Get off your ath, let’s do some math

Scene: Harriet’s car. Mr. Spy, Harriet and AJ are driving home from a craft fair that they stumbled onto haphazardly on the way to a bookstore. They drive past a field of horses.

Mr. Spy: I was telling AJ about Mr. Ed.

Harriet: I bet he’d like that.

Mr. Spy: Maybe we can find something on y0utub3 to show him.

AJ: Speaking of animals who can do unusual things, we haven’t seen the cat who drives in a while.

Harriet: Toonces? Yeah we should watch Toonces too.

Mr. Spy: Speaking of animals who do unusual things.

Harriet: Yes, speaking of them.

AJ: Are you making fun of me?

Mr. Spy: We just like the way you say things sometimes.

* * * * *

AJ has had quite a weekend. In addition to yesterday’s events, he got the game ball at today’s baseball game for making a crucial catch of a fly ball when he was covering third base. The grin on his face when he did it could have lit up half of Illinois.

I’m still reeling a little from yesterday and trying to figure out what it all means, for us, for AJ, for his school. Mostly nothing has changed. But it feels monumental.

The drive to Evanston yesterday was awful. It’s a good long commute under the best of circumstances, but summer construction has made it even worse. It took us nearly two hours. This was the most disheartening part of the day, because I’m not sure how feasible doing a daily camp there would be if that’s what the commute is going to be like. On the way home, at rush hour, it could very well be worse.

We arrived at the testing site on the dot. It was held in a small house in the middle of the N0rthw3stern Univ3rsity campus. AJ thought this was funny, that he would be taking a test in something that was just someone’s house. Walking in, it reminded me of the building where my college advisor had her office, also in an old house. There was a predictable chaos inside, due mainly to lack of storage — the bathroom, for instance, was full of stacks of boxes full of copier paper and a huge bookshelf full of textbooks. It’s just where they had room. AJ thought this was even funnier than the fact that it was in a house.

When we walked in, there was no one there. We wandered around for a while, trying to figure out where we were supposed to be, and then finally settled in to wait. Our examiner came a few minutes later, pausing on the front steps to pick up the message we’d left on his cell, erroneously predicting that we were the ones who would be late. He was younger than I though. He sounded younger still.

We all went into his office and he talked mostly to AJ but also a little to us about what he was going to do with AJ. Then he gave us a sheaf of forms to fill out and we were kicked outside. Mr. Spy and I sat down in the “conference room,” what was once a sun room stuffed with two folding tables and piles of books and other detritus. The table and floor were littered with half-finished drawings by previous occupants. There was a huge box of crayons on the table and another box of large wooden beads and string and a few broken toys. Mr. Spy and I turned to the forms we had to fill out and tried to decipher the hidden meanings in the mysteriously vague questions. Hobbies? Special Talents? Does his obsessive P0kemon gaming count as a hobby? Is music a talent if most of his singing is in the bathroom? Why didn’t they ask about his schoolwork?

While we were working, a father came in with his son, maybe a year or two older than AJ. We smiled at each other nervously. The mom came in, harried from work, a few minutes later and proceeded to field numerous calls in both English and Spanish. The boy was playing with a broken dinosaur model and threading beads on a string. “Is he smarter than AJ?” we wondered. “What if he gets in and AJ doesn’t? Does it matter? Of course it doesn’t. But should we even be here?”

And then AJ came strutting in, clearly pleased with the way things had gone. It was our turn to leave AJ behind. We turned over our check and the psychologist flashed a bunch of numbers at us so fast that I’m not sure I’m even remembering them correctly and I’m not sure I fully understand what they mean anyway. All I know is that he’s telling me AJ can take any class he wants. “The classes aren’t accelerated as much as his scores demonstrate, but he’ll be with other kids his age.” Holy crap. He’s telling us that we’ll get the written report in a couple of weeks, thank you and goodbye. And we’re out on the street. Mr. Spy gives AJ a high five.

“Did I do okay?” he asks.

“You did good, AJ.” we say. “You did great.”

We wandered towards the lake and raced through the Shakespeare garden looking for rosebuds to gather while we may and finding mostly fragrant tulips. AJ ran around the paths and found a friend and then we found the water and a lacrosse game. It was after two before we found lunch at an Italian deli and took our picnic to a lakeside park surrounded by mansions of astonishing size and richness. I listened to the waves lapping at the shore as AJ and Mr. Spy had a catch on the lawn. Then we drove on, winding through gorges and past lagoons, ogling the huge houses, every other one of which was for sale “reduced.” Not reduced enough for us, I am sure.

That night when I was washing AJ’s hair, I asked him what was his favorite part. “The mental math,” he said.

“Did he ask you some math problems and you had to figure them out in your head?”

“No, they were story problems. And he gave me some paper on the really hard ones.”

“What was your least favorite part?”

“There wasn’t one.”

“It was all fun?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s great.”

And for the rest of the weekend I’ve been bracing myself against being hit full in the face with the force of AJ’s future racing at me and inevitably taking him away from me. I cannot imagine it. How is he seven already? Seven! How many years do we have left? I am already heartbroken. Amazed and overwhelmed and beyond grateful and exhilarated and excited for him and already heartbroken.