My son Tyler came into the world at seven pounds and two ounces, with a specific and fully formed opinion about every single thing.
I know this sounds like the kind of thing mothers say.
I mean it literally.
The nursery nurses told me that most newborns have a period of quiet observation in the first days, a kind of adjustment to being outside the womb, a settling-in.
Tyler did not observe quietly.
Tyler was, from the first hours of his life, a person with things to communicate.
He communicated them loudly.
He communicated them without ambiguity.
He communicated them until he was sure the relevant parties understood what he needed, and then he communicated them some more just to be certain.
My mother, who has always been honest in ways I find more useful in retrospect than in the moment, held Tyler when he was four days old, looked at me over his head, and said: you are going to have your hands full.
She said it with love.
She said it with the knowledge of a woman who had raised me, and who therefore understood something about what a child with strong opinions and a high tolerance for making noise could become.
She was not wrong.
My name is Laura Hendricks.
I am thirty-three years old.
I am a dental hygienist.
I work Tuesday through Friday at a practice in the part of town with the good coffee shop on the corner, and I take Monday off because Monday is the day I try to do the things that do not get done when I am working.
I am also, for the past four years, doing all of this alone.
Tyler’s father, Jason, left when Tyler was three.
Not in the dramatic way.
In the quiet way that is actually harder in some respects because there is no clear event to point to, no moment where something breaks, just the gradual withdrawal of a person who had decided that the life they had was not the life they wanted and who backed out of it slowly and then all at once.
Jason lives in Columbus now.
He has Tyler every other weekend.
He calls on birthdays and at Christmas and occasionally on a Tuesday for no particular reason and I have made my peace with this arrangement in the specific way of someone who has accepted that the arrangement is not ideal and is also what there is.
Tyler has made his peace with it in the way seven-year-olds make peace with things, which is by not fully understanding it yet and by occasionally expressing the not-understanding in ways that are hard to watch.
He says, sometimes: how come Daddy doesn’t live here?
And I say: because Daddy lives in Columbus.
And he says: but how come?
And I say: because that’s where his life is now.
And he looks at me with the eyes he has, which are Jason’s eyes in my son’s face, and he processes this in the interior way of a child who is not satisfied with an answer but who has run out of follow-up questions for the moment.
Tyler is seven.
He is in second grade.
He likes dinosaurs and Legos and a specific animated show about robots that I have watched enough episodes of to have opinions about the supporting characters.
He is the funniest person I know in the specific way that children are funny, which is the way of someone who is entirely serious about things that are objectively absurd and who therefore produces comedy without intending it.
He has an enormous heart.
I say this as his mother, which you might discount, but I say it also as someone who has watched him over seven years with the specific attention of a parent who is paying attention.
He is kind to animals.
He is gentle with things that are smaller than him.
He notices when other people are sad in the way that some children do and some children don’t, and he does something about it, which is the more important part.
When my friend Dana came over for dinner six months ago and mentioned that her dog had died that week, Tyler left the table mid-meal, went to his room, and came back with his most important stuffed animal.
He put it on Dana’s lap.
He said: you can borrow him. He helps.
Dana cried.
I nearly cried.
Tyler went back to eating his pasta.
He is also, simultaneously, the most dramatic person I have ever encountered in my life.
The drama is specific to certain situations.
To desires being denied.
To the particular category of things that Tyler has decided he needs and that I have decided he does not need right now.
The distance between his wanting and my not-yet can produce, in Tyler, a response that is entirely out of proportion to the situation and that is delivered with the complete sincerity of someone who has assessed the injustice and found it total.
He crosses his arms.
He exhales with the specific exhaustion of someone who has tried everything.
He announces a verdict.
The meanest mom.
The most unfair house.
The only kid in the entire world whose mother did this specific thing.
He delivers these verdicts and then he storms out.
The storming is always exactly three door slams.
I do not know why three.
I have never asked.
The ice cream situation happened on a Wednesday.
I was making dinner.
It was the chicken and rice thing he likes, the one I had learned to make the way my grandmother made it, with the bay leaves and the specific ratio of broth that I always forget and have to look up and then feel foolish because I have made it dozens of times.
Tyler was in the living room with his Legos.
He came into the kitchen at five-fifteen.
He went directly to the freezer.
He opened it.
He looked at the ice cream.
He turned to me.
He said: can I have some?
I said: after dinner.
He looked at the ice cream.
He looked at me.
He looked at the chicken.
He assessed the timeline.
He said: but I’m hungry now.
I said: the chicken will be ready in about twenty minutes.
He said: I can’t wait twenty minutes.
I said: you can.
He looked at me with the look.
The look that preceded the announcement.
He said: you are the meanest mom ever.
He crossed his arms.
He turned.
He walked out of the kitchen.
One.
Two.
Three.
Door slams.
I stirred the chicken.
I have learned, over seven years, not to engage the storm.
The storm passes.
He always comes back.
He always comes back calm and slightly sheepish and sometimes apologetic without fully being able to articulate what he is apologizing for, which I find both exasperating and deeply charming.
I stirred the chicken.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked on the front door.
I turned off the heat under the pot.
I wiped my hands.
I opened the door.
A police officer was standing on my porch.
He was tall.
Late thirties, maybe.
He had the specific manner of someone who has learned to arrive at situations without their face giving anything away.
He said: ma’am. We received a call about a possible issue involving a child at this address. I just need to make sure everything is okay.
My stomach went to the floor.
Not the usual stomach drop of a minor inconvenience.
The specific stomach drop of a mother who has heard the words possible issue involving a child.
Then Tyler appeared behind me.
He had come from the living room.
He was still in his socks.
He was wearing the shirt with the dinosaur on it.
He said: I called!
He said it with complete ownership.
He said: my mom is the worst. She won’t give me ice cream.
I wanted the floor to physically absorb me.
I turned to the officer.
I said: I am so sorry. I told him he could have ice cream after dinner. He’s seven.
I gestured at Tyler as if Tyler needed to be identified.
The officer looked at Tyler.
Tyler looked at the officer.
Tyler seemed, for the first time in this interaction, slightly uncertain about the outcome.
The officer looked at me.
I said: I expected, I think, that the officer would smile.
