Warning: Bleakness ahead.
I had misgivings about baseball from the start. Alex on a “soccer” “team” is one thing — no one is pretending it’s anything other than a bunch of kids, of varying levels of ability, standing around kicking some soccer balls. That’s why my eyebrows raised practically off my head when I saw the baseball schedule. Why would a “Challenger Baseball” team need a schedule? Who are we kidding when we say that “practices” are Tuesday evenings and “games” are on Saturday? Are we really going to drive out to Greenwich and have a game with the developmentally delayed kids out there? Surely not.
Worse still, J works on Tuesday evenings, which means I had to take him to his first baseball practice. I contrived to get there early, so we could play with Lea a little bit, because during the practice itself she would likely be moved to the sidelines. When I take Alex to soccer, we’re almost always the first ones there, and the empty field is ours.
We arrived early at Brewster Field to find a baseball madhouse. I was lucky to get a parking spot. Sweet Jesus, we were going to have our practice at the same time as all the other teams. Kids in brand-new, brightly colored uniforms were doing drills: The team in red stood in three even lines, doing jumping jacks. The team in blue was doing a complicated passing-the-ball routine. There were a dozen teams or so scattered over and between the four diamonds, and all around us coaches were yelling, “Get on that!” and “Choke up! Swing steady!” and “Show some hustle!”
Oh my CRAP what were we doing here?
The Challenger team was in a far corner. Alex had a baseball mitt, so they put him in the field, at third base. Now, the Challenger team was not quite as concerned with the finer points of the game as the real teams around us. The infield was a wall of disabled kids — there were at least three kids at shortstop. Some had mitts, some not, some were standing on their own, some had parents or “buddies” to get them moving when necessary. Nobody was in the outfield. At home plate was a small, semi-orderly mob of kids waiting their turn to swing at the tee-ball.
Alex, of course, doesn’t have the slightest concept of “third base.” He wandered around, throwing his mitt in the air, making crazy noises. A former classmate of his was one of the shortstops. Once upon a time these two would entertain each other with loud baying sounds: BAYYYOOOOOOUUU! Alex picked that up again the moment he saw this boy, howling and falling over with laughter. Except the boy wasn’t howling back. He’d matured a fair amount since we last saw him, and he was standing more or less calmly with his father behind him, waiting to do something out there on the baseball field. Was this the same kid who had spontaneously removed his pants at Alex’s birthday party?
As a parent of a Fragile X child, I find myself playing a cruel and pointless game, often without meaning to or even wanting to. The game is called Compare and Contrast. I glance at the Fragile X newsletter or anything else involving disabled children — the horror stories of the physically deformed, of teenagers and twentysomethings who are not toilet trained — and I reflect on how lucky we are with Alex. It could have been so much worse, I think, and this is true.
This baseball practice was the first time I looked around, compared and contrasted Alex with the rest of the field, and concluded that my child is profoundly retarded. Happy as he was, his blissful unawareness of everything around him made me want to run on to the field and shake him. This is, of course, deeply unfair. Alex had never seen a baseball game, and even if he had, this looked less like a baseball practice and more like a bunch of people standing around. I can’t blame Alex for not picking up on the structure of things and intuitively figuring out his place within that structure. Look at the thirteen kids in the infield and the dozen more gathered around home plate and tell me why Alex shouldn’t entertain himself by rolling around in the grass.
But even if the baseball practice was run with a drill sergeant’s precision, Alex wouldn’t have fit in. Not yet. He’s seven years old chronologically but four years old in every other way. He understands the structure of the classroom and the structure of his home life because he’s been practicing it every day for years. I allowed myself to forget about all the practice, preferring to pretend that when Alex wakes up and starts his day — using the potty, asking for oatmeal or scrambled eggs, and after breakfast going downstairs to play a couple of games on the computer before school — that he’s slightly delayed, has a few extra problems we need to solve, but is otherwise just like any other kid.
Ain’t so. Ain’t so. It took us a long time to get where we are. What did we think was going to happen at this first baseball practice? Is Alex going to stand on third base, knees bent slightly so as to get a good jump on the ball when it’s hit to him? Will he even be aware of the baseball at all? No. Plainly not. We left after about twenty minutes. Lea had made friends with two other girls, and didn’t want to go, but I could not stay another moment.
For a while I was cursing the stupidity of the very concept of Challenger Baseball, but that didn’t last long. If a kid in a wheelchair wants to play baseball, this is pretty much the only avenue open to him. (And there was at least one such kid; his mom pushed him around the bases.) The trick is, these kids have to know about baseball in advance, and really want to play. Alex doesn’t fall into that category at all, and might not for years. If that happens, we can come back — the program is open for kids ages five to eighteen. But right now Alex isn’t ready for even this crazy version of pseudo-baseball. He’s not up to it. His delays are too severe.
From the beginning my wife has wondered what it’s going to be like when Alex is an adult — to what degree will we still be taking care of him, even as we’re getting older ourselves? I have largely scoffed at her concerns. Alex will be fine. I imagine him living in a small apartment, somewhere near us — mostly independent, but able to call on us if need be. I can’t quite coax the crystal ball into showing me what he does for a job, but I’ve never doubted he would have one. Not a lawyer, I grant you, but not a bagboy in the supermarket, either. All of this was put in cold water on my walk from the baseball field back to the car. We are preparing Alex the best we can, and we will continue to, one small step at a time — but my God! The distance we have yet to go! I’ve never allowed myself to see how long this road is, and now that I’ve had a glimpse, my optimism about his future seems a little more ridiculous than it did last week. It kills me to have to admit that to anybody, including myself.