The Case About Amy

14. Amy Remembering

Amy Remembering Early one summer day in 1991, over the TTY, Amy said she had a proposition for me. I should come up to visit her parents in Mountain Lakes, we would all drive up to Croton to visit our mutual friends, Charles and Helen Brooks, and Amy and I would spend a morning walking through Furnace Woods Elementary School slowly, classroom by classroom. Amywould try to slip back into her childhood, as ifshe were putting on clothing hung away for years unused. She would try to speak again with the voice of a child, but when she had spoken, she would try to tell me how she felt now and what it all meant to her as an adult. I tried, but I am sure I failed to conceal my delight. Here was an offer to accompany on a voyage ofself-discovery someone whose progress through childhood and adolescence I had been tracking for almost seven years. And someone who, while infallibly friendly and fun to be with, had withheld from me for those long, slow, first years any inclination to explore a childhood that burned so hot, so close behind her. I have four children of my own who have passed through the half-dark door of adulthood, but with none of them did I feel quite the shock I felt with Amy, discovering, suddenly , an adult, into whose shadow the child I knew had vanished. Driving from Mountain Lakes up to Croton, we took both cars, with Nancy and Clifford in one, thoughtfully leaving me with Amy and John in the other. I knew I would have time with Amy the next day, so I concentrated onJohn, who, at twenty-one, had a different kind oflook on his face. Copyrightet1CMaterial Amy Remembering The John 1remembered, even as recently as Amy's graduation the summer before, had two significant passions in his life: he loved skateboarding, a sport 1 had watched him and friends practice on a curved wooden ramp they negotiated at high speed. It seemed suicidal to me, and John did hurt his wrist badly at one point. The other passion was the music ofthe Grateful Dead. A confirmed Deadhead, John had joined others piling into cars to drive all day to concerts by their heroes, and then all night to get home. John's arrival at a small college campus in Vermont did result in the substitution of snowboarding for skateboarding, but John had hurt himself again that first winter, and 1 had the impression that he was floundering psychologically as well as academically. Now he was away at the University ofArizona and 1wanted a catch-up from him. "I went out there after a girl," he told me as he drove, with his sister by his side and me in the back seat, "but that didn't work out, but what did was much better for me. 1 had started to realize that what 1 was doing wasn't taking me anywhere. You can be an athlete, like doing skateboarding for a little while, and then it's too late for that and by then it's late to be thinking about school. . .. People had ideas and 1 got some ideas about what 1 should do, but 1 started thinking all that wouldn't mean anything to me, wouldn't do anything except for me, and 1wanted to do something that would matter to someone else. So 1 started thinking about working with deaf people like my parents and sister and [with] what had been so much of my life in the past. Well, 1 was out there, so 1 looked at the University ofArizona and discovered that they had all these special education courses, and 1 thought I'd surely be able to put to use what 1 already knew, American Sign Language. Then, 1 thought, well it's a good way from snowboarding and maybe it would be good for me to be away from all that. So 1decided to sign up at Arizona and give it a try. 1 didn't tell everyone 1 had a deaf family. 1 did tell my professor but he didn't tell the students, and 1 had a great time whizzing through this course, which 1 aced. That was summer school. 1 have a way to go to make up for the bad grades 1 had before this, but 1 feel good about where I'm headed now. I'm going back shortly to take...