The Player
I must have dreamed, a long time ago. When he was a baby, or a toddler, the way parents dream. We wonder who they are, wonder where they're going and what particular light shined on them in the beginning, what gifts they were given.
I must have wondered if a bat and glove lay in his future, or a wicked backstroke (or backhand). He was on the computer at age 3, so I must have wondered what magic he might create there, or with the other keyboard in the house, the one with 88 keys.
I'd watch him spend hours with Leggos, changing the original design and creating something new, and I must have wondered about engineering and architecture.
We all do this.
And then, slowly, the dreams went away, replaced by worries and fears. And some grief, as I discovered. For all the joy he brings me, there is some he won't, I know. I will never watch my son catch a fly ball or a sideline pass. I will never help him get ready for the prom and slip an extra 20 into his pocket. I will never see awkward teenage guile, for he is guileless, a born Truth Teller by nature and neurology.
I could be wrong about some of this.
But I held him when he was less than a minute old and I must have dreamed, and somehow I never thought about me and my life. And through all the years of counseling and medications and conferences, trying to find a road, a path he might be able to walk someday, it never occurred to me that he might find comfort and success in a familiar way.
He has never had friends, really. Can you imagine that? Fourteen years of life, most of it solitary, shut off from contemporaries because of who he is, his only companions his parents and his books and video games. Because who would accept him, at least at this age? What kids, at this age, when it's all about cliques and clothes and being cool and being the same, would take my boy?
So one day, I pull into the parking lot of his school and see him. Standing on the sidewalk, rocking and gesturing, laughing and twitching a bit, talking to a girl. He sees me and runs toward the car in his lumbering, zombie way, then turns and waves goodbye to the girl.
She's blonde and pretty. She waves back and smiles. She means it. I think I've never seen anything so amazing or glorious in my life.
Listen: You got a boy, a goofy boy, a sweet boy, an innocent boy who is lost in a world he can't comprehend, and you wonder who might accept him?
Goofy kids.
Drama kids.
John is in a play. He has a good part. The other kids think he's great. They cheer him, and encourage him, and miss him when he's not there.
We're talking loaves and fishes here, a Red Sea moment, and I should have known.
I spent years doing this, years in rehearsals and backstage, memorizing lines and practicing accents, years of spirit gumming beards and wearing wigs. I did other things; I knew locker rooms and game days and student council meetings, but I knew this best. They were the popular kids and the nerds, the extroverts and the loners and the goofy kids, but they shared a passion and they accepted everyone.
And they accept my boy, and I keep smiling a lot these days. The play is Friday night at 7 p.m. I have no idea if he's any good, but I hear good things, and I wonder if a boy who has spent his life trying to learn to read body language and facial expressions, who practices behavior and imitates norms he can't understand, might not just have something to share.
A French actor in the 19th century, too poor to afford lodging, slept in the theater. One night he awoke, wandered on stage and felt the silence, the stillness of the air, and then he knew. He knew that his passion, his goal, his job in life, as an actor, was to set the stillness vibrating.
It's just a dumb little one-act, a take-off on "X Files." He plays an evil scientist, or something. But we will all be there, nervous and excited, knowing what it means to one particular boy. Fourteen years is a long time to wait when it's been spent backstage. When it's your entire life.
I think I know what will happen.
The air will crackle. The boy will take his moment, and somehow I have a sense the whole world will be watching.
11:36:43 AM 
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