Wolfman and his cub

24

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Near the end of my first year at NCNM (renamed NUNM during the 2 year hiatus), Dave and I meet on a commercial photoshoot. Straddling school with occasional modeling jobs somewhat pacifies my more creative inclinations. On this gig, I’m booked as a ”yogini” for a Nike mother’s day video. Dave is a creative director on a neighboring set. Face caked with enough foundation to render me 2-D, I wait until it’s time to fold in half. I am a pretend yogi. I know the poses. I lived in Boulder, Colorado after all—no Mountain Pose, no mountain residency. With ballet’s flexibility and “body line” awareness hard-wired into muscles, I can do poses for a sports video. A die-hard yogi, however—palms together, slight bow—might swap “namasté” with “imposter.”

During a three-hour wait, I curl up in a vacant chair and open my book, Douglas’ Women. Next to me, a man with messy, salt-and-pepper hair and a 5:00 5 day shadow, works a Nike wristwatch design on his open laptop. I am aware of his presence but we don’t engage. I read. I nap. His mouse slides around, lulling us into a comfortable, shared silence. When I awaken, he asks about my book. I am remotely interested in the novel, more in the conversation it sparks about our favorites. Dave just finished “Perfume.” I love “The Spell of the Sensuous.” Eventually we exchange emails to elaborate on our lists. I don’t think anything of it until a week later:

Perfume

Dandelion Wine

The Terror

(503.704.8938)

quid pro quo

I’m in a relationship with another man. We live together but in the last few months have drifted apart. I don’t end things with him — a decision too emancipated for this version of Kim—but when Dave’s “quid pro quo” develops into one-email-a-week, one-a-day, then emails all-day-long, any last thread of emotional connection with the other man dissolves. He exits within 24 hours of discovering months of email exchanges with Dave. Moving out his box of designer shoes is heavier than the break-up.

Though we live only seven miles apart, Dave and I continue our written correspondence. These aren’t your typical “Hey, how are you” emails. Writing Dave is like attending a workshop with Raymond Carver—keep it simple, pay attention to the little things, focus on the ordinary over the extraordinary.

I develop a Pavlovian heart flutter every time my email chimes. Between classes I run to NUNM’S computer lab, an addict craving her next hit. Dave’s raw, poetic honesty solicits the same from me, and I become grounded in an emotional truth I haven’t felt for years, maybe ever. Always a direct line into my heart, an alien with two bald heads could woo me with good prose. Luckily, Dave is from planet Earth and has enough hair on his one head for five men.

Through four-months of monogamous pen palling, I learn Dave and his ex (married young, divorced young) split custody of their eleven year-old daughter Syd. “She’s different,” he writes and doesn’t expand.

And in a later email, “Syd’s experience of the world is unlike mine or yours.“

With time and trust, he eventually shares the details of his daughter’s intellectual disability. Her harrowing entry into this world. Tending to endless seizures. His abandonment of religion because it sure doesn’t feel like “God’s way” and the comfort felt when a brother instead claims, “This is shit.” The doctor’s prognosis, “She won’t ever walk or eat unassisted.” And their early morning, frame-assisted strolls through an empty mall because he insists she will walk someday. His love for her is wide and deep.

On Saturdays Dave and Syd like to wander Portland’s popular Knob Hill neighborhood—an easy single-dad ritual to stretch legs. I live a few blocks away so I meet them at a sidewalk table-for-two at Torrefazzione coffee house. I haven’t encountered much, if any, disability in my life and am ashamed of my naiveté. In my first encounter with Syd, I want to be open and casual but as I approach, I feel like anything but. I see Dave’s disheveled mane first. His Chuck Taylors. His, I don’t-give-a-fuck attitude pulls me in like good gravity—powerful, irresistible. Across the table is a blond head, hunched over the table as she spoons up a child-size scoop of vanilla ice cream. Both of our spinning slow in his orbit.

I crouch by the table as Syd looks over and asks, “What time it is?” [sic] I reply. She asks me again five minutes later. And then again. Her insistence is code for something else. For what, we will never know, but Syd’s conversing is never random. She may be reaching into a memory. Or she’s making a connection. I feel clumsy with our exchanges at first, like learning a new language. And self-conscious. Forever trying to fit in and now, in the company of Dave and Syd, I will never. We will never. Grocery store clerks, passers-by and waiters all make that painfully clear. Under their bewildered stares, I am a teenager again with cover-up caked pimples afraid of everything I can’t hide.

Dave has no June Cleaver expectations. Parenting a child with intellectual disability, he’s learned that life is messy and outcomes are often unexpected, even unwanted. Granted, Jack Daniels is his current therapist, but his surrendered comfort with darkness draws me in. I am a sun-deprived plant bending toward the light, but in reverse.

Our first Christmans together visitng my family in Colorado. Mom bought Syd yellow bedding because she wanted to envelop her in “golden light.”

The three of us after hiking up Boulder’s Sanitas Trail on Christmas day—Syd, a total trooper, was especially excited about the snacks we packed for the top.

The following Saturday, Dave offers to help change the bolt lock on my door. While he works, Syd and I listen to Imogen Heap on repeat. She sings along, eyes squinting, face lifted toward a certain, celestial partner.

Mid-doorknob assembly and a quiet pause between tracks, I share, “I love having you and Syd in my home.”

Dave’s eyes redden and liquify, heart leaping out through salty waters.

The next morning he texts, “I was so flustered after you said that, that I accidentally installed the bolt lock on the wrong side of your door.”

Oh the ache. All three of us, longing to belong.

But it’s not all singing and dancing. When clouds blow in and obscure my proverbial honey moon, Syd frightens me. Syd is unfixed, always will be, and I’m not ready to meet that in myself.

And Dave doesn’t encourage an opening. Eleven years of single-parenting in his, he’s learned to not depend on anyone—fathering a daughter who talks funny, engages differently, will never live independently. He doesn’t ask me to help, doesn’t expect me to love her, never requests I step in and step up.

So I compartmentalize. While my love for Dave deepens, I wade in the kiddy pool with Syd. I mostly engage through attempts to fix her. Gluten-free diets! Music Therapy! Body work! DNA sequencing! Fish oil! I research, I ask profs at school for advice, I present treatments to Dave, we try things, I grumble about Syd’s mom not following “the new plan” (and blame her when it doesn’t work), and then try something new. I never lose hope because that’s not an option.

I learn to connect, not with Syd, but with the possibility of Syd. Not with her unique expression in this world but with the one I want.

NEXT CHAPTER

Sydney Paige McLaughlin aka Dave’s earth-angel

Would you like to read the Unfixed memoir chronologically? Or have you missed previous chapters? You can access them all for free with the link below. I recommend starting from the beginning.