other

Everywhere I go, I am reminded of how much Calvin is—of how we are—different, “other.” In the cafe or grocer, little children peel off of their mothers’ sides to come and stare—front and center, bug-eyed, sometimes sullenly—at my boy. As a kid, I would’ve responded sarcastically, “take a picture, it lasts longer.” But now, I simply gawk back at them just as curiously as their little, serious faces peer at Calvin. They’re probably thinking, what’s his problem? A kid once asked me that in the neurologist’s waiting room.

At twilight several weeks ago, I stopped at the main intersection in the middle of town. Calvin was in the back seat pulling his usual shenanigans; biting his shoe, poking his eyes, happily flopping his arms to the music like a turkey. I noticed a driver in the SUV next to us ogling Calvin and looking vaguely repulsed. I gazed back at her for what seemed like five minutes before she noticed me, and then, when I caught her glimpse, I smiled. She didn’t smile back, just stared at me seemingly locked inside some paralytic, perplexed state of shock or disgust. Her handsome, oblivious teenage boy sat in the passenger seat with headphones stuck into his ears. Somehow, I felt sorry for her as she drove off.

Then, there are those who see us and smile. Some watch us fondly from inside the grocery store, Michael pushing a cart while I do damage control holding Calvin’s hands as he teeters drunkenly around displays of fruit and bottles of wine. They watch us bring our booty to the register where the clerk asks if Calvin might like a sticker and I graciously decline knowing he’d just try to eat it. They watch us move hand-in-hand through the wide automatic doors cheering Calvin along as he pigeon-toes across the parking lot cawing like some bird. They watch us load his screeching-drooly-spastic-sac-of-potatoes body into the car, buckle him up and kiss him. These precious few know something. I can see it in their compassionate eyes, hear it in their kind words. They’re the type of people you just want to embrace, or adopt and bring home, set them up in their own room with a warm blanket and a cup of tea. Often, they’re old with leathery wrinkles and moist, red eyes. Some are young and vibrant, oozing sparkling energy like a dewy chrysanthemum or a sunbeam. All of them touch me with their kind gestures that often bring a familiar sting to my eyes and a thickening in my throat. I see the same in Michael’s watery eyes sometimes, and it makes me love him that much more.

I’ve always felt different from the rest of my own family in most ways. Michael too. You know, the black sheep, the weirdos. And we like it that way. It feels good to see the world in somewhat unconventional ways, to see life through a sort of prism with all its refractory qualities, angles of light and color, shimmering, bending, dark at times. And now, with Calvin, life appears remarkably unlike anything we’ve experienced before. We’ve gone through another metamorphosis, see life through yet another filter, one that if our child were healthy, normal, we might never have known. Each year living with Calvin strips back another layer—like some withered bark or faded, brittle skin—of what we thought we knew but didn’t. Though life is hard, it’s always new and changing—we are changing—and it feels good, right. And in great part due to Calvin, we know and live “other” and embrace it.

There is a beautiful scene in the Terrence Malick film Tree of Life, set in 1950s Texas, where a mother takes her young sons to town. Crossing the street behind her, the boys pass a swaggering drunken man who tips his hat to them. The brothers mimic him laughing, cutting zigzags and bumping into each other as if inebriated themselves. Another stumbling man approaches, his body queerly arched to one side, his arms drawn up to his chest like a squirrel, dragging one foot nearly on its ankle. They stare but do nothing, noting the peculiar but sad circumstance of his disability and, perchance—in their minds—noting the sorrowful state of the drunken man. Lastly, the brothers skirt past a dirty, disheveled man in shackles. Their mother lifts a drink from her thermos to his parched lips. One son asks in a whisper, perhaps to himself, can it happen to anyone?

Yes, it can. I know. It can happen to good people and bad people, to adults and children, to saints and heathens. We can all end up being singled out, gawked at, mimicked and shamed, but by those who sadly, and for whatever reason, don’t have the sublime ability to look through life’s beautiful prism and see—embrace—the poignant beauty that is “other.”

indifference

stuck at home nursing a stiff, achy back and a sick, feverish kid. outside the earth is parched. too little spring rain for trees and shrubs to drink. watching bits of a minneapolis murder trial while calvin sleeps.

seeing video of a white cop in a blue uniform pressing his knee into the neck of a black american for nine minutes sickens me. the black man cries out. says he can't breathe. what i can only imagine to be his urine streams from under a police vehicle, like when people seize. maybe it's the car's condensation. still, the fact that i even wonder matters.

