9

A NEW NORMAL

I had five back-to-back meetings with the Special Ed Office to discuss the children’s individualized educational plans. I arrived with five color-coded folders, white athletic tape tight around my sprained wrist, a sty in my right eye, a bruise on the corner of my mouth from a head butt, and two slightly chipped teeth. The committee greeted me warmly, everyone smiling nicely and mock-shaking my sprained hand, “What nice folders! So organized.”

Various teachers, aides, advocates, school psychologists, and principals sat around the table and discussed each child in turn. I took copious notes. My kids had been in school for thirty days and in this time, these people knew as much or more about my children than either Dan or I did. They had done comprehensive testing and the reports were devastating. I was writing down numbers like seventh percentile, twelfth percentile, and fourth percentile in my color-coded notebooks; words like “borderline,” “egregious,” and “global delays.” One of the children had scored in the fortieth percentile in one category and I let out a “Yes!”

After the second session, I started to feel a little defensive. It was ungrounded, of course. No one was suggesting these test results were a reflection on my parenting. Jason had been diagnosed as “borderline mentally retarded.” He tested so low, they were not sure if the diagnosis was correct; his vocabulary was so small that the testing might not accurately reflect his abilities. “He has about a 400-word vocabulary,” one of the teachers said. I laughed, “Really? Because he’s taught me a few new words!” Some of the teachers laughed with me. One said seriously, “We’re not talking about those kinds of words, Ms. Fox.” I apologized, “I know, I’m sorry. I was kidding.” I was near tears.

Anthony was up next. As they went around the table with their numbers and results, I had to take deliberate breaths to keep from crying. The tragedy of Jason, the nine-year-old who could not tie his own shoes was paling before the fate of the little brother who never would. Anthony was testing poorly in an ungraded, skills-based class. He couldn’t hold a pencil, needed toilet training, and had trouble eating. Ninth percentile, fifteenth percentile, third percentile . . .

I interrupted, “Right! How about that smile, huh? I’m looking at ninety-seventh percentile right there!” Everyone chimed in, “absolutely, what a great smile.” I went on. “Good. Hugs, ninety-fifth percentile, cute laugh ninety-eighth . . . ” Everyone was nodding in agreement. The head of special education said, “These are wonderful children, Ms. Fox. I think we should take a break.” I went outside and sat in the car.

I’d met with a psychiatrist earlier that week who was doing the intake sessions for our kids. She asked me if Dan and I were trying to save these children. I said no, “We just want to make it better.” She looked surprised and sat quietly, waiting to see if I had anything to add. I didn’t. The psychiatrist said my expectations were realistic: “Some of your children could still end up addicts, homeless, or in prison, even after being adopted into a loving home. We just don’t have enough information yet about the long term effects of trauma on a developing brain.”

All of the diagnoses were overwhelming. Shit! I banged my hands on the steering wheel. The long term effects of trauma . . . okay, I’m just guessing here but I am going to say . . . not good. What the hell happened to my children? The question is what happens next. I don’t have any training. You have a healthy brain. Use it. I put my head on the steering wheel and started crying. Why are you crying? They don’t need your pity. I’m not crying for them. Feeling sorry for yourself? Not productive! I am crying because it isn’t fair. Make it fairer!

* * *

I was born in Berkeley in the nineteen-sixties, then moved with my family to Palo Alto when I was four. My dad had a PhD in neurophysiology and my mother, a master’s in child development. I thought everyone lived like me, precious and loved, never hit, never hungry. I grew up happy, healthy, strong, and confident. I had never heard of foster care, not even on television. We didn’t have a television. I was taught as a child that I was on this earth to experience joy and fulfill the nature of my design. These were my expectations for life. I knew who I was and where I came from. I never doubted that I was worthy or deserving and I was given an education to help me to achieve my potential.

I regret I was not there for my children’s formative, critical stages of neurogenesis. But the past was behind us, I had to look forward and do my best to compensate for their fearful, love-starved, stimulus-poor start.

The next night after dinner, I called the kids together. “Fox children, piano lessons will begin this week. You will practice thirty minutes each day. The practice schedule is here on the whiteboard with your name and time for your practice unit. No one will be made to practice. If you do not practice, you will sit facing the wall for the duration of your practice time. When you have done your practicing, you will receive fifty cents. If you put your fifty cents into your savings account, your Dad and I will double it and it will become a dollar. Practice five days a week, and you will have five dollars in your savings account. Are there any questions?”

Ruby raised her hand, “Do we have to?” I nodded. “Yes. Fox children play the piano. They practice thirty minutes every day. This is what Fox children do.” Jason asked, “What if we don’t want to?” I smiled, “You will sit and face the wall for thirty minutes while your siblings are making bank.”

