“Oh, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
The television was on as I walked through the living room with a full basket of clean laundry, and there was Alix, scrunched down behind his child-sized overstuffed rocker, putting it between himself and the screen.
His bright, four-year-old eyes looked up at me carefully, so as not to bring his head above the top of the chair.
“It’s the scary part,” he said.
It’s not that something unbearable had happened on the screen and sent him, shivering, to behind the chair. This was a video he knew by heart, and he’d made a preemptive move to get himself out of harm’s way before he would be exposed to the bad part: The Brave Little Toaster was about to get yelled at by the curmudgeonly vacuum cleaner.
Alix had always been sensitive. He was slight, and small for his age, with translucent skin and thoughtful grey eyes. He liked to cuddle close to people he loved, and when the two of us took naps together, he liked to stay in physical contact by gently holding my earlobe. He loved bright colors, sparkly things, dancing, and music. He laughed easily, and in most ways, was like other kids his age. As the only child in the house, though, and without neighborhood playmates his age, he’d not yet seen testosterone-fueled behavior modeled and had no idea that other boys liked throwing things, blowing things up, and punching each other in the arm.
One day, I took him to the park, where he was playing happily in the sand under a jungle gym by himself, when I spotted another mom, with child in tow, headed toward the playground. Her little boy looked about three, which was great, because Alix loved to take younger kids under his wing, show them how to do things, and otherwise mentor them. I sat on my bench and observed the enviably seamless transition from being strangers to co-workers in the sand.
They’d been playing together for maybe fifteen minutes when the smaller boy stood up, took an aggressive stance, and performed some sort of fist action that made Alix back away, shielding himself with his arms. I stood and called Alix’s name, but the other mother rushed in, stilled her son’s hands with her own, and had a quiet, intense talk with him, while Alix looked on.
After getting some affirmation from her son, and as the boys settled back into the sand, the young woman made her way over to me, looking embarrassed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s the Ninja Turtles. He watches them and likes to pretend he is one.”
I was completely dumbfounded, but made the requisite understanding remarks and watched her walk back to her bench. Ninja Turtles! My son had been frightened because he didn’t understand a form of play that involved combative behavior, modeled on an animated children’s television show. And it wasn’t just that he didn’t understand the role that he was supposed to have assumed at that moment; the aggression was something he had no need or taste for.
I think most kids shy away from frightening images, and many parents shield their children from the villains who scared them as children: the Wicked Witch of the West, the Sorcerer Queen in Sleeping Beauty, the ghostly skeletons striding ominously through the dark ocean water in The Pirates of the Caribbean.
My child hid from Saturday morning TV when the Power Rangers had a fist fight.
My husband adored Alix. Not being particularly observant, I don’t think he was very aware of how adamantly Alix abhorred any kind of violence, whether physically or verbally expressed. What Dave could easily see in Alix were the parts of himself that Alix reflected back. Sometimes those reflections were unrelated to who our son really was. But as I said, he adored Alix, loved showing him new things, talked with him with almost childlike enthusiasm, and most of all, loved taking him on adventures.
As Alix grew, Dave tried to give him the experiences he remembered from his own youth. An adventure could consist of a fishing trip, a foray out into the wilds of our wooded back yard, or a hike in the mountains. When Alix was little, the three of us would venture together out into the wild unknown, but with the birth of Alix’s little brother, these expeditions became known as “boy adventures”, and I would often elect to stay at home with the baby.
Dave had a friend named Rob, whose son, Jamie, was a robust, freckled strawberry blonde, just a couple of months older than Alix. Despite being completely different in size and temperament, the boys became great friends, and they spent many a long afternoon playing together while their dads looked on from under a nearby patio umbrella, beer in hand. Sometimes Rob’s family would come to our house for brew and barbeque, and once in a while, our family would all go over to their place for barbeque and brew, but generally, the women of the respective families were happy to leave “the boys” to their own devices. Rob and Jamie were perfect companions for those boy adventures of fishing trips, camping trips, and afternoon hikes.
Shortly before Alix’s sixth birthday, our family of four bundled into the car on a warm spring afternoon and headed for the hills. Our goal was to find a turnout to a service road and walk a little way into the woods and have a picnic. Dave brought along a World War II German pistol that he’d acquired from a friend, in trade for a short-term loan. It was unregistered, and for all I knew, unsafe, but Dave was bound and determined to try it out in the woods. He’d bought appropriate ammunition and just wanted to shoot at a few soda cans. I was not looking forward to that part of the adventure, but it did, at least, serve as impetus for us to get out the door and into some dense and beautiful forestland.
About an hour from home, we found the perfect turnout: A circular clearing only a few yards in from a little-used service road, with fallen and decaying logs to sit on. We entered the area like a whisper, our tires cushioned by dense shavings of disintegrating cedar, spruce, and Douglas fir. In delighted anticipation, we pulled open the trunk of the car and extracted the cornucopia of treats we had brought with us. The fallen log nearest the car soon displayed an array of cheese slices, fresh grapes, crackers, brownies, plates, napkins, and cups of apple cider. The baby was propped in a hiker backpack that kept him safely suspended a few inches from the ground, and we all indulged in a lunch we weren’t necessarily hungry for, just because everything tastes better outdoors, and besides, the picnic was the point of the adventure.