bystanders plead with the officers to show mercy, but none of them is moved to acquiesce or aid george floyd, the man in distress. he is succumbing to their pressure. they remain an unmovable, emotionless threat. the white cop leans hard into the black american as if he doesn't matter. the victim's bloody face is ground into the asphalt, arms wrested, the intolerable burden of three big men leaning on his back and legs, his chest compressed. the knee in his neck shimmied into prime position for eternal silencing. the white cop indifferent to the pleas of his victim. contemptuous of onlookers. hands casually in his pockets as if jangling spare change. passing the time. as if nothing he does matters. callous as hell.

as with all things just and unjust, i think of my little boy calvin; he has no voice, is misunderstood and sometimes swept to the margins. goes unseen by many who avert their gaze or pretend he doesn't exist—to them he doesn't matter. he's different. easy for others to neglect. not in a position to help or defend himself. could easily get knelt on in the wrong circumstance. this makes me think of the boys and young men somewhat similar to calvin who have died under the weight and watch of those in uniform. autistic. misjudged. misunderstood. misapprehended. falsely feared. wrongly accused. bullied into final submission. insignificant. in some realms—because of their difference—they are thought of as mattering less and are treated as such. 

this black american—and too many like him—was deprived of blood to his brain and oxygen to breathe, vitals denied by a public servant paid and sworn to protect. in broad daylight. witnessed by other beseeching human beings. captured on cell phone video. white mass shooters and dogs fair better.

words provoked by the bully in blue come to me: 

mister charlie. monster. bigot. predator. inept. unjust. lynching. white supremacy. relics. vigilantism. corporeal punishment. systemic racism. apathy. grievance. abuse. hatred. contempt. ignorance. othering. difference. indifference.

the last five words make me consider calvin again. mostly, though, i think of countless dear friends with black daughters and sons. they have to give their kids the talk no parent of white kids does. the talk about being innocent and unarmed. of being suspected, feared, stalked, pulled over, apprehended, gunned down—even in their own homes—too often just because of the color of their skin. they tell their kids: do as you're told; be respectful. keep your hands visible; make no false moves. in this so-called liberated america, following these instructions can mean the difference between tasting oxygen or earth. black people know this. too many die while living it. the difference and indifference is sickening, malevolent, criminal.

at one a.m. calvin's fever spikes. he's restless, inconsolable. little can be done to ease his misery. we tend to him as best we can. crawling back into bed i hear the rain begin to fall. it's coming down sustained and heavy. a deluge. I wonder what would have happened if it had rained that day in minneapolis. wonder what the bloodless cops kneeling into george floyd would have done if the sky had opened up.

in the absence of words

When blowing out candles or spotting a falling star, I usually wish for Calvin's seizures to disappear. Michael, on the other hand, says that if he could change anything about Calvin, it would be that our boy could speak, mostly so that he could tell us the source of his misery. I can't disagree.

Last night, Calvin ramped up into a familiar and distressing episode in which he writhed in pain, screeching, moaning and screaming for nearly two hours. As soon as I saw it coming on, I gave him two pain medications, and when those didn't work I gave him extra homemade THCA cannabis oil. Taking turns in bed with him, Michael and I did our best to comfort and console him while trying not to get hurt ourselves. Calvin, who is nearly five feet tall, has no concept that his flailings can hurt others. To avoid getting bopped by an errant fist or poked by a rigid finger, I shut my eyes tightly, curled my lips over my teeth and pressed them together, then held my hands in front of my face attempting to absorb my boy's lunges and desperate, clawing embraces.

Ninety minutes into the episode, which I am fairly certain was a migraine brought on by a bout of latent benzodiazepine withdrawal, I was able to cradle him in my lap while resting my head against the end of his bed. Ten minutes after giving him the THCA, he fell asleep with his arms above his head wrapped loosely around my neck.

Afraid to move lest I wake my boy, I laid in the awkward position for an hour. There, in the silence of darkness, I thought about the film Michael and I had just finished watching, Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words. In the film, which features excerpts from interviews with the prolific composer-musician-entertainer, Zappa muses on freedom and free-thinking. Some of the things he said struck a chord with me:

"I hate to see anybody with a closed mind, on any topic."

"Any sort of political ideology that doesn't allow for the rights, and doesn't take into consideration the differences that people have, is wrong."

