Raising Blaze (23 page)

I
take the pill early in the morning and begin to feel the effects almost immediately. First comes a sort of electrical buzzing that starts in my chest, works its way into my jaw, and settles at the base of my neck. My breath starts to come quicker and shorter. My fingers tingle a little. My heart starts doing some annoying little flips as if it misses a beat and goes back to make up for the loss with a double. I cough. The buzzing sensation moves into my head and my eyes start to feel tight. After an hour, a ragged headache claims a band around my head where it will remain for a long time. There is no real “rush” that I can distinguish, but about twenty minutes after I take the drug, I am talking faster and getting organized. Sure, I think, I can write on this stuff. I could also probably be talked into cleaning the bathtub with a toothbrush or organizing thirty years of loose photographs. I could write a term paper. The term paper seems a particularly appropriate task because the feeling I am experiencing reminds me very much of my college days where I and dozens of other hapless students would drink thick, black coffee until our bladders threatened to burst and when that no longer did the trick, scrounge around for stimulants the chemistry majors had been cooking up that week. We took whatever would
keep us awake. Once I even saw a hardy soul snorting lines of espresso in the library.

My chest feels constricted and my head is alive with noise. I’m not enjoying myself. Those college days are long gone, to be sure. Inexplicably, I decide to make myself some coffee. I drink two cups and go over the edge. My heart starts to pound, I begin to sweat, and my eyes feel stabbed with pain. I am now useless, irritable, and uncomfortable.

When the drug wears off a few hours later, I feel sapped, disoriented, and tired. Much later, when according to all the literature the drug should have metabolized and passed out of my system, I lie awake in bed staring at the unforgiving blackness of the ceiling.

I am not the only one in my house who can’t sleep. In the bent hours after midnight, the shape of my twelve-year-old son hovers next to my bed, outlined dimly in dark.

“I had another nightmare, Mom,” he says. His voice is tremulous and still soaked with sleep.

“What was it?” I ask him.

“I dreamed I was a cartoon character. There were black lines drawn around me. I couldn’t move off the paper.”

“It’s only a dream, honey,” I tell him and take his hand. “See? You’re not a cartoon. I couldn’t hold your hand if you were a cartoon.”

He doesn’t seem particularly comforted. He wants to know if I’ll walk him back to bed. Back in his bedroom, he puts on his headset and listens to music. He wants his door closed so that nothing can get in. Or out. I kiss him and assure him that he remains three-dimensional, but he’s drifting away, still troubled.

Now in my own sleepless bed again, the tears start. I know how Blaze feels and I know why he can’t sleep and why he’s having nightmares. After all, today we have both been on the same drug. It’s not speed, cocaine, or anything cooked up by college chemistry majors.

It’s Ritalin.

After years of resisting the attempts of doctors, teachers, and special-education administrators to convince me to give my child some kind (any kind!) of psychotropic medication, I have arrived here, like so many others before me, at the house of Ritalin. And I didn’t start Blaze on this course of drugs because I finally yielded to the pressure of all those professionals—in fact, they’ve backed off from the whole medication issue lately. No, I made this decision all by myself.

I toss around in my bed, imprisoning myself in the twisted sheets. It’s ironic, I think, as I sit up and stare at the clock for the tenth time. I held off for so long and now I’m giving Blaze Ritalin, not because he’s been failing at school or because his behavior has gotten worse, but because he’s been doing so
well
. So what’s wrong with this picture?

It took Blaze a couple of months to really settle into Mr. Davidson’s class, but after he did, the transformation was quite impressive. Suddenly, out of nowhere and with no particular reason, my son knew his multiplication tables. I had tried every kind of strategy to get him to learn and memorize these before to no avail. Grace, the math wiz, had tried even harder, but Blaze seemed stuck where he was, mathematically. Then, after only a few weeks in Mr. Davidson’s class, he knew all his math facts. What’s more, they were lodged in his brain forever. I couldn’t stump him.