With a brownie in one hand, Dave sauntered back to the car and fished the pistol and ammunition out of the trunk. He carefully removed the magazine and laid it on the ground, then sighted down the empty barrel and tested the hammer before loading the magazine and reinserting it into the gun.
“Here,” he said to me, when he’d gotten it put back together. “Come hold this.”
“No! No, thanks. I don’t want to touch it.”
“You should learn how to handle a gun. Really,” he said, “this is in my top dresser drawer, next to the bed, and you may need to use it someday when I’m not home. You should know how to shoot it.”
“I’m not going to use it. I don’t even think it should be there by the bed! What if I were in some dream state when you came in late and I thought you were a burglar and I shot at you?”
“You’re not going to do that. C’mon. Just hold it, see what it feels like in your hand.”
Alix was busy experimenting with feeding part of a grape to some ants, the baby was absorbedly chomping on a cracker, and I walked over and took the gun from his hand. It was cold, and heavier than I’d expected. It felt solid and scary and very real. I handed it back to him, trying not to wipe my hand off on my sweater.
Dave found a battered old can—others before us had used this spot for target practice—set it up on a tree stump about ten yards away, and with his back to me and the boys, pulled the trigger.
The explosion rang in my ears, echoing over and over through the trees, cracking open the silence of the forest. The baby took it all in stride, watching Dave intently, but Alix’s eyes were wide with shock, dark rings underneath expressing his silent terror. Dave turned with a satisfied smile and offered the gun, once again, to me.
“You have to fire it,” he stated decisively, “or you won’t know what can happen. You should feel what the kick back is like, so you don’t get hurt if you ever have to use it.”
“Oh, no,” I whined. “I don’t want to, I really don’t.”
“C’mon, it’s no big deal. Just come try it.”
I crossed back to him and he put the gun into my hand. I held it out in front of me and squinted off to the side, trying to avoid the whole situation. Dave stepped behind me, brought my left hand up to help support the weight of the gun, and told me how to site down the barrel.
“Now just squeeze the trigger a little bit,” he said, and as I started to protest, added, “It’s not going to go off. Just pull on it a little so you can feel the play in the hammer. There, feel where you start to hit that resistance?”
I nodded.
“Now release the pressure, slowly, that’s it, now this time, aim at the can, and keep pulling past that resistance point. The gun’s going to push back hard against your hand when it fires, so you don’t want to hold it too close to your face.”
Completely oblivious, now, to the boys or the beautiful landscape or of anything except the gun in my hand, the man behind me, and the need to get the ordeal over with, I firmed up my resolve, supported the weight of the gun, sited carefully down the barrel, and with determined calm, pulled the trigger. The force of the kickback was what I noticed, more than the noise, now that I was the one firing, but I turned around to see Alix’s face, even more frightened than before, looking as though the whole world had just crashed down around him. Handing the gun off to Dave, I moved quickly back to him and put my arms around his shoulders, and together, we watched Dave shoot off the rest of the clip. Then he turned around to us.
“Alix,” he said, “C’mere. Come over here, buddy. You want to hold this?”
Alix’s little eyebrows went up just a fraction, and with round eyes staring into his dad’s, he shook his head.
“It’s okay, buddy, it can’t hurt you,” Dave cajoled. “There’s no more bullets in it, see?” He popped the empty magazine out, then clicked it back into place.
“Dave, he doesn’t want to.” I understood Dave’s desire to share this moment with his oldest son, but holding this fragile little being in my arms, I could clearly feel his alarm at being asked.
“It’s okay, Alix. Don’t you want to just hold it for a minute?” Dave walked our direction, preparing to place the gun in Alix’s hand, thinking, I’m sure, that once he was holding it, Alix would discover it was cool and interesting.
“Dave! No!” I stood quickly, putting myself between them. I rarely opposed Dave when he felt strongly that a particular thing should or should not happen, but I could feel in my own bones, as well as Alix’s, that this was wrong. It was not okay to force this terrified child to hold the thing that was frightening him.
“He does not want to touch it, and he doesn’t have to,” I said, moving nearer to Dave, away from Alix. I didn’t want my words to amplify what he was already feeling, and lowered my voice. “He’s terrified, and you are not going to put a gun into the hands of a five year old boy!”
“Okay, okay,” Dave said with a grin. “Jeez.” Then he called to Alix, “ It’s okay, buddy. We’ll come back in a couple of weeks and try again.”
I gritted my teeth, and with my back still to the children, I hissed, “You will not. You will not make him do something that scares him this badly. He is too young, and you will not make him touch that thing.”
Dave seemed to think my reaction was comically overblown, but he dropped the subject and walked back to the kids, and together, we packed up to head home.