I thought about Calvin and his inability to access in-person or remote learning during this pandemic. I thought about disabled Americans in wheelchairs who, for instance, still don't have equal access to train and air travel. I thought about how the LGBTQI+ community is treated by this administration and others in this nation, and how Blacks, Indigenous, Latinos, immigrants, refugees, and Muslims are treated on the whole. Zappa went on to speak about morality in a way that, as a non-religious person myself, deeply resonated with me:

"When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion, and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view ... and if that code happens to be very, very right-wing ... well, then [whoever opposes it] is [considered] an anarchist."

One panelist challenged him on this assertion by saying, "Every form of government is based on some kind of morality, Frank."

In clarifying, Zappa replied, "Morality in terms of behavior, not in terms of theology."

Zappa's response had made me smile.

While still in my embrace, I mused on Calvin, a boy who is incapable of pondering any god or subscribing to any religious dogma, and yet is the purest being I know. He has no words to pray, no aberrant behavior which could be considered sinful. He can't hope for or contemplate salvation, or wish on a star. I thought about the righteous, honest, loving, accepting, charitable people I know who are not religious, then contrasted them in my head to some of the hideous, bigoted, greedy, deceitful folks I know of who insist on calling themselves Christians.

As I began dozing off, I went back to wishing Calvin had the words to tell us what is wrong. If only he could express himself so we could better help him. Despite that disadvantage—or perhaps owing to it—at that moment I felt grateful, as his mother, to be able to care for him from a gut-instinct, cellular level unlike anyone else can or ever could. I keep my mind open to what Calvin's presence affords me to see and learn about the world. He informs and shapes my views on otherness, bigotry, freedom of movement and speech or—as too many in this straight, White, Christian, patriarchy experience—lack thereof. Thank goodness for other strong voices which are resistant to White nostalgia, chauvinism and puritanism, and are fighting to bring about change.

Slipping back into bed with Michael, before drifting off to sleep, I imagined my favorite of Zappa songs—the wildly irreverent ones, the zany ones, the impossibly complex and bluesy ones—in particular one called Watermelon and Easter Hay. The song is gorgeous and, like Calvin, it doesn't have any words.

                                       Turn it up, close your eyes and have a listen ... and maybe even weep:

              

in no uncertain terms

My parents told me and my siblings never to say the word "retard." Still, we called each other "spazzes" with reckless abandon. I grew up in a time when, and place where, it wasn't uncommon for racist jokes to be told with little reflection on the harm they caused. Some were told by my father, whom I didn't consider racist because of his friendship with, kindness to, and deferential treatment of people of different races and nations, including my friends.  

Later in life, it felt troubling when people close to me mocked my gay friends, used the "N" word, called Middle Easterners "towel heads," and referred to homeless people as "winos" and "bums." A friend's husband once used a racial slur to suggest that Black people are lazy. With a pounding heart and a face flush with indignation, I've challenged antisemitic, homophobic, sexist and racist tropes. Years ago, I ignorantly used the slur "White trash." I'll be forever grateful to the White woman I was speaking with who schooled me about the ways in which the term is offensive, wrong and hurtful. I've never said it since. 

Long before Calvin was born, I became sensitive to the bigotry and oppression that non-White, non-male, non-straight, non-Christian, poor, and homeless people face. I owe that to the many African American and gay men and women I've loved, lived with and befriended, and to my Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Muslim, Latino and Jewish coworkers, friends and neighbors in Seattle, San Francisco and Maine. For years, I've done in-depth study of this nation's systemic racism; research shows racial discrimination occurs at all levels of government and society including housing, healthcare, education, employment, lending, criminal justice and voting. My son Calvin has given me firsthand experience of what it means to live with disability—its limitations, its stigma, its burdens and hardships. It wasn't until after his birth that I learned that children and adults like him were the first of millions to be executed during Hitler's Holocaust. This knowledge has stayed with me, and has further informed my opinions about bigotry and the dangers of otherism.

Despite what I see as dubious foreign policy, blatant and astonishing self-dealing, shady and felonious henchmen, petty and vindictive tweets, and reckless handling of the coronavirus pandemic, it's my love and support for vulnerable, oppressed and marginalized Americans, immigrants and refugees that is at the heart of my criticism of Trump and his administration's harmful policies. I mean, who cruelly separates infants, toddlers and teens from their parents for any reason? Trump does. For someone who claims to be Christian, that policy is the antithesis of godly; in other words, it's evil, and tantamount to terrorism.

