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One morning he retched and seemed to throw up the very little he had eaten because he did not want to go. We took his temperature, and he had no fever. We made him go. (It was wrong of us to make him go. I know that now, and everybody we talk to about it says it was wrong. But nobody has been able to tell me what would have been right.)
I wandered by there secretly later that day to observe him, and I was jubilant at what I saw. It was a relay race, and he was ten yards ahead, my joyous little boy (I was so proud to spy him), carrying a heavy medicine ball in his arms that he had to deliver to the next ru
My boy was still laughing (his face and teeth and mouth were all gleaming) when he handed the medicine ball off to the next boy on his team, who, instead of ru
"Move, you dope!" I pleaded to myself. "Why don't you move, you dope!"
And then, with a numbing, devastating shock that made my head feel fault, I saw that his eyes were red and swollen and brimming with tears and that his lips were bloodless as ashes and quivering. And then I understood why he did not move: he could not move. He was paralyzed. He was devoid of all power and ability to act or think. He could not even panic. He did not move because he could not move. He did not speak because he could not speak. He did not hit back because he could not hit back. He did not cry out or cast his gaze about for help because he couldn't: the thought was not there. He had no voice. Here was that bad dream of mine coming to life. Here was onrushing death and degradation bearing down upon him once more in the senseless, stupid action of a little, slightly sturdier boy (looming suddenly in this situation as large as a giant) whom my boy recently tried to give two chocolate cookies to (it was the same one. Or maybe it wasn't) and he could not move (neither could I) to avert it or mouth the words necessary to call attention to it and release himself from that lifelong, terrifying nightmare of mine. (I am there, and someone can get me — I am dead already because I ca
I left when they were all playing again.
I was very good to my boy the rest of that day. (I was so good to him, and sensitive, that I did not even tell him or my wife what I had seen. He had been afraid to fight.)
The next day, as I more or less foresaw, he did not want to go to play group again. He didn't say so; he merely said he didn't feel well but would probably be all right if we told him he had to go. He looked wretched and pasty, and my heart went out to him silently because I knew (I thought I knew) what he felt. He went. We told him he did have to go and took him. Leaving with us for play group that morning (our daughter was away at camp that summer, where she was having a difficult time of it too, if we could believe her), he looked as miserable and ill in spirit as he did on that bleak and drizzling, u