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T A B L E++T A L K Do you look away when other parents seem to neglect or mismanage their children? Discuss the thin line between intervention and interfering in Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Peep show
Not waiting to inhale
Dear Daughter: Go to jail. Love, Mom
The water lilies look splotchy up close
The fun police
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WHEN A MIDDLE-CLASS MOM NEEDS FATHERLY ADVICE FOR HER SON, SHE TURNS TO A GANG MEMBER NAMED CRAZY ACE. BY CELESTE FREMON | Just around this time three years ago, Academy Awards Monday to be exact, a tiny vascular balloon exploded in the brain of my son's father, inundating his left frontal lobe with blood. The cerebral aneurysm didn't kill Will's dad, who is also my ex-husband, as at first we were terrified it might. Instead, it unhinged the mechanism with which he encodes and decodes speech. When he talks to us, it's as if he's reaching from the bottom of a Lewis Carroll rabbit hole, trapped in a realm where the only language spoken is a jumbled blend of real words and jabberwocky. Will still sees his father for dinners and occasional outings, yet his role is more caretaker than it is child. Now that I'm raising my son as a single parent in the truest sense, I attempt to be the best mother time allows, while also trying to do those things I imagine a father might. Will and I river raft, fish and ski together regularly (he snowboards). I've taken him parasailing, rock climbing, tracking wolves in the wild. I've even promised to take him sharpshooting at a firing range because, although I abhor firearms, I want to ensure that guns aren't an attractive mystery. But I'm not a father. And the older he gets, the more I see the effects of that lack. I try my damnedest to model for Will the way to be a good person. However, I cannot, by definition, tell him how to be a good man. I can't, for example, tell him how a guy should deal with a bully. My limitations came particularly into focus a year after Will's dad got sick. Will, who was, by then, in the fourth grade, began coming home from elementary school in a state of high distress. He wouldn't say what was wrong but left a visible trail of emotional bread crumbs: bursting into tears at the smallest homework-related frustration; staring absently into an interior distance, his 10-year-old shoulders tensed as if against a defeating blow. Finally, after days of prodding, I got him to confess that he was being pushed around on the playground by a fifth grader. The bullying was mostly verbal: threats, name-calling and some personal form of insult that Will considered so egregious, he refused to reveal it. My son is a bright and, in most ways, fearless child. He jumps his bike and skateboard with an abandon that gives me the vapors. During the weeks spent at our summer cabin in West Glacier, Mont., he always manages to become friends with any new neighbor faster than I do. However, when faced with this typical schoolboy badgering, Will seemed to have no defenses. Concerned, I rummaged around in my own experience for what I hoped was helpful advice. "Don't pay any attention to that kid. He only picks on you because he doesn't feel very good about himself," etc. The Psych. 101 approach fell woefully short of the mark. "You don't get it, Mom," Will said quietly, then laid himself down on his bed and turned his head away from me. Over the next week, the bullying continued, with my son still unable to ignore or confront his juvenile harasser. Instead, he developed stomach aches and pleaded to stay home from school. I asked Will if he wanted me to speak to the bully. He said, "No" with extreme prejudice. I tried reporting the kid to the school principal, an unnaturally cheery woman who informed me she could do nothing unless my son would come to her office and repeat to her exactly what the other kid was saying. Then she could bring both boys in for "conflict resolution." "Yeah, right," Will said with a horrified roll of his eyes. "I wish I could talk to my dad," he said. Yes. Of course. Groping for a substitute male perspective, I called my brother, a good and caring man, hoping he could help. He offered Will a string of snappy retorts he might toss back at the offending child. While the quips were great theory, and made Will laugh, in practice, he wasn't destined to be the Noel Coward of the playground. The bullying, the stomach aches, the distress continued. Then, just when it seemed he must somehow hang tough till the fifth grader left for middle school, aid materialized in the most unexpected manner: Crazy Ace called from prison. Deus ex gang member. I had been working as a journalist specializing in East Los Angeles street gangs for seven years. It's an admittedly peculiar specialty for a middle-aged white woman, and there were times during those years when I found myself shuttling schizophrenically between yuppie Cub Scout meetings and urban shoot-outs, a fact that did not, I'm sure, add to my son's sense of security. However, there were payoffs too, in the form of relationships. I got to know scores of gang members well -- some of whom call me collect from correctional institutions when they get locked up. A homeboy with the street name of Crazy Ace was then among my most regular callers. In order to rise high in the ranks of street gangs, one must possess intelligence, a bad-ass ultra-cool persona and the ability not to blink in the face of danger. Ace had all those qualities in lavish abundance. So the next time he called, on a whim I decided to apprise him of my son's dilemma and ask if he had any advice. He suggested I put Will on the phone. Will had met Ace only once in the past, but remembered him vividly. Wide-eyed, he took the receiver and listened. Afterward I asked Ace what he'd told my kid. "Just mainly to try not to let it get to him," he said. Exactly what both my brother and I had already advised. But coming from the infamous Crazy Ace, it had weight. Within days, Will seemed calmer. A week later, I dragged another gang member into the role of counselor. This time it was a homeboy named Grumpy, who imparted essentially the same tips Ace had given. "But," he added, jotting something down on a piece of paper, "give your son my pager number. And tell him, if that kid keeps giving him trouble, to just page me. I'll come up and have a word with that little fool." This last was said as an affectionate joke, and I passed it all on to Will as such. Joke or no -- the bodyguard idea cheered him up immensely. Grumpy, as his name suggests, looks like a huge, tattooed version of the bad-tempered Disney dwarf. The idea, however fanciful, of this enormous gangster suddenly showing up on the Topanga Elementary School playground to growl menacingly at my son's attacker: "You gotta problem with my friend Will?" ... well, it was delicious beyond expression! The bully problem wasn't solved overnight. But somehow Will ceased to be tormented and, under the unlikely tutelage of Grumpy and Ace, a new confidence bloomed in his demeanor. The bullying incident also precipitated a sea change in me as a single parent -- albeit a discomforting one. N E X T__P A G E: No dad, just like all those gangsters ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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