Back to Dr. Bill

 

“Andrew and Savannah, two of my most frustrating – and frustrated – parents, are back.” 

“When we last spoke,” Dr. Bill began, “you were having issues with your daughter, Sage, who was having issues with adjusting to a new town and dealing with her brothers being sent off to boot camp.  How’s she doing now?”

“She’s doing great,” I replied.  “She’s on the honor roll, she rides horses, she trains her dog, she helps out with the new baby –”

“Since we last spoke, the two of you had your fourth child.”

“Yes.  Skylar Rose.”

“How is life with the new baby?”

“It’s – a challenge, to say the least.”

“I cannot believe the two of you.”

“What?”

Dr. Bill looked at us quizzically.  “The two of you brought a fourth child into this highly toxic situation.”

“What do you mean, Dr. Bill?”

“Savannah, this ain’t my first rodeo.  I’ve been around families like yours for a long time.  I’ve seen mothers like you for thirty years.  They look different, they talk different, they have different names, but I’ve seen you for thirty years.” 

“Now, the two of you are back, not just with your daughter, the one you initially contacted me about, who from your own report is doing reasonably well now, but you have with you one of your older sons, back from Fort Starch military academy.”

I nodded.  “I’m worried about him.”

“You know, Savannah, I’ve obtained your sons’ juvenile records from the Sunset Valley city hall.  Their criminal histories are extensive, and, you know, I absolutely see why they were remanded to Fort Starch.  Imsety -- breaking and entering, stealing tests from the classroom, stealing a computer, defacing school property, throwing eggs at someone's house, and this, this is the big one, he threw a party while the two of you were gone."

Andy piped in, "We were at a couple's retreat at the time."
"The cops came to that party, along with the paparazzi, didn't they?" asked Dr. Bill.
"When we came back, the house was a shambles, people all around,” I recalled.  “I walked in and the place reeked of alcohol.  I found my sons passed out drunk on the floor, it was awful.  Then the worst part was that the paps took a picture of my sons and it got out –"

"You blame him, Imsety, for influencing your other son, AJ, the one who’s here with you.  Who, by the way, has his own laundry list, and in some ways, his is even more egregious than his brother's.  Drinking, fighting at school, bullying -- one boy in particular, and you know I have zero tolerance for bullying because I know what scars it could leave – and then he was photographed drinking in a nightclub."
"That tore me up as much as anything, honestly.  The fact that he would show such blatant disregard for the rules –"

“You were concerned about your family’s reputation, right?”

I nodded my head in reluctant agreement.

“What was the last straw?”

“I think it was the picture of him sitting in a nightclub.  Andrew and I were just, you know, done at that point.  We couldn’t take anymore.”

A few minutes later, Dr. Bill escorted Andy and I out of the room and wanted to speak to AJ, alone.  I could only hear bits and pieces of the conversation.

“You’re AJ, correct?  How are you, son?  Have a seat.”

“I’m not sitting down!”

“Calm down, boy.”  After a few minutes they finally got him to settle down. 

“So, you like computers?  Video games?”

“Computers, mostly.  When I was at Fort Starch I took this computer programming course.”

“Is that something you’d like to pursue?”

I didn’t hear whether he said yes or no to that.

A few moments later I was back.

“Savannah, I had a lengthy chat with your son.  Like I told you and Andrew before, with Sage, y’all make gorgeous kids.  Your son is handsome, he’s, I think, incredibly bright – but he’s very troubled.  Do you agree that he’s troubled?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s a lost young man, right there.  He’s going through life rudderless.  He has absolutely no direction whatsoever.  He’s actually, let me see how I can put this, he’s a geek who is pretending to be a tough guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He spoke at length to me about his passion for computers and chess, and how he hid that at his old school to prevent from being bullied.  Now, that doesn’t excuse his actions in turn bullying someone else, but at least it goes a way toward some kind of explanation for his behavior.  You didn’t know this, Savannah, but he joined the chess club at Fort Starch.  He talked about his interest in aerospace technology and astronomy.  You mentioned that he is fluent in Arabic because of his brothers and his Egyptian nanny, and he talked about perhaps going to Egypt one day and going exploring in tombs.”

“I was going over his Fort Starch record, and it was revealed that he failed a basic vision test.  Savannah, your son is severely nearsighted.”

“Oh my Watcher!”  I was shocked, and in a way, I was also devastated.  He inherited his nearsightedness from me.  I had hoped he would inherit Andy’s 20/20 perfect vision, but it was not to be. 

“He needs glasses or some kind of corrective vision procedure, whether it’s surgery or it’s contacts or something else.  And I’m sure that’s part of the reason why he struggled so much in school.  He couldn’t see the chalkboard, and he was too pig-headed and too stubborn to ask for help.”

My son is more like me than I could have possibly imagined.  And in some ways that’s not a good thing. 

Update #1

 

AJ has been talking lately, about what happened to him at Fort Starch. 

"Sety and I were escorted to our dorms. Sety and I were placed in separate regiments so we actually hardly saw each other after arriving."

"The commandant there was Capt. Derek Downey, who, coincidentally, was Zachary's father. Zachary was the boy whose house I hit with eggs and firebombs. He didn't like me much. He seemed to have it in for me and was harder on me than he was on the rest of the boys in the regiment."

"I spent most of my days running around campus. building my endurance.  I hated being there, up in the mountains.  It was cold, lonely, and miserable."

"Commandant Downey worked my ass off, had pretty much singled me out, just because of what had happened between me and his kid," AJ said. "I felt like it just wasn't fair. Other kids were pickin' on him too. He looked like a freak. I felt like he was punishing me for what had happened to his boy."