I was bluffing. I had no idea if the Fox children would practice, and had no way to enforce a thirty-minute consequence if they didn’t. Hell, I couldn’t get a Fox child to sit for a nine-minute timeout. I’d found a piano teacher who was a retired second grade teacher, lived within walking distance, and could take all five. I put a wooden music cabinet next to the piano and made labels with each child’s name by their own shelf. I began playing for the kids throughout the day, stopping at the piano as I passed by. I used the piano as one might use a cup of tea, a moment for oneself to savor and enjoy, modeling for my children the pleasure one gets from making music.

I never interfered with their practicing. I would answer questions, but never teach. Passing as they played, I’d say, “You sound incredible! I love it. Play that one again, you sound so good.” In a free minute I would sit with them and make up a left-hand accompaniment. I wanted them to love the piano. “Jason, did you know that your grandfather learned how to play on this very piano when he was just a boy?” Jason looked confused. “I have a grandfather?” Right.

The kids started popping the ivory off the piano keys, one by one, and leaving them all over the house. Dammit. I collected them, quietly, one by one, and put them in the back of a dresser drawer. Our technician said it would be too expensive to put them back on, but I saved them anyway. I never confronted the children, never said a word. There was only one way to stop this vandalism and I knew exactly what to do. We needed a grand piano. A big one, a real looker, and we needed to put it right in the middle of the living room, in front of the French doors and close enough to the window for the light to pour onto my artists. We needed to put an enormous mirror at the end of the piano, angled for a view of the audience and their own gorgeous selves as they came and went.

I knew it would work. A grand piano is a presence in the house, a piece of art, commanding respect and inspiring in itself. Massive weight on temple legs, Samson strength with brutal grace; handsome, kinetic, and yes, a little dangerous. It’s compound curves like the back of a horse, the open lid a lion’s mouth. It is complicated, beautiful, and the height of romance.

All children crave attention, mine as much, or more, than the next. For those thirty minutes of fame each day, each kid was center stage, blazing, amazing, singing at the top of their lungs. Studies show that instrumental practice is most productive when a parent sits and listens. With a grand piano, sitting or not, the kid knows you are listening. Everyone is listening. It’s a seven-foot long, eight-hundred pound talking stick. They loved it: “Mom, it’s my turn to practice next!” They loved performing for our guests, for the neighbors, for me.

No one argues about the benefits of teaching children music: the positive effects on the brain, coordination, critical thinking, and discipline, not to mention self-expression. But there is also a hidden benefit for parents: when my children were practicing, I knew exactly where they were and what they were doing.

* * *

After music came food. In the foster home, our children ate at a small plastic table, away from the biological kids, and were beaten if they didn’t eat. In the Fox home, no one had to eat anything they didn’t want to. I took requests and spared no expense. Processed foods were avoided, fresh fruit and vegetables strongly recommended, but only if you wanted to eat anything else. Menus were designed to engage a youthful palate, provide the vitamins and minerals their bodies needed to grow healthy and strong, and educate young eaters about other cultures through world cuisine. Our family sat for three meals a day, singing together before we ate, elbows off the table and manners politely enforced.

New dishes were met with a healthy skepticism. Jimmy, nicknamed “Food Hero,” was fearless in taking the first bite of a new dish: tikka masala, injera, fajita—the kid tried everything. His siblings, watched with rapt attention while he tested the unknown.

I branched out. Cheese wasn’t just orange anymore: meet feta, fontina, and homemade ricotta. Spaghetti had a skinny little sister called capellini, and cousins called fettucine and farfalle. We served racquette pasta with green peas during the US Open. We had lox for bagel night, latkes for breakfast. Anthony called me “Edemama” on soybean night; I had to cut him off when his pile of husks was bigger than his head. Dan would tell us the story of Stroganoff, the Russian chef who would carry an onion under his armpit for two days before using it in his famous sauce.

The kitchen was my classroom. We learned to follow directions, work as a team, and respect the clock. Cooking math was built in as every recipe had to be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled. And with cooking came lessons in hygiene, chemistry, and nutrition. We learned the secrets of yeast, the virtues of the single rise versus double rise bread, quick breads. And lessons too in geography: Where did our food come from? It backfired once while I was teaching Anthony to name the states on a blank map of the US. I pointed to Wisconsin on a blank map, quizzing Anthony on the fifty states. He said, “mozzarella.” I gave him partial credit.

One night Susie asked, “Did you put pecorino romano in the risotto?” Impressive! Ruby and I had experimented by mixing a quarter cup in with the pound of fresh parmesan. “How did you guess?” Susie said proudly, “At first I thought it was the fresh asparagus instead of our usual artichoke hearts.” What kid talks about food like this? “But then I realized it was the salt from the sheep’s milk romano that was giving it that extra layer.” My kids, apparently! We had a house full of foodies.

The kitchen was also my sniper’s perch. I could see Anthony in the sandbox from the window; I had a sight line to the living room two steps back from the sink; I could see the tutor desk in a strategically placed mirror and was gathering critical information about the activity on the second floor from the footfall over my head. Aware of the entire house, I could be present but not hovering, available and productive.

