Soundtrack

Tonight my son and I have the evening to ourselves. We walk down to the corner Mexican restaurant for burritos, take a long loop home through the neighborhood, bake a batch of peanut butter cookies, play two rounds of cards while they bake, and with an hour left before bedtime he says what he’d like most is to sit on the couch together and listen to his favorite record, the wide-sweeping full orchestral Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard instrumental soundtrack to the Dark Knight. He’s never seen the movie, of course, but he loves batman, and he loves scores, and this 74-minute cd addresses both.

There are clouds moving in as the light slips to other parts of the world. He leans against me and closes his eyes. His fingers draw pictures in the air as directed by the movement of the notes. When the violas hover his hands slow; as the horns move in, his fingers open and he twists his wrist back and forth. A cello lingers, his hands pause. “Did you hear that, mama?” I did. At least I think I did. It is difficult to know if I hear what he hears.

A few days ago, a friend of mine and I had a discussion about what holds more truth, believing in faith, or in luck. Faith, he said, implies the work is done in spite of oneself, by our submission, our life is our life is our path. Surrender. Luck requires action, setting oneself up to receive luck should we be so lucky to have it grace our paths. Both require belief, yes; but luck requires a pragmatic alignment of forward steps taken, in spite of the path, in spite of the seeming course. To reconcile for oneself. To not surrender, under any circumstances. To believe in luck, is to squarely face the opposite truth, to know it very well may not appear. And to be okay with that, anyway, and to continue on with the life’s work of finding oneself anyway.

Piano notes string melody above a blanket of synthesizer on track three, ivory keys divided like days by black, and night brings shadow to the living room. I have not gotten up to turn on the light, the sky is dim and my son’s body has become a twilight outline. I can still see his fingers tracing sound. He seems to know every movement, every transition, every fade, every build, of every track. I wonder how many times he has listened to this music.

Without any set up, I break the quiet and softly ask what he thinks has been the lesson in all his medical issues, in his tumor, his chronic pain, his tinnitus. I have learned over the years that he usually has the answers I do not. He keeps his eyes closed, takes awhile to answer, and then simply says, big and little. I ask him what he means. He says, little things don’t matter, we have to save our energy for the big things that come along, like my head. He is eight.

I don’t answer, we keep listening to the music. A moment later he says, you know mama, it’s okay. I sort of think all this has been okay. What do you mean, I ask. Well, he says, this is who I am. Kids at school, they think I’m cool cause doctors cut into my head, and it makes me different from everyone else. And even if the doctors could take out the parts they couldn’t get last time, I would say no. I want it in there, cause it’s me. And it’s how I hear, even the tinnitus, even the headaches, it’s me.

When he was four, he created a whole kingdom in his head that has since been built on and on, an elaborate story about bullfrogs bringing his headaches, and tiny bats only he could see sweeping in and taking them away. Giant ‘thunderbeasts’ cheered for the bullfrogs, and the chief chameleon would always determine which side had won each battle. Sometimes the bats couldn’t help with his headaches because they had other work to do, such as making the oceans not flood. The bats would scrunch together their eyes really tightly and turn into the biggest bats in the world and hold back the ocean with their wings. He would start talking, usually while tucking him into bed, and I’d grab a notepad and pen and write while he told his stories.

At least at one point in each of our lives there is a dramatic pause, that point where nothing makes sense, or at least is not clear, and there is a rest in the score while we look around for the coda, some kind of permission or symbol or reason to gather our notes, to then throw them up to fly like dots of crows against a familiar sky, quietly and forward, toward bats and bullfrogs, toward descending nights, quiet, peanut butter cookies, neighborhood burrito joints, and eight year olds who already know who they are, who don’t wince at needles, or at their mother’s questions, or at the choice to believe in luck.