My son isn’t playing the matching game. He’s trying to attach the matching cards to his head.
Why? If I only had a brain, I hum. The therapists want me to ask why rather than assume or get angry.
***
Dominic was a special ed. student with tear-red wild eyes. A Baby Huey in a leather jacket. My job was to help Dom with his schoolwork. But Dom ran from my help, literally sometimes.
Other times, he would call me racist and Ebola just for trying to get him to read rather than distract Four Eyes, the waif-like White girl with the big brain he’d steal answers from.
“Stop, Dom. This is your education!” I demanded.
“Why should I care?” he’d ask, tearing up.
Why hadn’t I asked why for Dominic? What would real help have looked like?
***
My heart goes dom dom. My son is screaming, the cards falling. He’s trying my patience. I am racking my brain, wanting the scales to fall from my eyes the way they did when I saw Four Eyes staring at me in class one day, and I asked her why.
She looked at me like I didn’t have a brain and told me that all my wheedling of Dom wasn’t helping him.
“You’re like a disease,” the girl said.
Ebola.
“I’m only trying to do my job,” I shot back.
But my job didn’t see Dom, who wanted to learn Russian. He knew moy dom and do svidaniya[1]. He never looked people in the eyes.
***
My son wants to stick the matching cards on his head. He’s trying to stick them on. I want to scream why can’t you just be normal! But instead, I let him help me understand what is going on inside his brain.
He bumped his head yesterday. It clicks in my brain. My son has a headache and wants a band-aid.
Dom? His head ached, along with his heart and I was no help. Four Eyes was right. I led when I should have followed.
I have new eyes with which to read the heart and a mind to ask why boys run from work and men run from love.
It’s trying, laying down my trying, singing if I only had a brain, wondering why for my son, for myself, for Dom.
To see out of these tear-blind eyes, I need their help.
[1] Transliteration for the Russian word for ‘my home’ and ‘goodbye’.
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