Blaze was also reading, really reading, in class and answering comprehension questions about the material he’d read. Mr. Davidson’s class split into groups and read from novels every day. Rather than choosing a few long novels, Mr. Davidson opted to teach many, shorter books. Blaze (and I assumed the other students as well) didn’t have time to grow bored with any one particular novel and was exposed to many different styles and stories.

Blaze brought homework from school and we worked on it together. Every week, he carried home a packet of all his work from the week before, so I could see exactly what he’d been doing and the
progress he’d been making. By the end of fifth grade, Blaze had jumped the academic equivalent of two grade levels.

But there were other, more important, signs of progress besides the academic gains. Blaze was starting to feel a measure of security at school—a sort of emotional safety—that had been lacking for so long. In Mr. Davidson’s class, the boundaries of acceptable behavior were always very clearly drawn. There were rules to be followed and standards to be adhered to. Blaze pushed and strained at these boundaries in a mighty effort to see how far he could go before someone would reach out and pull him back.

I observed this struggle from a distance. Blaze took a bus to school in the morning and I didn’t see him again until he returned home. Mr. Davidson communicated through notes and phone calls. Occasionally, we met for parent-teacher conferences. It was a far cry from my previous immersion in Blaze’s school day, but I never felt out of the loop.

“He’s been throwing his assignments away on his way out to recess,” Mr. Davidson told me. “We’ve been retrieving them from the trash. He’s discovering that just because he’s made them disappear, doesn’t mean they won’t be coming back. It’s only a temporary reprieve.”

Blaze also found that his old response to fire drills and trucks didn’t elicit the same response as it had before.

“He’s only allowed to get out of his seat once,” Mr. Davidson said. “After that, he starts losing privileges, like playing games during free time.”

At home, Blaze would complain, “I hate Mr. Davidson, he’s too strict. He’s mean.”

“You mean he won’t let you throw your homework away?” I said. “What a terrible man.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Blaze said indignantly and then stopped himself short. “Mom, are you being sarcastic?”

“Yes, Blaze. Yes, I am.”

There was more.

“Your son came up to me today and told me I was drunk,” Mr. Davidson said.

“What?” I was horrified.

“That’s right, walked right up to me, pointed in my face and said, ‘You’re drunk!’”

“Why did he say
that
?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Davidson said, and laughed heartily, “because, you know, I hardly ever drink in front of the kids anymore.”

“Oh, ah, ha, ha…”

And Blaze kept pushing on.

“He told me he wanted to punch me in the nose,” Mr. Davidson said.

“That’s really unacceptable,” I said. “I don’t know why he would say such a thing. He’s never done that before.”

“He’s staking out his territory,” Mr. Davidson said. “He’s trying to figure out what it means to be a young man. This is how he’s trying to determine his role. This isn’t a bad thing.”

“You’re not worried about this?” I asked.

“Oh no. He’s coming out of himself, giving himself a context. He’ll figure it out. He’s a bright kid.”

Before this, Blaze had found no brick wall to butt up against. He had alarmed, cajoled, or simply worn down his teachers. In Mr. Davidson, Blaze had finally met his match, a person more obdurate than himself. Someone who would never give up.

Because it wasn’t in Blaze’s nature to concede willingly, he continued to grumble about the tyranny and injustice in Mr. Davidson’s class. He took advantage of every opportunity he got to avoid working and never ceased trying to use his considerable powers of manipulation to get what he wanted. Under all of this, though, he was happier and more content than I’d ever seen him at school. I understood the full measure of this when I read his dream journal. I’d encouraged
Blaze to start writing his dreams down because he’d been talking about them to everyone who’d listen. While they were vivid and fanciful, I told Blaze, it would be better to keep them on paper. Some time in the spring of fifth grade, while he was still carping regularly about what a difficult teacher Mr. Davidson was, Blaze wrote:

The tower came up again in Blaze’s dreams a couple of times after that. Each time, Mr. Davidson was there teaching him how not to be afraid.