Later that night, as I lay in bed, Dave wandered from the master bathroom into the bedroom with his toothbrush stuck in his mouth, chuckling.
“You kind of freaked out this afternoon,” he said through the toothpaste.
I stared at him, unbelieving. “You really don’t get it, do you? Could you really not see how frightened he was of that pistol? He didn’t even want you to come near him as long as you had it in your hand.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“Dave!” He turned back to the bathroom and spat into the sink. I sat up. “Dave, listen to me. You will not put him through that again! He isn’t even six years old.”
Dave was still looking cheeky. It was clear that he thought I was being hysterical over nothing and that he felt Alix would be comfortable with the gun if he just spent more time around it. I was speechless, helpless to find the right words to communicate what I’d sensed in our son that afternoon. I threw the covers off and bolted out of the bed toward him, my fear for Alix triggering a strong fight or flight instinct to protect him.
“This is important to me. Please! Promise me you won’t put him in that position again. Promise me you will not force that five year old boy to hold a gun. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO ME.”
“Okay, okay.”
“PROMISE ME.”
“I promise,” he said. He went back into the bathroom, but still hiding a smile, and I got back into bed, trying to allow breath back into my body and to trust that my message was received.
Spring warmed into summer, and one hot August Saturday, Dave and his friend Rob decided to take the boys into the cool mountain woods for a hike. I fussed around, helping pack snacks, beverages, stuff for the boys to do in the car, jackets, wet wipes, ginger ale for carsick tummies, and all the other mommy-radar items that they wouldn’t have thought to put in the car, while Dave gathered his woods-adventure necessities. The baby and I waved as Dave and Alix pulled out of the driveway to go pick up the other guys, then went inside and had a lovely, quiet day together, reading, eating and sleeping at whim.
The long summer sunshine provided opportunity for the boy adventure to go on past Alix’s usual bedtime, so he was sound asleep in his child seat when Dave pulled back into the driveway as the last sunlight reflected off the few clouds in the late evening sky. Dave got out as I started to unbuckle Alix from his booster seat.
“I’ll get him,” he said. I brushed my hand over my sleeping boy’s head and moved out of the way, to unpack the things in the trunk.
“Just put him to bed in his clothes,” I said. “He’ll be okay till morning.”
Dave gently scooped Alix into his arms and carried him inside while I hauled the first load of trunk detritus into the kitchen. Dave came downstairs a few moments later to get the remainder, and I went up to Alix’s room.
I could tell from the dirt on his clothing that he’d had a great afternoon. His face and neck were damp with perspiration, and I gently pried off his sweater. He rolled away from me but didn’t wake, then I went to work trying to get his shoes off. My efforts at freeing his feet brought him up to the surface in a half-conscious state.
“Mama,” he murmured.
“Yes, punkin, I’m here. I just have to get your shoes off, and then you can go back to sleep.”
“Mama,” there was long pause while I continued to work at loosening the laces enough to pry his second shoe off, “we shot a box in the woods.”
I froze.
“What did you say, sweetie?”
He rolled back over onto his back and looked at me through half-lidded eyes. “We picked some berries and ate them and we found a box and Daddy put it on the log and we shot it.”
“Wow,” I said, carefully keeping my voice calm. “You mean you watched Daddy, like the day when we went and I tried the gun, too?”
“Daddy showed me how to shoot at the box,” he said, and turned his back to me again and lay still.
I couldn’t breathe. I stood frozen till I felt sure he’d gone back to sleep, then finished extracting his foot from the shoe. Closing his door quietly, I practically flew up the stairs to the master bedroom, where Dave was getting ready to take a shower.
“Alix says you took him shooting,” cold steel from between my teeth. Dave stood and just looked at me. My breath shallow and my body tight, I choked out, “He says he shot the gun.”
“It was no big deal,” he said, but I could see he knew, he knew he’d done something unforgiveable. “I held the pistol with him and I was the one who pulled the trigger. He was completely safe.”
My head exploded, and my heart cracked with pain for the little boy downstairs. A wash of red obscured my vision as I tried to inhale enough air to speak.
“You promised. You promised. I told you how important this was to me. I thought that at the very least, even if you didn’t think it was important, you would keep your promise because you knew it was important to me, and you care about me.”
He didn’t speak. There was really nothing to say. He hadn’t taken me seriously, he hadn’t understood his child, and he hadn’t cared enough about me to comply with the most adamant request I’d ever made of him. I was hurt and blindly angry, but above all that, I grieved for the innocent boy downstairs who’d had no choice, no advocate, and no protector that hot summer afternoon.
The heartache drove me silently out of the room and back to Alix’s bedroom, where he lay facing the wall, as I’d left him a few endless moments earlier. I lay carefully down on his bed behind him and delicately lay my hand on his shoulder, just to be there with him in my regret.
“Mama,” he said quietly, without turning.
“I’m here,” I said, and as I reached to stroke his hair, he rolled toward me in a tight little ball, and buried his face against my heart.