "hey, that's cool, you know your son, you should have a great relationship." NO. He is just as clumsy, just as impulsive, just as blunt, just as cloying, just as ME as I am. I am too critical a lot of times without thinking just because I could do something such a way, he SHOULD be able to do it. That kind of thing and when he doesn't meet to my standards, we go back and forth until we reach a nice middle ground.
The thing about our personal relationship is that he's the one child who perfectly understands my moods and responds in kind. He's my humor child and my comfort child. He's the child who's entire focus is on working with me, even when he gets it wrong, he still tries his best. When times are tough, I can count on Aaron to come through one hundred and ten percent. He is the best of sons. He's my rock child. Pitching in with the younger children, helping with things that need doing. Volunteering to do his best. We talk. I love that.
Add to that the mixed messages his father's family gives him in contrast to mine. To Nay Nay and Pop Pop, Aaron is perfect - all the time. Oh, he has some bad moments, but he's perfect. He goes there all the time. They offer him a softness I can't allow myself to give, a comfort I don't have in me sometimes. I've been so busy fighting for him, teaching him to be a man, that a lot of the time I can't be close to him. His grandparents are quick -- even after the tests, even after the years of watching him struggle, of watching him be hurt, of watching the aftermath and hurt he goes through every time he knows I've been begging for him to get left back-- to say I'm over reacting and there's nothing wrong with how he learns, EVERY TEACHER IN THE SCHOOL HAS IT OUT FOR HIM. And when he comes home, I have to move quickly to regain the ground, lest he allow their excuses for him overtake the reality of our cause and he just give up because no one 'gets him'. I know this temperament because I was this temperament.
I was in college when I was diagnosed with dyscalcula - math dyslexia. I had given up years ago on math, it was the terror of my mother I had ingrained in me from birth that made me go to college. Thank God.
The Kindergarten teacher wanted him tested for ADD because Aaron had started "acting out"- getting frustrated that he wasn't getting the work and finding other things to amuse himself, or defending himself from the nearest kid who was hissing mean things at him. The doctor said he didn't have it but couldn't test him for learning disabilities because my health insurance said the school had to do it. The school wouldn't do it. Flat out.
I didn't know what to do other than make as much of a stink as Fannie's daughter was taught to do. Bull in a China Shop kind of dust raising. I hate doing it, but I'm good at it and I know from experience the more dust I kick up, the better the results. I demanded they keep him back, I fought with them daily. Every time I turned around I was back up at that school, bullies, or teacher complaints or demanding justice for my son.
Needless to say, from the Principal to the school board, from Kindergarten all the way through the sixth grade, while they passed him up with a straight 'D' and 'F' average and his self esteem in the toilet to the point he was wandering the school all day every day instead of staying in a classroom when he didn't understand the work or was taunted because the other children knew he was 'different' (read: target) , I kicked, screamed, wrote, pleaded, and FINALLY during his sixth grade year, a school counselor listened to me and decided to shut me up by working with me. Her reasoning, if they did the tests, I would shut up.
Of course the tests didn't begin until almost the end of sixth grade.
After all those years of struggling and fighting and all that evilness my precious son, the one who was so gifted so early, the one I saw in shades of happiness and delight, had to go through with me the only one on his side, not his grandparents, not his uncles, not his own father. Me. After it being Aaron and I against the establishment, finally they tested him and this is what they found:
My son has an unidentifiable learning disability. Genius level I.Q., listening and reading comprehension at college level, math at above average level, everything that doesn't involve the process of looking at information and translating it to paper, serious Einstein level intelligence. There is some form of disconnect in his process. Somehow, what is written on the board doesn't connect to his hand. He can't copy. He can't put together the exact string of what he reads into articulation. If he takes the time to read it, he can recite it. If it's read to him, he can repeat it. Whatever happens between the written word and his hand moving to copy it just doesn't mash well.
Do you know what that means? People all over the world are always struggling to 'think outside the box". My son IS the outside of the box!!
So when he got passed up to seventh grade despite yet another straight 'F' and 'D' report card, we celebrated with ice cream and a week long party. This school year my son faces a different kind of adversity, one that allows me from holding him up and lets him stand by himself. He faces Puberty.
Without any real understanding of what was happening, my son has had to face adversity and difficulties and prejudices, he has overcome so much in addition to the reality of a school system that's failing him because he's black, from a district where our boys are expected to drop out and become drug dealers and just don't give a crap about him as a person. He has had to wake every day and fight to stay in class, even when they made him feel less than himself, he has to work seven times as hard to be a quarter good, even when the students single him out, he fights. He has survived bullies, he has thrived in his older sister's shadow. Aaron has survived teachers who wouldn't understand him, he has survived. He has thrived.
He has managed to keep himself true despite it all. He has been through pain and isolation and misunderstanding and he is finally in a place where he is coming into himself.
That brings me back to thirteen years ago this very moment in the middle of the hospital praying that God show me how to mother a man. What a man my son is going to be! Self sufficient, optimistic, stronger than he believes, smarter than the smartest person in the room, gentle as a kitten. My son at thirteen is showing the signs of becoming a good man. All I can say is, "Lord, I wish we could have done this easier, I wish he hadn't had to suffer so much. Thank you for getting him through it mostly unscathed and intact with just enough cynicism not to fall for people trying to take advantage of him."
By the way, his first report card this year, my son actually got an A, three 'C's' and only one D. For the first time since Kindergarten he's beginning to flourish! That's my boy. That is my Aaron Michael.
God bless him, God blessed me with him, and the world at large for the him that will be one day. Happy Birthday my son. I love you Aaron Michael Thomas Paris.
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