It’s not a surprise to me that Tim’s sense that everyone mattered drove much of his behavior, both constructive and destructive. You can’t instinctively understand the value of others without an intrinsic sensitivity, which most of us associate with an equally intrinsic goodness. But it can also be a curse.
Sensitive individuals are often tormented by demons invisible to the rest of us, because the sword of sensitivity has two edges. We easily see the emotional sweetness in a child who is sensitive, but we often miss how easily they bleed with a cutting word.
We recognize the value when we see a child spontaneously come to the aid of another, or, unprompted, shares what he has with a child he just met. What we sometimes miss is the sudden dim of the eye when we lose our patience with him. We often overlook the sudden withdrawn demeanor after a difficult day. We grow annoyed with the ease with which laughter suddenly turns to tears. We don’t always understand what is behind the sudden outbursts.
We often forget or perhaps just don’t know that these might be symptoms of something much deeper. What’s deep below the surface can be something confusing and frightening to the child who is sensitive. The feelings that induce the empathy in him that we find so charming sometimes creates a dark, cold place—a place we cannot see and which, the child cannot understand.
And there in the cold, unsympathetic void far from the bright world we try so hard to provide, uncertainty can begin to fester. The very sensitivity that benefits others can begin to nourish a self-image of doubt about his own place in the world, his place in the family, and his worth to those around him. Positive and negative feedback alike can have a lasting impact on all children—but the more sensitive the child the more exaggerated the effect can be.
It is not my intention to dwell on the darkness in some men’s minds, which sometimes begins in childhood. I am, however, compelled to explain at this juncture that sometimes the thing we love about someone is the very thing that can bewilder us and drive him from us.
As parents we want to do right by our children, but we can’t always know or even fully grasp what might be in their minds when we act.
This is very much my assessment of my time with Tim as his mother and I raised him. That there was something inside him feeding doubts about his place in the world. He wanted desperately to always do the right thing but something inside him began slowly but surely to draw him away.
Where, I can’t say. Why, I’m not sure. I have only an inkling. It is a guess that I hazard as I recall that moment when I knew I lost him.
As his father I viewed most events as learning opportunities. I believed it was my obligation.
When asked why the sky is blue I would offer an age-appropriate answer but, eventually, I had the opportunity to explain refraction. After a discussion of cloud shapes in which we all exercised our imaginations that included dogs and bunnies and elephants, I was asked “what are clouds daddy?” I explained the water cycle. And as we read together, we would sometimes encounter a new word, and I would explain what it meant, its etymology, and why it was used in that particular context. I tried to help them understand what was in the mind of the writer.
All of this for the purpose of fomenting curiosity, for that is how children ultimately learn about the world. As parents, we intuitively understand that this is one of the many joys of parenting: the opportunity to pass on what we have to offer in a way that inspires curiosity about the world around them. It’s one of the many pay-offs for the work and the effort and the frustration that comes with the all too brief job of raising children.
These memories are not romantic, but they are joyful.
It was one of the greatest joys I had in raising little ones. Watching them take what I and others offered them, and then watching each become his and her own person, each one unique, and each still so much like me in so many ways.
And then came the day when I lost him, the day his path was suddenly and noticeably divergent from our walk together as father and son. That journey on which he initially took my hand and I showed him the world, slowly became two journeys: mine and his.
From my path I could see his and it was clear to me our paths would be different from that moment forward.
At that time, I commuted from Fort Worth to Plano, Texas and back every day, 50 miles each way. And every day I would come home exhausted. One evening, when the sky was clear, I could see Venus brightly shining. My father taught me how to identify certain of the stars and planets and I saw this as an opportunity to pass this knowledge on to my son.
He was eight.
I came home awash in excitement at the new discovery I was about to reveal to him. I imagined that look in his eye, the familiar twinkle complemented by his beautiful smile and so many questions about the endless, mottled heavens.
I pulled into the driveway and made my way to the living room threshold. He was playing there, some game I don’t recall. A highly charged bundle of energy, a toy in-hand running to and fro, his activity punctuated by shouts as his sisters looked on.
“Tim! Let me show you something.”
“I’m busy.”
“I can see that. This will only take a second. I have something to show you.”
He stopped for a moment and looked at me.
“Come on; it’s neat.” I smiled.
And then a look I didn’t recognize. His momentary gaze came from somewhere between annoyance and defiance. As though he were tired of being shown things, and that this was somehow a disruption of his time.
“What now?” he demanded, a flash of anger in his eyes that precluded the look of curiosity and excitement I imagined. Something I’d never seen in him before. A look so alien and disconcerting.
“Nothing, son. Finish your game with your sisters. We’ll talk about it later.”
And, of course, later never came.
It’s so easy to look back on that circumstance with a sense of blame. Blame the child for asserting his will in a moment you imagined would be so sweet but, which, never materialized. Blame yourself for not being gently insistent and to nudge him past the jarring he felt in that moment of interruption, because you know better and he doesn’t.
But, in the end, it was not the moment that mattered. It was what the moment told me about his station. All children rebel. They must. Pushing against authority is how they establish their way in the world. This is the gateway to adolescence—but in that moment, I sensed something different.
“I just lost him.” I thought.
I could sense a sudden shift in our relationship. Something was gone. Something I would not regain for another two and a half decades.
The hope and optimism I recall so clearly from the the night of his birth showed its first crack that night. What his mother and I felt on the night of Tim’s birth stood in stark contrast to what I felt in that moment. It was the first time I was given a glimpse of the darkness. It was the darkness spawned from a seed that took root at some point I do not know where or when, yet it was there. It was so subtle—so invisible to everyone around me, but I knew. God help me, I knew.
There are moments when you want to be wrong and for that reason I tried to dismiss the sense that I was right about something I so desperately wanted to be wrong about. Time would eventually confirm what I knew, but we all lived in denial about Tim’s sense of self for a very long time and, for me, it was the proverbial elephant in the room.
The darkness had come and as time marched on, no word or action on my part, nor on his mother’s part, nor on his sisters’ part would be formidable enough to combat it. Only Tim would be able to overcome the demons with which he struggled for most of his life.
The redemption would come but not for a very long time. He would eventually vanquish the darkness but his path would be long and anguished, and a lot of people would be hurt along the way.
“The people who are trying to make the world worse never take a day off, why should I? Light up the darkness.”
– Bob Marley
Ultimately, I believe this was Tim’s mission: to light up the darkness.
For when the veneer of darkness is stripped away and the light is revealed, we are able to see, that everyone does, in fact, matter. From my vantage point, this fact is both undeniable and immutable…
