The next morning, I asked, “Do you want to bake a cake?”
“Yesith!”
“Okay, get dressed; we’re going to the store!”
I bought cake pans, cake mix, and ready-made frosting. I didn’t see any reason to make it from scratch. Mixing anything in a bowl was going to be a challenge for me. Thorin picked out blue frosting with sprinkles. We listened to Johnny Cash and made a two-layer cake. It was delicious.
Being a stay-at-home parent who homeschooled was never being off-duty. It was a full-time job with overtime! It took energy, ingenuity, and creativity to be with a child all day long. I regretted every judgmental thought I’d ever had about a stay-at-home parent. Kathy was right: This was a huge transition for both of us. I was learning as much as Thorin, and most of it was on the fly. Thorin was still out of sorts and cranky. He was processing a horrible year of school and testing the limits with me. This was all going to take time. It would not be a smooth transition; there would be bumps and starts and do-overs. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense we butted heads.
One particularly crabby morning, I took Thorin out to lunch at 10:30. I hoped being outside the house would limit our bickering. Thorin, on the other hand, must have seen the public venue as a more effective way to get under my skin. He munched away on his grilled cheese, stopping only to say in a really loud voice every so often, “Hi, Bad Mommy!”
What a jerk! I sat with my head down, perusing a local weekly newspaper. I was reading the listings, looking for anything to take him to. The moment he said “Hi! Bad Mommy!” for the seventh time, a tear dropped from my eye onto the words “Does your child like make-believe?” It was an ad for a theater class starting that afternoon at the Children’s Museum and Theatre of Maine.
“Thorin we’re taking the rest to go.”
“No, not!”
“Would you like to go to a theater class?”
He stopped mid-bite. “Yeah!”
I called the museum, and there was still room for him in the class. I asked to speak to the teacher.
“Hello, this is Jamie!”
“I’m calling about the theater class starting today. Um . . . my son has Down syndrome,” I sounded tentative.
“Okay,” she answered, like she heard this all the time.
“Is that a problem?” Good grief! I’d been brainwashed by years of schooling!
She laughed, “No, of course not!”
“He has a hard time talking or being understood.” It felt like I was trying to talk her out of taking him.
She responded quickly, “We have students whose first language isn’t English.”
“Okay, see you later!”
When we arrived at the museum, Jamie was at the front desk to greet kids for the class. Thorin stood with them, away from me. A few minutes later, I watched Thorin follow Jamie and the other children upstairs.
I said to the woman at the front desk, “Can I wait here?”
“You can but you don’t have to.”
What should I do? Thorin just went off with a stranger and no aide.
“I better stay.”
The woman smiled at me. “Sure. That’s fine.”
An hour and half later, Thorin appeared. He was so excited; he seemed ready to levitate. “How was it?”
“Great, Mom!”
When I talked to Ward that night, he told me that I did a good job. He also gave Thorin and me aprons he had bought.
Thorin and I started having breakfast with Bubba a couple times a week. One morning at our favorite diner, I noticed Thorin’s attention was drawn away from his pancakes to the table behind us. First, he was smiling then he wasn’t. He was frowning. I looked and saw three guys, about eighteen years old, who were taking turns looking at Thorin and laughing. The boys weren’t trying to engage a cute kid in the next booth; they were literally pointing and laughing at a boy with Down syndrome. They were talking low enough that I couldn’t hear what caused the outbursts of laughter. Thorin put his head down. I put my arm around his shoulder.
“I’ve got this. Don’t worry.”
I stared at the two facing me until one of them pulled his eyes away from Thorin and saw me. My expression? Imagine Heath Ledger as the Joker. That’s when it hit him: Holy shit, that lady is going to kick my ass! He blanched and looked down at his plate. I couldn’t hear what he said to the others, but their behavior stopped abruptly. They didn’t look at our table once after I gave them the evil eye.
I turned to Thorin and said, “They’re jerks. Don’t mind them, okay?”
He nodded and went back to eating. My mom asked what happened. I quietly told her.
“What assholes!” she said.
We finished eating and decided to go to the park a couple blocks away. My mom and I sat on one of the benches, talking while Thorin played. About ten minutes later, those same guys showed up at the park. When they saw us, they moved behind a large area of bushes to pass around a Hacky Sack rather than play out in the field directly behind us.
I’m a believer in signs, and this was an opportunity to explain why their behavior was wrong. It was also something I could have never done at Thorin’s school—at least not without getting permission and talking it to death beforehand with three staff people. So, I walked over to them. The guy who I had engaged with my menacing stare saw me and immediately looked down at the ground.
“Hey, I noticed all of you staring at my son in the restaurant earlier.”
One of them said with a sneer, “What are you talking about?”
“You were all staring at my son and . . .”
Before I finished, one of them walked
