During the month of February, my mom lived with us after she passed out in a restaurant. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital.
Thorin asked, “Bubba die?”
“No, not now,” I replied trying to assure him.
My mom was more dependent on me. It was hard for both of us. Sometimes, she resented needing me, and I resented being needed. We fought about the most ridiculous things, but we also had deeper conversations. Our relationship was much richer and more honest now that it was clear it was also time-limited. She, Thorin, and I spent many days together cuddled on the couch reading. Thorin slept with her every night. Most days, I was grateful to be at home for both of them. I was supposed to be doing this.
After nine months of homeschooling and spending close to ten hours per day, five days per week with Thorin, I had changed. Some changes were noticeable—I could not only cook but loved cooking. Other changes snuck up on me. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but Thorin started offering daily commentary on what I was wearing.
One morning, I came into the kitchen with a head wrap on, which I thought was very chic and practical because it was humid and I have wavy hair. He looked up from his cereal grimacing.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, no. Off now.”
“Now listen I like it . . .”
Thorin covered his eyes and said, “Very bad. No!”
I took it off.
Another day, I put on a pair of boots with my jeans tucked in.
“Oh, no. No. Go back.”
“I like the way it looks!”
“Ick!” We agreed I could cuff the jeans above the ankle.
A few weeks later, a black quilted vest I ordered arrived. I put it on.
“It’s great, right?” I said seeking Thorin’s approval. At that point, I didn’t realize I had been brainwashed.
Thorin picked up the bag it had come in and said, “Put in here now.”
“I love this.”
“Bad, bad, bad. No good. Ick.”
I decided to ignore him. I wore it out that day. Every hour or so, he would say something, such as “really bad,” “stinky, stinky,” and “so sad,” even signing the word “sad.”
Ward hadn’t actually seen the vest on me when he accompanied me to the mall store to exchange it. I shuffled through all the vests, trying each on and hating them.
“I should have brought Thorin to help me,” I said aloud.
The look on Ward’s face was of true concern. “What are you talking about?”
“Thorin likes to help pick out my clothes?” Why did it sound like I was asking a question?
Ward in very serious tone asked, “Kari, tell me exactly why you’re returning the vest?”
“Thorin hates it.” I realized how wacky it sounded as soon as I said it.
“Kari! Thorin is eight!” he said emphatically. In a more soothing voice, he said, “Put the vest on.”
After I put it on, Ward told me, “You look great. That is a perfect cut for your body.”
“It is?” I said unconvinced.
“Kari how long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know . . .” I didn’t want to say maybe months.
“Has it occurred to you he may have an ulterior motive in trying to manage your choices?” This sounded like an intervention.
“Oh no, he is messing with my head!” A full-on epiphany moment.
In the car ride back home, I thought about how to handle this whole situation. I realized I mustn’t be direct. I didn’t want him to know I had been duped. Ward helped me by making a big show of how much he loved the vest on me.
“Doesn’t Mommy look beautiful?”
“Yes! Pretty Mommy!” he said beaming.
While Ward let Coco out, Thorin sidled up to me.
“Not for you! No!” He sounded like the kid in film The Bad Seed.
“Hey, I’m on to you!” I sounded firm in my conviction. I would be keeping the vest!
I was puzzled by something. Thorin still had a hard time putting sentences together when he talked, but when he read aloud, it was amazingly understandable. Ward, my mom, and Betty had also commented on the notable difference. Since homeschooling, Thorin had continued to see his out-of-school speech therapist three times a week. He had made great strides with her, but it was clear he had a way to go toward being understood. I asked her about the contrast in communication between talking and reading.
“He has apraxia.”
“Apraxia?”
“It’s a motor speech disorder. He knows what he wants to say, but the communication between his brain and coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words is blocked. Generative language is hard. When reading, he sees the words; he doesn’t have to figure out what he wants to say.”
“Why am I just hearing this?” I was incredulous.
“I don’t know.” She was blasé.
It was a lesson for me in not assuming I was getting all the information I needed about Thorin. I clearly needed to be asking more questions.
She continued, “Imagine all the thoughts he wants to express, but the opening for them to come out is a very thin straw.”
I had suggested a similar hypothesis years ago—that Thorin had more to express—to his preschool speech therapist but had been discouraged by her.
“Okay,” I said to his speech therapist. “This is the first time I’m hearing this from any speech therapist.”
“Not all speech pathologists understand apraxia.”
“So the therapy he had gotten before . . .”
She nodded her head, “Probably wasn’t effective.”
I imagined how much work Thorin was required to do for things most of us take for granted. Also, the phrase “thin straw” struck me; his words parsed through a straw was like his breath gasping through the same metaphor in the ER years before.
Each month, Thorin started a new theater class at the museum.