As if the past four years of Trump's racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric and policies weren't enough, yesterday, I saw a video in which Trump, at a mid-September rally this fall in Minnesota, said to the crowd:

"You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it’s about the genes isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory—you think we're so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.” 

For those of you who don't know what the racehorse theory is, it's the premise that selective breeding— eugenics—can improve a nation’s performance. German Nazis used this theory as the basis for exterminating those they deemed as undesirable, to advance their attempt at racial purity and strength.

Until now, in this blog, I haven't promoted the full argument that Trump is a racist, despite having been utterly convinced of it for years. However, after watching the video, I can no longer refrain. This time, his comments are so clear they cannot be explained away as being "not racist" or "sarcasm" or "in jest" or "taken out of context." This time, there's no denying the meaning or significance of his words; his message is odious and deliberate, its threatening implications, unmistakable. His words should serve as a caution to anyone thinking of voting for him who does not support White supremacy or Nazism. 

In no uncertain terms, Trump touted the same theory which Hitler employed to murder eleven million innocent people—disabled children and adults, the infirm, the elderly, the mentally ill, gay men and women, Jews, Romanis, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics—to a crowd of mostly-White Americans of mostly-German heritage in a state with a growing number of Somali and Hmong immigrants.

After seeing Trump spew his vile words, to then knowingly back him is to choose to secure a White supremacist racist in the most powerful position in the world. His rhetoric goes hand in hand with his long record of using racist dog-whistles—"law and order," "save the suburbs," "go back to where you came from," "America first," "bad hombres"—and is particularly disturbing considering his tacit and overt support of White supremacists and far-right terrorist militias. As cynical as it might sound, it's not a stretch to imagine that his racehorse theory serves as grounds for his administration's promotion of herd immunity, in light of the well-documented evidence that Blacks, Indigenous people and Latinos are two to six times as likely to die from Covid-19 as Whites, depending upon age.

Chilling.

I can anticipate a response to my assertion from some Trump supporters. They'll say they're voting for him because they are pro-life and they are under the impression that he is too. But a pro-life claim rings hollow if one supports a man who espouses such a nakedly racist and dangerous theory used to justify the genocide of countrymen, women and children. Furthermore, any pro-life claim is meaningless if one does not also support social programs that sustain life beyond birth for those in need, such as healthcare, housing aide, food aide, family leave, childcare, pre-K, a decent education, and an interest in protecting the lives and livelihoods of immigrants, refugees and their children.

So, before going to the polls, if you have not voted already, ask yourself what kind of America you want to wake up to every morning.

Edward Muybridge, Horse Galloping, 1878

others' shoes

Hard as I try, I can never get inside my disabled, non-verbal son's head. I long to know what Calvin is thinking. I often wonder how he feels. Does he dream, does he remember, does he dread? Though I can never know the answers to these questions, in my quest to understand and to empathize with him—and to suppress my inclination toward anger and frustration at his protests—the best thing I can do is to put myself in Calvin's shoes.

Long before Calvin, I thirsted to know the experiences of others unlike myself—People of Color, the homeless, people from foreign lands. So, after graduating college I set off to explore the world—Great Britain, Europe, Turkey, former Yugoslavia, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt—in search of other, and to find my best self. I saw firsthand how others lived—in urban apartments, in mud and grass huts, in slate-roofed brick inns, in bungalows. Everywhere I went people were the same—kind, generous, loving, trusting—and yet different in the ways they cooked, the foods they ate, how they worshiped, the way they labored. When I returned home I began to explore what life was like for my fellow Americans.

Yesterday—Columbus Day to some—was what many of us have reframed as Native or Indigenous People's Day. It's a day to honor the millions of Native Americans and their descendants whom Columbus and those like him did their best to exterminate and homogenize, the same people who continue to be marginalized today. Last Saturday night, Michael and I discussed the holiday with a group of friends. We spoke of the horrors that Native people faced when White imperialists invaded the Americas—genocide, disease, pillaging, slavery, kidnapping, rape. We spoke of the terror indigenous parents faced when their children were snatched from them and given to White Christian couples to raise. We cringed hearing that Natives who dared to speak their own languages risked having their tongues snipped by Whites. For hundreds of years, a similar horror befell African men, women and children who were forcibly brought here during the Atlantic slave trade and—if they survived the brutal months-long journey—were denied their religion, their language, their customs, their dress, their freedom, their families, their lives. As we spoke of these atrocities, I imagined walking in their shoes.