On occasion a child would threaten me with a hunger strike. Good luck with that. Once Jason made it all the way to dinner in protest of what he called an “unfair grounding.” I stuck my head into his room just before dinnertime. “Hi, honey. I just wanted to check and see if you would like some cabbage soup with hot oatmeal bread.” He hesitated. “Uh, uh, no.” I opened his door so the smell of the fresh baked bread could waft into his room. “Really? Not even a little bit?” He stumbled. “Uh, uh. Okay, but just a little bit.” Three servings later, we had him where we wanted him: full and happy, laughing and joking. Appetite’s victory, honor’s defeat.

* * *

And while I sang for our suppers to make our house home, Dan fought to forge our family in the air, on land and sea. He took us camping, no frills and often. Oatmeal for breakfast, ramen for lunch, hot dogs for dinner, marshmallows for dessert. Condiments as follows: ketchup, mustard, bug spray. We hiked and sang, threw sticks for Charlie, and got mosquito bites all over. We played tag in the clearings, hide-and-seek in the woods, discovered nature’s most scenic timeout spots—there’s no better way to do your time than staring at the Green Mountains of Vermont, the High Peaks of the Adirondacks, or both, depending on the elevation of your bad choice.

Next came canoeing. We packed our gear in dry bags, kitchen gear in a duffel, and the guitar in a plastic garbage bag. We’d push off for one of the many islands dotting Lake Champlain; our regatta included, but was not limited to, a flat-bottom twelve-foot boat with a tiny outboard for the dog, the French horn, and other precious non-paddling cargo, plus two seventeen-foot aluminum canoes. From our base camp island, we would swim together to neighboring islands, our voices conversing across the conductive water, Charlie’s barks the backbeats to Anthony’s shrill at the thrill of such beauty so close.

And to help put things in perspective, Dan would rotate taking the kids up in his four-place Cherokee light airplane. I headed the ground crew, waiting and waiting, we could hear the plane before we could see it. We spelled out messages on the big lawn with rolls of paper towels and would start jumping and waving as the plane flew overhead. Dan would fly the kids to a regional town, land on a grass field, and buy them lunch at the airport diner. The flyers’ voices were as high and fast as the plane itself, squealing with delight: “We saw the island where we camped, Mom, and Dad let me steer! I got to fly the plane, Mom!” I could feel their excitement, the thrill of a small plane. These were moments of happiness.

And when the weather got too cold for camping . . . movie night. Movie night with Dad was the reason for living, the reason to behave during the week. Dan would arrange the furniture around a large flat screen monitor and set out blankets on the couches and chairs. After dinner on Friday, the children would ask to be excused from the table. Dan would nod and say, “Pajamas. Stay in your room.” He would grant amnesty to those grounded. Viewing was only denied to those who had committed an act of violence that same day and even then he may still let them watch.

Walking to the base of the stairs, he would say their names one by one. He’d wait, build the suspense and then say, “Movie.” A brief stampede down the stairs and into assigned seats. No talking. If there was an argument at any time during the movie, the movie would be stopped and everyone sent to his or her room. Dan would start the movie, then ceremoniously sit himself right in the middle of them, sometimes on them, sometimes between them and when the screaming subsided, he would sit there with them, watching with them, everybody together. And if everything went well, he might show another movie on Saturday.

He did not take requests. His programming was thoughtful and deliberate. He would show a popular animation film, a documentary on origami or topiary, Fiddler on the Roof, maybe an action film or a foreign film with subtitles. “Anybody have a problem with that? No one has to watch, you are always free to go to your room for the duration of the movie.” Everyone watched. There was no screen time outside of movie night.

From what we could tell, television and gaming had been the go-to in the foster home. Our children’s developing brains had been bathed in unsupervised television and video games. World Wrestling Entertainment was their model for behavior, and Grand Theft Auto their moral compass. Not on our watch. We introduced our kids to nature TV: the river, the stars, the woods. The programming was slow-paced, quiet and calming. Even city kids would watch. All we had to do was remove cell phones, computers, internet, DVD players, radios, televisions, handheld devices, make hot chocolate, and sit with them.

We did recognize that our children would also have to be computer literate in order to function in the world, so we gave them twenty minutes of free time on the computer each day. I say “free” but they had to earn it. First they had to complete twenty minutes of a typing tutorial, twenty minutes of online math exercises, and then answer a research question in the marble composition notebook:

Where did Langston Hughes go for college?

What is the equivalent in cup measures of thirty-eight tablespoons?

How many tragedies did Shakespeare write? How many comedies?

What does the acronym NAACP stand for?

What is the life expectancy of the common housefly?

Then, and only then, could a child go to pre-selected, age-appropriate, educational, and vetted websites. There was one approved two-dimensional gaming website where they were free to play any and all games, so long as it did not involve shooting, hitting, or the pistol-whipping of any representation of life forms. Also off limits were games involving people dressed inappropriately or exhibiting inappropriate behavior. Games like soccer, moto-cross, or biplane dogfight? Enjoy! Not exactly the latest technology but deprivation makes one grateful for what one gets.