"16!" the husky little voice answered.
Having asked him to double everything from zero to that point, I kept on. "What's 9 + 9?"
"18!"
"What's 10 +10?"
You can probably guess what George said, and that he kept answering, quickly and correctly, for several minutes more, as I turned over second-hand coffee cups and looked at utensils that once sat in someone else's countertop utensil container. Tongs for the memories, whoever you were.
It was somewhere around, "What's 49 + 49?" ("98!") when a surprised-looking older gentleman came around the corner, to have a look at the little mathematician he had been listening to from the neighboring aisle. That's when surprise turned into a stunned gasp, because the boy who could add any number to itself was three years and a half years old.
Now double that. 3.5 + 3.5 = 7, the age George was singing about in a video coughed up into my newsfeed by Facebook memories, early the other morning. With shaggy blonde hair and a short-sleeved shirt, he shuffle-stomped a beat, back and forth, among way too much front porch clutter, while singing, "Somebody's going to turn seven soon. Somebody's going to turn seven soon. Somebody's going to turn seven soon, and the correct answer is George!"finishing with the biggest, sweetest smile.
Lingering before getting out of bed, I watched it over and over, listening to how young he sounded, and noticing things. His long hair, his short sleeves, the messy porch: all of these could have just coincidentally been, but I knew better. Back then, haircuts frightened him, long sleeves bothered him, and the porch was his self-made classroom and art studio.
Although batteries of assessments conducted during his first, completely silent, foray into preschool had not decisively concluded that he was "on the spectrum," we knew better. We knew that he was his best when he decided things for himself. So his hair grew long, his sleeves stayed short, his time was his, and he smiled, sang, painted, wrote, invented, and connected, all on his own terms.
Now, double that. 7 + 7 = right now, and right here. Here? Is Mexico, at the end of a long trip he once announced he'd never take. Six years ago, when I started to take off for other lands, and eventually take kids with me, he disabused me of that notion in no uncertain terms.
"Mae can have my trip. I don't want to leave the country."
So she came with me before he did, to Mexico, last summer. Fond of familiarity, and rooted in routines; the world outside of the house where he was born, the yard in which he frolicked, and even the school he ventured to attend, was not enticing to George in the least.
Or so I thought, but he knew better.
Because he revealed something to me two months ago, when were just about to board our first flight out of the country. He had his support system, in the form of his father and sister, besides his wanderlusty mom. He had his laptop, some Spanish instruction, and repeated assurances from his sister that life in a different country could and would feature many of the creature comforts he feared leaving behind. The secret deep inside him, always covered by fear and denial, always allowed to stay there because until then, nobody had dared frivolously impose upon him something he always said he didn't want, surfaced as we stood in line in the airport.
"You know, it's good that I'm doing this. It's good that I'm traveling now, even though I didn't want to come. Because, I'd like to go to Japan someday. You know, have new experiences."
Like that guy in the thrift store, I was stunned.
Of course, besides being relieved that he was able to approach an adventure for which I so desperately wanted his company, I found this revelation almost heart-breaking. That he held out hope that the rest of the world might be exciting to him, and that he could almost see himself stepping out into it, was news to me. Shuddering, I imagined what would have been, had I stuck, single-mindedly, to the policy of never crossing his stated preferences for himself.
It was almost an act of faith, ignoring his decree, booking a ticket anyway, and even planning a trip so long, his birthday happened while were still on it. Tonight, as he inserted his, much lower, voice into the Happy Birthday song, adding "ME!" in place of each "YOU" sung by the rest of us, before blowing out the flaming 14 atop his cake, I was warmed by his resilient sense of humor. It shines on, in spite of this unexpected excursion, which I hope is only the beginning for him.