The subjugation of Brown and Black people continues today with policies that restrict their mobility and limit their access to housing, proper education, healthcare, employment, clean water, safe streets, the right to vote, and exposes them to criminal justice biases and laws that put them behind bars at alarming rates compared with Whites. What's more is that many if not most Whites deny this racist paradigm, willfully submitting themselves to—and emboldened by—the false propaganda of racist fearmongers like the current part-time, temporary resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and of his attorney general.

The other day I heard my state's US Senator Susan Collins—in a forty-five minute speech defending her support of a Justice Kavanaugh—say that she imagined walking in his shoes. While some of my best friends are White men, the shoes Senator Collins and other legislators should be imagining themselves walking in are the shoes of sexual assault victims and the shoes of the vulnerable and disenfranchised, whose numbers dwarf those of self-proclaimed wrongfully-accused White men. With few exceptions, White men are not the fragile of us in this nation; they are fortified, buttressed by centuries of laws upholding their rights before all others to own property, go to college, get credit, run for office and vote. They are not the oppressed; in government—on the Right—they are the oppressors. They are not the abused or terrorized; statistically, they are the abusers, the terrorists. And while I agree that many White men work their asses off to get ahead, because of the White male paradigm in this nation they have had a major advantage and—due to neglect or intent—have impeded others' progress far too long. The rest of us continue to struggle—to be paid an equal wage for the same work, to be free from racial profiling, to feel free to peacefully protest our oppression, to be sentenced fairly when we do wrong, to feel safe having a drink at a bar or party, to feel safe to camp and hike and walk alone at night, to feel safe calling the cops, to feel secure in our own cars, neighborhoods and homes, to feel safe to identify our assaulters. These are all freedoms virtually guaranteed to White men while being denied, through policy and/or practice, to the rest of us.

Furthermore, we who value freedom, justice and truth should rebuke so-called leaders who blame sexual assault victims calling them hoaxes, who champion legislation that limits freedoms of marginalized people, who disparage and malign women and People of Color, who characterize White supremacists and Neo-NAZIs as "good people," who align themselves with vicious dictators, who call African nations "shitholes," who pitch us against each other for selfish gains, who lie often and with impunity, who incessantly praise themselves, casting aspersions on others while never holding themselves accountable for a goddamn thing—and who openly and unabashedly mock people like my sweet boy Calvin.

We should recognize, own and credit—not feel guilty for or ashamed of—our privileges as White folks in this amazing land stolen from its natives and built on the backs of slaves. We should believe our fellow Americans when they say they are being oppressed. We should champion causes for the marginalized and most vulnerable of us. We cannot hope to better ourselves and our nation until we understand and empathize with the plight of others. The first step is to decide to walk in their shoes.

oh, and for paradigm shift, please go to vote.org

Photo by Floriana-Barbu

rain and moon, refugees and stones

I don’t care that I’m getting drenched, that rain is dropping on my face, clinging to my lashes, nose and chin. I'll be dry and warm soon. Out here, the air is fresh and clean, so I take it in as most I can, so much so I feel it in my fingertips. I walk past the same candlelit house I ducked into last night, unannounced, where I gave everyone a hug, sat on John’s lap and gave his husband Mark a kiss, where Luz and Marcos tried to serve me up a glass of wine and a dish of food, and where Lauren sat, smelling of the roses reflected in her cheeks.

All these wonderful people in such a small place, I thought, grateful of my tight-knit town of gay and straight, black and white and brown, Guatemalan, Mexican, Native American, Somalian, French-Canadian, Asian, European, Californian, New Jerseyan, young and old—the list goes on.

This rain is cleansing, particularly to my soul, which I leave open and unguarded. Some might warn me of an assault, my heart some kind of guileless target, but instead, its spongy muscle is sopping with love and compassion for that which some regard as other.

Did Calvin teach me this?

On my walk home in the dark, raindrops dancing in puddles like electric ants, I consider the recent vitriol spewing from the mouths of those with hardened hearts filled with hatred fueled by fear and ignorance. How difficult is it to imagine our ancestors’ families fleeing to this land to escape persecution, war and famine? Why do some of us feel so entitled to hoard this chunk of earth we like to call our own? Why are some so quick to blame those who look different, speak a different tongue, wear different clothes? Can't people realize we all come from the very same cosmos? All of us—the world over—love our children, love this earth, love each other. Every faith and culture has its fanatics, even Christians.

