I just dropped your mum off at work. We had been to have ice-cream for lunch; I remembered what Tom Hanks said they said in the Godfather: “go to the mattresses”: Though marzipan and honey ice-cream has no springs or a memory-foam top, Dr Lek Ice Cream Parlour seemed the right place to be. Something about going back to basics, getting my feet on the ground, surrounding myself with things that you were meant to spend your pocket money on, memories of a life that was simple. It is probably just called comfort-eating by others. But me and you love ice-cream. And you don’t need to comfort eat, you just need to eat yours as fast as you can and then open your big brown eyes at me and ask for what’s left of mine. And sometimes you are so smart and sly that you realise that in this world, what is yours is yours and what is mine is yours too, and you wade into mine way before you polish off your own.
The car stereo is usually quite intermittent, I really need to clean the lens on the CD. Right now it’s playing fine. Gene – Olympian. One of the songs I could play a hundred times in a row and still sense a smile break out across my face when that first line gets sung. I remember the first time I heard it: my studio flat in Hayes in 1995, I’d bought it for £4 at the local car boot sale. I took your mum to see it performed live many, many times when we lived in London. I always remember the feeling as the crescendo rises in the song, the crowd, the band, the sweat, the noise. I used to live for that feeling, hedonistically bouncing between the Astoria, Kentish Town and Shepherds’ Bush.
Then you came into my world and suddenly all the beauty and wonder I ever needed was there in my arms. From the second that the nurse passed me a bundle of green blankets, with a little scrunched up face poking out and a nose that could only be mine and big brown eyes that could only be your mum’s. The midwife was so happy to say you had dimples. I thought your mum would be so proud that you had two beautiful dimpled cheeks like her, but then I realised how much she loved me when she was happier to exclaim you only had one. On the left cheek. Just like your daddy. I read somewhere that it is no mistake of nature that children are born looking like their fathers, they do everything they can over those nine months to make sure the big brute that fathered you will crawl out of his cave to club to death anyone who even thinks about hurting you. It obviously worked.
I feel like crying ever time I think about those few moments. Suddenly, at 9:06am I went from being me to the person I was always supposed to be. My whole world reconstructed in a second, my dreams forgotten, new ones just exploding in my mind. Not that you would ever need my help in life, not with those lashes, you’ll have them eating out of your tiny little wrinkled hands.
My eyes are full of tears, I can hardly see. I can hardly think. I reach to turn Olympian down. I’ve never done that, never in my life. Then I turn it off. I can’t think straight, I can’t think at all. I just want to go home and cry and cry. I’m going to leave you with Safta rather than pick you up, you never need to know how sad I am, you just need to know how much I love you and how proud I am of you and all the wonderful things you do.
You were so fantastic with the doctor today. You surpassed my expectations, she asked you to stick your tongue out and you did, to close your eyes and you scrunched up your face like the little magical boy you are, though I am sure you could still see through the little gap you left. She blew bubbles for you, and you laughed and went and popped them, and you exclaimed “ballonim” with such happiness I could have cried. And when she wanted to frustrate you, she screwed the lid back on the bottle. I told her she would have to try much harder than that, we weren’t dealing with a regular little boy and you proved me right. And the fact that she wouldn’t blow bubbles any more for you didn’t frustrate you either, you just worked out how to blow your own, and you blew your first bubble ever, just on cue. She gave you a puzzle with animals in and you put them all back in place, named every one and sang a beautiful song about zebras in pyjamas. I didn’t know it but mummy and Safta joined in with you and the doctor. She asked me and mummy lots of questions, we answered as honestly as we could.
