Paul was tested by a county school psychologist whose results were very much like those we had accumulated to date. She clearly liked Paul—a fact that soothed my wobbly heart.
In her summary, she wrote:
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Paul’s greatest area of deficit is in the distractibility arena, with scores falling significantly subaverage. The strengths Paul brings to learning include his curiosity, his humor, persistence, diligence, and a generally high frustration tolerance.
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After the bumpy ride that was spring for this child, I chose to delay telling him about changing schools, waiting until August to do so. I knew he would fret about the unknowns, and I figured at least I could shorten the duration of unease and let him settle into summer and regain his footing in this world. Furthermore, by August, I too would’ve had time to catch my breath, time to collect my thoughts and introduce the new school—Annapolis Elementary, otherwise known as Green Street—with enthusiasm.
As the time drew near, I rehearsed what I thought was the best way to explain the situation. Then August came, and I told him.
Paul had only one response: “What is Scott going to do without me?”
Chapter 3
Running Toward Morning’s Doorway
Miracles are sometimes stretched few and far between hardships.
And though battles may rage in our communities
and though our hearts keen sense of injustice may be felt;
when miracles surface, they will carry us back to refuge.
DESPITE MY MOSTLY optimistic outlook, juggling life’s demands as a parent, a homeowner, and a professional presented challenges. Sometimes I felt buoyed by my ability to manage, and manage well. Sometimes I was lonely; other times I felt discouraged by competing needs that pretty much ruled out my ability to live up to my own standards, at work or at home.
When the children were still pretty little, I signed up for an exercise class that met one time a week in the early evening, something I saw as a luxury but good for my overall health, even though I’d have to figure out childcare each week as the day approached. To enable my getaway one winter evening, I took Keely and Paulie to my neighbor’s house.
By the time I returned home, snow had accumulated, and I decided to steal a few extra minutes to run inside, grab the broom, and clear our front steps and walk before having the children underfoot. Later, when the three of us were settled back in the house and I was getting dinner together, a gust of bitterly cold air whipped in from the playroom, prompting me to yell to the kids, “What is wrong with you? Close that window! It’s winter, for God’s sake!!”
Keely, the appointed spokesperson for the twosome, came into the kitchen and said, “We didn’t open the window, Mommie.”
I walked in there. The window was wide open. I closed it before noticing the shards of glass at the top of the basement steps. Checking for additional signs that would help calibrate my reaction, I went upstairs and discovered my ransacked bedroom and eventually my missing jewelry. The police came and investigated, telling me the thief had entered by breaking the basement window. They surmised he was caught off guard when I returned home, and, rather than exiting via the front door, he jumped out the playroom window located at the back of the house and beneath which they could see his footprints in the snow. I knew then that I had startled him when I ran in for the broom and was thankful I hadn’t come in to stay, with the children in tow.
The whole thing unnerved me. I soothed the kids, fed them, and began to clean up the mess and anticipate the repairs, the insurance claims. I would not have considered myself a jewelry person, and was far from dripping in anything, but when adding up every piece of jewelry accumulated in your whole life, it’s more than you’d think. I learned that without a separate rider for jewelry on my homeowner policy, the coverage would be a mere fraction of the total value of what I’d lost.
My insurance agent then suggested I reconsider and take out a jewelry rider on the policy. While I could have cried, I actually laughed. “Run this by me one more time,” I said to him. “Despite my years of premium payments, you can’t pay me the money to cover my loss but, instead, I can pay you additional money to cover that which I no longer have and cannot replace. Is that what I heard?”
I was sad mostly for sentimental reasons. Among the things I lost were a gold charm bracelet my parents had given me for my sixteenth birthday with accumulated charms representing many a milestone. Also gone were gold earrings my father had given my mother, gold cufflinks she had given him, my engagement ring, the diamond bands Don had given me when each of the children was born, and a watch I loved. Sometimes I still wish I had those things, but they were just things.
Don had remarried as soon as our divorce was finalized, just as Paul was entering pre-kindergarten and Keely second grade. While he didn’t tell me or the children directly, I had heard about the engagement and the pending wedding. From the start, his relationship with Lucy ushered in a more regular visitation schedule, which I welcomed—just as I did the fact that Lucy was a likable and family-oriented person. One has no say in who will become a step-parent to their children; let’s just say I was grateful. Some years later, Don and Lucy would have their own child, a daughter named Annie.
Even though life was full of challenge, I wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship during my first couple of years as a single parent. Without giving the matter much thought, I instinctively focused on the children. In any case, they were my highest priority and their world had been disrupted enough. And frankly, even in my younger carefree days, I valued breathing room between romantic relationships.
It stands to reason that another influence on my thinking was rooted in the heartaches of a failed marriage. But regardless of the forces at play, about which I am not entirely sure anyway, we were a pretty happy threesome—Keely, Paulie, and I—and even took to calling ourselves “three peas in a pod,” a reference to our bond that cropped up now and again in many a light-hearted moment for the duration of our years together.
Eventually, however, I agreed to unleash one particular friend, Linda, whose extroverted personality suited her matchmaker aspirations. Since this was the 1980s, there was no such thing as Match.com, but Linda’s reconnaissance on my behalf would stand up to any comparisons. Linda was a born social butterfly who was pretty, and she knew it. And while she was a faithful wife and a devoted mother, she loved to flirt and was in her element in scouting out men. Linda recruited several candidates, each of whom met her rigorous criteria: nice looking, social, and successful. Over time, she introduced me to a lawyer, an airline pilot, and a judge. As a result, I dabbled in the dating world and admit I did have some fun, even though I often felt it was more trouble than it was worth, mainly because I shielded the children from my activities.
One date stands out. Mike, the attorney, invited me to go out on his boat with another couple. We agreed to meet at the dock at the end of my street and from there motor over to Mill Creek for dinner at Jimmy Cantler’s Riverside Inn, a wildly popular waterfront crab house, an Annapolis icon. I had not met Mike or his friends but was instantly at ease and enjoyed the cruise and the dinner.
Navigating the waterway in and out of Whitehall Bay—linking Mill Creek to Annapolis’ Severn River—is tricky, something I knew well. The Bay is deep and narrow, with shoals on either side, requiring careful attention to channel markers and charts. We made it in without any problem, as had always been my experience, but got stuck on the way out, a situation that was made worse by the motor getting hopelessly tangled with crab pots, abundant in this particular area.
Keely and Paul’s babysitter that evening, Andrea, was a young teenager who lived in the house directly behind ours, and I had told her I would be home by 11:00. I