The barbarians are coming.

A true story about what happens when words lose their meaning.

A Thanksgiving tale, sort of.

He pulls over at the curb.  All the shades are pulled down, the house looks dead.  The house-- shack-- is on the beach.

He gets out of the car.

"Tracy," he calls out, expecting nothing. 

He walks to the screen door.   It's locked, but the inside door is wide open.  He smells pot, and something that is not pot, and something that is feces.   He has never seen this place, yet it is, somehow, exactly as he imagined it would be.  It is also worse.

I.

This is the story of a boy, he just turned four, but he couldn't talk yet- nothing more than one or two words at a time, "mik" and "mo Nemo!" and that was it.  The worry was that there was something wrong with him, and everyone who discussed it never said the word Asperger's.

There are a million reasons he could have this speech delay, including but not limited to genetics, increased paternal age, thiomersal, elevated serotonin, or parts of any of those, but for certain it could not possibly be related to being bookended by an cooing pork sausage of a baby brother and a preposterously hyperverbal, parentified 5 year old sister.  and a father who was angry all the time because the junior partner is an idiot.

But at least mommy was for him, she got him, she was tender and strong and consistent and available, a brick wall between him and schizophrenia.

She's 4, and she's sobbing and chasing her brother, five, around the room.  "Stop!" she yells, "stop!  I'm trying to tell you something!  Stop!"

He's giggling, running away from her, he thinks its fun, a game.  Laughing so much he's drooling.

"Stop!!!!" hysterically.

I'm exhausted, exasperated, from another day in middle management hell, where everything is urgent and nothing is important.  "What's going on up here?  What's wrong with you?"

"He won't stop--!"  She's still after him.

"Baby, you can't chase him around. You have to learn about how to handle little boys, you can't chase them, you have to stay in one place and then they'll want to come to you."

And her eyes say ? but she statue-freezes, a temporary hold on tears.  She looks straight ahead.

True to destiny, her brother, still giggling, stops, turns, comes bouncing back, stopping within inches of her, staring into her eyes, smiling, waiting to see what's next--

and as she sees him come, a smile like a sunrise breaks through, as she starts to learn about power...

I was about to pull the covers up, and she looks at me and says, "Daddy, are all doctors daddies and all nurses mommies?"

Here we go, I think.