We told her proudly that you learned eventually to follow our gaze and our fingers to the object we were showing you, and that you point yourself to show us things and we were so happy that you learnt these things. Then she asked where your eyes went when you pointed. We said you looked at the object. She asked mummy to point, and mummy pointed, and she looked at the object too. Then she looked at the doctor, and then back at the object. And that was it. The difference between you and all those other little boys and girls who take hours and still fail to learn what you can do in a few seconds. You can count past a hundred in two languages, you know more words in English than most English children, more words in Hebrew than most Hebrew children, you have a photographic memory, you can stack 15 blocks on top of each other, you only need to be in a place once before you know the way there from everywhere you have ever been. But you don’t know that there is a triangle when you show something. You don’t know that you are showing something to someone. You just show the thing. You don’t make sure that I’m looking, you don’t need to know that I am looking. And no matter that you are the brightest kid I have ever seen, no matter that my mum says that you blow me at that age away, no matter that the little genius that was your mum at two and three quarters had nothing on you, that triangle is more important than any of the amazing things that you stun me with every day.
She told us what we knew already; she was very vague, very non-committal but she talked of you being on a spectrum. You fit somewhere between the extremes though she wanted to leave the specific diagnosis to the psychologist we will see three times in the next couple of weeks. She said that you are so bright that you will make massive progress, that you had already learnt to make huge steps without any assistance and with the right help you will blossom into the fantastic person I already know you are. She gave us lots of advice, lots of hope. We shouldn’t put you back in the nursery that you were in, the nursery that couldn’t love you like I love you, we should find something smaller, we could get you an assistant, and that if things go well in the next three years you could go to regular school with everyone else. You will probably always struggle with relationships, and you might get obsessive when you hit your teenage years, but you are smart, and you are showing so many positive signs, speech, eye-contact, intelligence, abilities to join in with singing, that we should be optimistic for everything in your future.
We left with a book recommendation and a broken heart. I drove through a red light without even thinking and got stopped by the police. Somehow I didn’t get a ticket, I’m not sure if she bought my story, but I don’t think you can fake the sadness I had in my eyes. Maybe I’m going to take that luck with me everywhere I go from now on. Maybe I will.
I took you to Safta’s home, I thought she was exactly the person you needed right then, not Daddy. I love you too much to ever let you see how hurt I am. Nothing could phase Safta. Every second with you is a blessing for her, and that is what you needed while I worked out how to put the floor back in my world. So I drove Mummy to work, and we decided we need a plan. I’m good at plans, and now it was time to put all those brains I was supposed to have to work.
I spoke to a couple of organisations when I got home. I didn’t cry, I figured that yesterday I had the most magical boy in the world. Today, the same little boy woke up at 6:30am and asked me to cuddle him, the same little boy still thought he could run past me without me grabbing him at the doctors, and the same little boy still burst into fits of laughter when I caught him every time. Clearly, I had only things to be happy about, the tears I’ll save for a rainy day.
The Mifne Center asked me to send them a video of you, half an hour of you playing and eating and being you. I’ll set something up soon, maybe at the weekend. They can evaluate whether they think they can help. I tried to call Tomi to see what they could help us with, but it diverted to an answerphone in the USA. I’ll try again tomorrow. There seems to be several approaches that all seem to bear fruit most of the time. I suspect that I’ll know instinctively which one works best for you. You’re a very special kid. You’ll pick up things in a flash.
I went to pick up mummy from the bus stop, and we drove to get you from Safta’s. We both looked at each other like the we didn’t know what we were going to do, helpless, weak, hopeless. Then Safta opened the door, and you were playing the xylophone and the tambourine and you were just so happy to see us that we remembered that you were a little boy. You weren’t a diagnosis, you weren’t a syndrome, you weren’t a problem. You were our little boy. Ben, the funniest and most loving little boy I’ve ever met. The only boy I know to make kissing his daddy into an hilarious game. Why kiss when you can blow raspberries?
We rode the lift for a bit, you love riding the lift, you always seem so astonished that it does say 17 on the floor when you press 17 on the buttons. And then when we got to the ground floor we knelt down to give you a hug, and you took my head and mummy’s head and said “kiss” as you pushed us together. You’re smarter than the pair of us put together. Nothing made more sense to me than forgetting this last year of war. And as you grow up, I hope you never remember what we put you through in all our stupidity. I’ll do my best to forget it and I hope you can too. I’ve got so many more important things to think about now. And I’ll always love you for sorting out with one little gesture what your parents couldn’t work out with all their efforts in a year.
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