"You know, son, maybe you should write something about what happened to you at Fort Starch. You know, like a cautionary tale, so other kids could learn from what happened to you."

"I dunno, mom," AJ mumbled through his sandwich. "It's still, you know, it's still too raw right now."
"Do you want to talk to someone about it? I mean, I can give you the number of Sage's counselor –"

"I don't want to speak to no d**n counselor!" he thundered angrily.
"You know," I tried to reason, "I just think it might help. It seems to have helped your sister."

I was referring, of course, to Sage’s visit to Dr. Bill.  She has to go back this week, but I have to say she has made tremendous progress.

She’s even made a new friend, who happens to be as horse-crazy as she is.  They like riding through the woods together and hanging out at the horse park. 

I actually think the animals have helped her.  I swear, that girl has a way with the four-legged set. 

And she’s apparently one heck of a diarist.  Dr. Bill had suggested she keep one, and from what I’m told, she’s taken off running with it. 

I’m really worried about AJ.  Ever since he got back, he’s been pretty angry and withdrawn.  I want him to talk to Sage’s counselor, and it just seems like, you know, he’s blaming me for his issues.  He’s so angry with me. And I can’t blame him.  If I was him, I’d be angry with me too.  I failed that boy, badly. 

When he was born I failed to connect with him.  I couldn’t believe that this was actually my son. 

I was holding and feeding him one week on, but I still failed to develop any kind of connection with him. 

I wish I could say it was easier with the other kids, but it wasn’t.  While they were infants, I failed to develop the kind of maternal instincts that I should have, even though they came out of me.  Heck, it was easier for me to bond with Satis than it was either of my biological children. 

Pathetic. 

More Sage observations

 

(School photo)

The fact sheet

Full name:  Sage-blossom Margaret Plumb Cheesman

Favorites:  Food – autumn salad  Music – Chinese  Color – white

Second of four biological children of Andrew Cheesman and Savannah Plumb Cheesman

Middle name, Margaret, is from Savannah’s beloved aunt, who died when Savannah was a teenager

Sometimes I look at Sage-blossom and wonder, how on earth could she possibly be my daughter? 

It’s not because she’s been rebellious, or because she’s been out of control.  Quite the contrary.  And that’s why I wonder how on earth this child could possibly have come out of me. 

She is the complete opposite of what I was as a teen. 

She’s a middle aged woman trapped inside the body of a fifteen year old girl.

She loves the outdoors, like her dad, and she loves animals, especially dogs and horses.  She has asked to grow a veggie garden.  We keep saying no because we’re renting our house in Hidden Springs.  Sometimes I think she should have been a 60s flower child.  Sometimes I think she might have been a nun in her former life. 

I’ve also discovered that she is a vegetarian.  I didn’t find this out from her, but from Max, our butler, who’s been cooking a lot of tofu meals.  I’m not entirely happy with this but it’s her life and her decision not to eat meat.  I try to keep hands off of my children, to let them develop as they may, but this is hard for me because I am, admittedly, a bit of a control freak.

She is also very much an environmentalist, and she’s been this way since she was tiny.   When she was little she had to do a science project to collect insects.  She was all too happy to do it, but she was so upset that she couldn’t find this rare water beetle that she cried for a couple of days about it.  Days.  It took Andy and me forever to calm her down.  She ended up doing a school report (on her own) about the extinction of the water beetle. 

A couple of nights Sage even sneaked out and actually slept in her treehouse.  She loved playing in it.  We built the same kind of treehouse for Sierra and, quite honestly, Andy and I have spent more time in it than she has. 

It’s how we got Skylar.

But I digress. 

Sage is much the same way now, but instead of going to the treehouse, she is taking long nature walks into the woods (taking nature photos along the way and, apparently, still collecting insects), going fishing, and riding her horse.  When I look back, she was this way at seven, eight years old.  She is still my little Sage-blossom, just taller. She has not changed.

She always had this ‘old soul’ quality about her.  It almost seems like she’s been here before. 

Indeed, I worry that she seems to prefer animals to people.  She’d rather ride her horse than drive a car.  Her closest companions are her dog, Bitsy, and her horse Traveller. 

She’s tickled pink that AJ is back, though.  The other day they did a karaoke duet in the backyard.

I wish I could say she and Sierra get along as well.  Sure, they tolerate each other, and both have blond hair and blue eyes, but that’s about where the similarities end.  They are night and day different, with very little in common. Sierra is much more like I was growing up, very rambunctious and a bit on the rebellious side.  In addition, she is very athletic and sporty.  Sage is on the artistic/creative side of the spectrum. 

This was the backdrop of a nearly four-hour conversation the other morning at the breakfast table.  Just Sage and me, no one else around. 

Apparently she’d been through the private museum, the room in my parents’ house I’m most proud of. 

"Mom?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"All those old bowls and stuff?"
"Huh?"
"Where'd they come from?"
I hesitated, taking lots of pauses and deep breaths. I knew my kids were going to ask me about my adventuring life at some point. 
"Before you were born, baby, I told you, I used to live quite a different life from the one I lead now."
"What kind of different life?"
"Oh, I used to do a lot of traveling, different countries. I used to do paid archaeology work and there's a part of me that still wants to do that. That urge doesn't go away. At times it was dangerous work. Disarming traps, walking through fire, exploring tombs, fighting mummies –"
I saw Sage’s eyes popped open.
"I've had enough electricity shot through me to power an entire town for a year."
"How did you get the stuff? Some of those vases in there have to be really really old."
"They are really really old, baby. They date back thousands and thousands of simyears."
"Some of those vases are really beautiful. Can I bring one to school?"
I smiled. "Sure, as long as you bring it back."