Tolstoy and the Purple Chair (15 page)

Chapter 16
Offering a Better View

Like today, she remembers, it was so quiet at home, just the two of them with the whole day to themselves, and she was so sure of what she had to do: teach him everything, make him laugh, make him feel that he was safe and watched over.

RON SUSKIND,

A Hope in the Unseen

EARLY IN JUNE, GEORGE HAD A BAND PERFORMANCE.
He'd been playing the tuba for months, and I liked the sound of it. His instructor assured me that playing the unwieldy instrument was a sure “in” to college: “Tuba players are rare and necessary,” he told me. I wasn't thinking about George getting into college yet, and I already knew he was rare and necessary. But I really did like the resonating reach of the deep
boom
s and
bahm
s that came from George's tuba.

The concert kicked off a stream of end-of-school-year events. Exams and a prom for Peter; graduations for George and Michael, elementary school and middle school; a beach party for Martin. My kids were growing up. I'd have them home with me this summer, but our days of entwined hours spent together were dwindling. My boys' lives were spreading out, away from me, and into places where I couldn't go. Places I wasn't invited. Places I couldn't protect them.

There is a terrifying scene in one of Greg Bottoms's short stories in
Fight Scenes
, which I read in early June, where a young boy defaces a photo of himself and leaves it on his mother's refrigerator. His friend observes that “if a mother had any idea of what her son's life was like, what his thoughts were like, what he was like, he might kill her by breaking her heart.” I hoped that none of my children had lives or thoughts that would break my heart. I wanted fresh air and happiness for them, and no dark nights or choked thinking. Whatever protection I could offer now came in the values that I'd tried to instill, through sharing and teaching and example. But what had I instilled?

I have a drawing hanging up in my bedroom that Peter made for me the first summer we lived in Westport. The drawing is titled “Mom Making Dinner,” and it shows me with baby Martin in one arm. He is bawling his head off, with large oval teardrops falling off into space. With my other arm I am reaching helplessly for a salad bowl that is cascading to the floor, all the salad leaves floating around it in a halo of greens. My mouth is wide open in full Edvard Munch
Scream
mode, and my eyes look a bit wild. But despite the O-shaped mouth and rabies-reminiscent eyes, I look happy. I'm light on my feet, dancing barefoot across the blank white of the page.

My life for so long was that drawing, mishaps and mayhem and screams but also laughter, togetherness, and light. Lots of light.

The light still shone for me whenever I looked at my kids, but our moments of building Lego towns and making up new cake recipes (each more sickening than the last) and reading out loud before bed were over. Okay, so we still made Jell-O chocolate pudding as a team: one to stir, one to pour, one to bring to the fridge, one to ladle on the whipped cream before serving, and one to clean up (me). And we still all had dinner together, although it was chicken paillard now instead of nuggets, and my mixed salad managed to make it to the table intact in its bowl.

All the easy talk that used to happen over dinner had been replaced by the boys telling me what they wanted to tell me, when they wanted to. Of course I had never been fully privy to what their thoughts were, but when they were little, they'd prattle on and on about whatever was on their minds. Now I had to rely on whatever words they'd parse out over meals, or resort to more modern forms of expression, like texting and Facebook. Peter allowed me to be his friend on Facebook, but with the threat that if he felt as if I were stalking him, he'd de-friend me.

“Don't stalk me, either!” I'd replied.

“Yeah, right, Mom. Like I'm going to spend my time reading your profile page.”

No, I knew he wasn't going to waste his time spying on me. But what was he going to waste his time on? I knew so much about my children, but what terrified me was what I didn't know. What good examples or advice had I passed on to them? I wondered what had stuck with them, of all the life lessons I'd lobbed their way.

I know my kids love to read, like I do. When we still lived in New York City, every morning Jack and I walked the boys to PS 9 on the Upper West Side. Then Jack would continue on to the office, and I would head home with George, not yet old enough to go to school. One morning as we were walking, Peter was reading a book and trying to keep up with us at the same time.