Spring turned into summer and, once again, I worked the summer session with the preschoolers. Blaze was next door in his own special-ed class and Mr. Davidson’s class was one door beyond that. In my experience, the summer-school session for special-ed students served mostly to give the special-ed parents five additional weeks of a break from their kids. That is to say, not much actual learning went on. Mostly, there were games involving water and lots of “crafts,” such as constructing picture frames with cardboard and lima beans. The regular-ed kids got much more actual remediation in their classes. Since Blaze wasn’t getting much academic time in his own class, I asked Mr. Davidson to start including Blaze in some of his lessons. In this way, I saw firsthand how effectively Mr. Davidson worked with all the children in his class. There was no doubt in my mind that I’d found the right placement for Blaze this time. I even began to allow for the possibility that Blaze might be able to go away to sixth-grade camp in the fall.

“What do you think about camp?” I asked Mr. Davidson one July afternoon.

“What about it?”

“Blaze. Do you think he’ll be able to go?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“But the boat trip?”

“Ancient history,” Mr. Davidson said. “It’s a new day.”

“But it’s five days, isn’t it? Away from home?”

“Yes it is.” Mr. Davidson was smiling.

“And I can’t go with him, can I?”

“No, ma’am, you cannot. No parents allowed. Kind of defeats the purpose.”

“But, I don’t know…. It’s a long time. I don’t…What if…”

“I’ll be with him,” Mr. Davidson said. “I’ll be with him the whole time.”

Blaze started sixth grade in the fall of 1999. I went back to work at school as well, but in a slightly different capacity. I had developed a real affection for the preschoolers and, in working with them, I had learned quite a bit about basic behavior modification and the efficacy of different teaching strategies. When the kids did well, started to talk, learned how to use the bathroom, blow bubbles, hold a pencil, or sing a song, I was as joyful as any parent. I
liked
being with the preschoolers. This was one thing Dr. Roberts had predicted quite accurately.

Despite all of this, though, the physical demands of the job were too much for me. As a veteran waitress, I’d spent years on my feet, hauling trays of food and drink and sprinting through busy dining rooms, yet none of that had adequately prepared me for the kind of lifting and carrying I had to do in the preschool. There was a big difference between a loaded tray of dishes, however heavy, and a rigid, sixty-pound child who didn’t want to be lifted onto a changing table. I quickly developed a bad back. Worse than that was the almost constant assault of bacteria and viruses that we were all subject to every day. I was sure my body couldn’t handle another year of flu, strep
throat and bronchitis. I’d been sick more often in the preschool than I’d been in my whole life and I didn’t want to risk doing permanent damage to my health.

I transferred to the resource specialist program, which had been helmed by Blaze’s nemesis, Mary. It had expanded to include another credentialed special-ed teacher and dozens of children, spanning kindergarten through sixth grade. The range of abilities and disabilities in this group was staggering. On any given morning, I’d be working with second-graders reading on a kindergarten level, first-graders reading on a fourth-grade level, and third-graders who couldn’t read at all. Unlike the preschoolers, these kids could talk and were quite skilled at using conversation to keep the adults around them off-task. Tony, an eight-year-old with an uncanny resemblance to Opie, was especially good at keeping the conversational ball rolling.

“Hey, Ms. Ginsberg, how old are you?”

“Tony, didn’t your mom ever tell you not to ask a lady how old she is?”

“My mom’s, like,
forty
. You’re not that old, are you?”

“I’m pretty old.”

“Are you, like,
thirty
? That’s pretty old.”

“Close enough.”

“Are you married?”

“No, I’m not married.”

“You got a boyfriend?”

“Tony, we don’t talk about these kinds of things at school.”

“Yeah, okay. But how old are you, really?”

Every one of these kids was fully included in a regular-education class, so each day I spent a portion of my time “shadowing” one or more of the students in their classes. In this way, I was exposed to the classrooms and students of every grade level.

A few weeks into the school year, I was forced to meet my fears
about sending Blaze to camp head-on. It would have been easy to say no had Blaze been unwilling to go, but the opposite was true. Blaze couldn’t wait to go away and talked about it almost every day.

“You’ll be sleeping away from home for four nights,” I told him.