If there is a God, might there be just one?

Looking up, the clouds begin to break and the moon peeks through—the same moon illuminating hungry refugees drenched inside their tiny boats, shivering in the same water that will touch these shores, the same moon which glows off the faces of frightened children, weary mothers and desperate fathers who have fled a plight worse than we can ever know, while my Calvin sleeps in a cozy bed, safe and warm.

As the rain falls, now mere drops from the bows of trees, a dark stranger in a hoodie draws near. I tell him not to fear my dog, that she is friendly. A handsome, swarthy face peers out into the streetlight’s beam, his young smile reflecting mine. I assume he is a college student on his way home or to the library to read.

“I thought she was afraid of me,” he says with a foreign accent and a sparkle in his eyes while reaching out to let Nellie sniff his hand.

My impulse is to invite him to Thanksgiving. I chuckle and wish him goodbye, so grateful that he, and others like him, have come to this most homogeneous state, have graced my presence and enriched this town, its faint mélange my salvation. And in my effort to find metaphor I think of those refugee boats, of oars, of life rings and savers. Then, I think of the rope that pulls these boats ashore, strong because it's braided with different fibers, each relying on and bracing its neighbor, and in case one strand breaks, the rope maintains integrity. The same goes for the fabric of society; our history of immigrants, of refugees, has made our nation what it is, which, though not perfect, is great in so many ways.

And we mustn't ever forget upon whose captured backs and bloody sweat this very nation was shaped: the slaves.

The rain hasn't ceased, it has just moved on and soon will be drenching the backs of children who have no dry clothes, no food, no shelter, no country to call home. And yet some of us, in our warm castles and in glass houses, are bent on building walls, fueling fear and hate, blaming others, and throwing stones.

Photograph by PAOLO PELLEGRIN, New York Times Magazine

friday faves - misfits

I’ve always been drawn to that which is “other," perhaps because I feel a bit of the misfit myself.

I’ve got a soft spot, an attraction, for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, the misshapen cookie, the mangled potato chip, the scrawny baby bird that couldn't fly well enough and fell out of its nest, the three-legged shelter dog.

When it comes to my fellow humans I want to know the wallflower, the genius, the underdog, the social deviant, the nerd, the black sheep of the family, the gypsy, the kid with the Coke bottle glasses, the hermit, the brother from another planet, the chick with tattoos and piercings, the immigrant, the guy with the magenta mohawk. Besides being drawn to them, I figure if I can rub elbows with these wonderfully curious, yet in some ways familiar, bodies I can glean something, tease out some new facet of myself that I didn’t know existed, improve on myself or perhaps add a soft layer of humanity that was missing from my heart. Let me intimately know "other" and I am happy.

And maybe, just maybe, I can do the same in return: nurture them, love them, understand them, lift them up, befriend them, embrace them, make them laugh.

So it's no surprise that Michael is my husband. And I suppose in some weird and wonderful way, by some random artistry, it makes sense that Calvin is my son, my little misfit. I don’t mean to say I was chosen to be his mother or that it was some grand design or plan that he became my son—I don't believe that for one second. Just that it works. By some crazy serendipity, it works.

Originally published April 2011.

class visit

Today I'll go to visit Calvin's third grade classroom, the one he mainstreams with for less than an hour on most days. The rest of the time he attends the Life Skills classroom with other kids like him who can't manage on their own to do the most basic things.

I get nervous thinking about sitting in front of a class with twenty wide-eyed munchkins peering up at me, Calvin sitting to the side or in back in his one-on-one's lap. The kids ask me questions like:

why does Calvin wear a diaper? what's that harness for? will he ever learn to talk? how come he drools so much? why does he do that thing with his fingers? will he always have epilepsy? how come he makes those noises? why does he flap his arms? can he read? can someone die from epilepsy?

I'll try to explain to them about epilepsy, about the seizures and about the drugs, as best I can without scaring them. I'll try to describe Calvin in a way that they might begin to understand, in a way that will warm them to him.

But as the years pass and the kids get to that age of teasing and name-calling and seeing differences and judging, I worry they'll no longer embrace Calvin as one of their classmates. I worry that they'll start getting those signals from the world, from their peers, from some of their parents, that "other" is something to be feared, something to mistrust, something to keep at arm's length. But I'll keep hoping that the world is changing, keep hoping that I am wrong, and I'll keep trying to help them to simply understand.