“Peter,” Jack admonished, “you can't read and walk at the same time.”

Peter nodded, and we continued on. I noticed after a few minutes that Peter wasn't with us. I turned around to see him at the end of the block, head in his book. Given the choice of reading or walking—he couldn't do both—he'd chosen to read.

I saw in the books I was reading this year both what I hoped for my children, and what I feared for them. In a swirling of voices and scenes, I found guidance not only for my life but for what I wanted in theirs. In
The Picts and the Martyrs
by Arthur Ransome, I read about a perfect summer spent outdoors, freed from supervision and rules. Ransome wrote twelve Swallows and Amazons books between 1929 and 1947, about the kids from two families, the “Swallows” from the Walker family and the “Amazons” referring to the two Blackett girls. All my English friends read these books when they were kids, and sometimes I think the childhood memories they shared with me were actually taken straight from Ransome's novels. And why not? The kids in Ransome's books have great times together.

Defiant of adult intervention, Ransome's characters set their own course for fun. “We're free to start stirring things up. We'll hoist the skull and crossbones again the moment we've had our grub. We'll get things moving without wasting a minute.” The kids take care of themselves and of each other, having a good time and getting along with very little bickering or whining. Ransome is known for his practical details, and this novel included specifics on how to sail, how to catch trout with your hands, and how to skin a rabbit (not easily). The kids in
The Picts and the Martyrs
behave as I hope my own kids would, with bravery and common sense and joy.

In Junot Díaz's
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
, which I read a few days later, a much darker portrait of an independent childhood is presented. Oscar is a teenager hounded by his mother but then left much on his own to defend and define himself on the streets of Newark. The kids in Ransome's books always have the safety net of their family (or the family cook), but Oscar is on his own. His father disappeared years ago, and his mother relates to both Oscar and his sister only through threats and anger: “It was her duty to keep me crushed under her heel.” The sole loving person in Oscar's life is his grandmother, and she lives across the sea in the Dominican Republic. To his grandmother, he is a “genius”; to everyone else, he is a mutant: “You really want to know what being an X-man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

My book group in Westport read
A Hope in the Unseen
by Ron Suskind for our June meeting.
A Hope in the Unseen
is a nonfiction account of a boy raised by a single mother in one of the worst neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Cedric, like Oscar, is something of a mutant, jeered at by the kids at school for his good grades, held up like a specimen of good behavior by his teachers, and misunderstood by his incarcerated father. His mother is his main support, and she is generous with her love and affection. Food and shelter, however, are harder to supply. Some nights there is no dinner because there is no money for food. The pair face eviction and homelessness more than once.

Although there are similarities between Oscar and Cedric, Cedric has the unfailing support, if not always understanding, of his mother. Cedric's moment of becoming a man is, for me, when he understands that whatever he wants to leave behind in his past, his mother is “not something to rise above and leave behind. She's what got him this far. Give, give, give her whole life, mostly to him.” He says to her now, “You can't be the only one doing the caring. I'm strong enough to do some now, too.” Then he hugs her: “His long arms squeeze tight around her, a big woman who doesn't need to be so damn big anymore.”

From a place of hope and love grows a man. Cedric was cared for, and in turn becomes a man who can take care of himself, and of others. An example set by a mother and replicated by a son. What examples am I setting? A book a day for a year: obsessive and crazy, or dedicated and disciplined? It was up to my kids to decide for themselves.

One very rainy day in the fall, back before I'd started my book-a-day project, I went out to the side of the road by our house and started to dig away at the roots of a maple tree growing up in the shade of bigger trees. It was a tiny tree, but with beautiful red and orange leaves that glistened spectacularly in the rain. I worked away at the root ball of that tree and finally dug the whole thing out. I dragged the tree and the huge chunk of dirt hanging onto its roots into a wagon and then pulled the wagon across the lawn and out to the back of our house. I planted the tree beside the patio. From the kitchen sink, I could look out and see the brilliant leaves against the dark blue autumn sky. In winter, the branches caught snow that glittered under the sun. In springtime, tiny thin buds came out on its branches, and now, in June, the skinny tree was abundantly green. It provided just enough shade in one corner of the patio for me to pull a chair into and read, out of the sun. My kids had asked about that tree: Why hadn't I just gone to the nursery and bought a nice tree?

