How Did We Get Here?

How did we get here? I do not know exactly when I lost him. He was always such a mama’s boy. Though I am quite certain he would deny as much today. I remember his staying right by my side at the park, too timid to play with the other children. I remember his still hugging and kissing me goodbye in front of his friends through middle school and high school. Were there signs? Did I miss them? Did I see them but excuse them for something else? He was always a difficult child, but he was sensitive and emotional and impulsive and reactive. Aren’t these traits that could make him difficult, or at the very least temperamental? And temperamental he was.

Looking back, Jay threw fits and tantrums from the time I can remember. He screamed for hours on end before he was old enough for tantrums. Babies cry. He was my first. How was I to know that screaming for hours on end was not ok if the doctors perpetually justified it for me. When he was a newborn it was colic. When he was a toddler it was my fault. “Just ignore him,” they’d say. “Walk away.” Well, that was much easier said than done. I remember it like it was yesterday. He was about a year and a half old. I was walking from our living room through our dining room to the kitchen stepping over him all along the way. He’d throw himself down at my feet. Nearly tripping, I’d step over him and start to walk again all for him to double-step to drop down in front of me again. This happened over and over and over before I reached the kitchen. It’s a wonder neither of us got hurt. Another day around the same time frame, it seemed that he did nothing but scream… nothing… but scream and scream and scream… all day. I changed him. I fed him. I bathed him. I played with him. I even tried to bribe him with cookies. Nothing. Finally, when I broke down and cried too, I called my mom. “Is he wet?” “Is he hungry?” “Is he tired?” Gee, Captain Obvious, I didn’t think of those things before I broke into tears.

As Jay got a little older they decided it may not be my fault after all. He was late to walk and even later to talk. They came to decide that the tantrums were not, in fact, tantrums at all, but frustration because he could not communicate; though when he began to communicate, he was hesitant to. He would fumble with his words and he would mumble. He would mumble a lot. You could see his mind working but it was as if his mind was working faster than his mouth and his mouth could just not catch up. You could see him getting frustrated, so it stood to reason that they were right and his frustration was at the root of the outbursts. They tested his ears thinking that maybe he had a hearing disability that was making it more difficult for him to articulate clearly resulting in the mumbling. Nope. In preschool they had him meet with a speech therapist twice a week. In time he was able to communicate much more clearly when he was prompted to, but he often still chose to avert his eyes and mumble. You had to encourage him to look at you and to speak up, but he would communicate without getting frustrated. However, the outbursts continued.