“Because,” I explained to them, “this little maple was growing out under the shade by our big maples. It wasn't going to get any bigger out there, but it could get bigger. With more sun and air and space it could grow tall. So there it was, a tree with potential, and I saved it. That tree cost only the effort of my digging it up, lugging it over here, and planting it in the ground. Do you understand?”

“You don't have money for a new tree?” asked Martin.

“You're cheap?” tried George.

“You love to dig,” Michael said in conclusion. Peter just shook his head. Jack came outside and offered another explanation.

“Your mother is crazy.”

“All of the above,” I said, “and I wanted shade on the patio.”

I read Francine du Plessix Gray's biography
Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman
under the shade of that tree. Just like me, and like most mothers, the mother of Madame de Staël was hell-bent on raising her child the right way. In figuring out how to raise my kids, I relied on the example of my own mother and of the mothers I liked in books, like the character of Geraldine Colshares in Laurie Colwin's
Goodbye Without Leaving
.

I felt a kinship to Geraldine. She'd been a backup singer and dancer for a rhythm and blues duo, and I'd always dreamed of being one. Once she gets married and has a kid, she wants only to hang out with her baby, Little Franklin: “Asleep on my arms, he was unaware that the person holding him was out of a job, had no profession, and had in fact outlived an era. Little Franklin of course didn't care, and I didn't much care either. I had a purpose in life: to sit in a rocking chair mindlessly musing on my baby while I nursed him and burped him and rocked him.”

Yes, that was exactly how I felt when the boys were little. So maybe I wasn't looking to books for guidance on how to be a mother, as much as for approval on how I was doing it. Either way, reading Gerry's take on how motherhood was just like being in a band—“being very tired and singing a lot. Also being on your feet all the time”—made me feel better about being the mom that I was, and I sang louder than ever.

The mother of Madame de Staël also relied on books to figure out how to raise her daughter. She turned to the writing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and especially the guidelines he set forth in his novel
Émile
, to steer her child straight toward a fulfilling existence. According to biographer Gray, the mother misinterpreted Rousseau's dictates completely, but never mind. Her daughter came out of childhood with high wit, fast intelligence, big ambitions, and most of all, great enthusiasms.

Madame de Staël wrote in a letter, “Enthusiasm is the emotion that offers us the greatest happiness, the only one that offers it to us.” I've tried to instill in my own kids unguarded glee about and curiosity in what happens around them every day. After all, what is curiosity but an enthusiasm to learn and to know?

Anne-Marie had boundless energy and endless curiosity for new ideas and new ways of looking at things. That enthusiasm drove her in her work, and in her relationships, although its flip side—her boredom with old tropes on tired themes—sometimes made spending time with her unnerving. I'd sat through dinners where she got up from the table, fed up with stagnant conversation and in search of someone more stimulating to talk to. For those of us who knew her well, the signal was clear: change the topic or else. It wasn't hard to find a new topic. Anne-Marie was always ready—and enthusiastic—for new ideas, and happy to come back to the table. I want my kids to be more diplomatic at dinner parties, but to be always open, like their aunt and like Madame de Staël, to new and different ideas and visions and goals.

I also want my children to feel grateful for all that life offers. In
The Laws of Evening
by Mary Yukari Waters, I found beautiful illustrations of such gratitude. The stories in
The Laws of Evening
are set mostly in Japan, ranging in period from the days before World War II through the war to the years after. Waters's characters have witnessed death on scales ranging from intimate (children, father, mother, spouse) to national (the horror of Hiroshima). None of her characters is fearful of death, but they display different responses of expectations, regret, or acceptance: “And she was thankful to whoever had left this signpost to testify that he, too, had known this limbo for which there are no words; that through the ages others had known it and that by her own humble path, she had come to the right place.”