Rex

by Cathleen Lewis

  And after repeating the same process for the other foot, he was all set, although he looked even more concerned now that his feet were completely imprisoned in skis as well as boots. What had he gotten himself into?

  Don placed a clip on the front of Rex’s skis, which connected them. “This is to keep his skis together,” he explained. “And I’m going to place a tether on your skis, Rex. It’s a sort of strap to make sure you don’t get away from me up there on the slopes.” The instructor winked at me and said to Rex, “I know you’re probably going to want to leave me behind, but we can’t let that happen just yet.”

  At this point my son didn’t have an ounce of his “bomb down the slopes” bravado left, but I was hoping once he got to moving on the skis, that might trend back.

  “I’m going to move you forward just a little, so we can get you used to the feel of sliding on the snow,” Don said, pulling on the tethers.

  Rex’s face registered shock at the sudden slipping movement, his hands moving up and to his sides, an automatic balance reflex. “Good, Rex. That’s exactly what you need to do to balance,” the instructor said.

  Don pulled some more. Rex shifted his body to maintain his balance, but his face looked frozen with fear. “Okay, Rex, now try to slide your own feet.” He couldn’t do it, until the instructor took hold of his hips from behind and helped him glide one leg forward, then the other.

  Rex had a good sense of balance, but he looked so scared slipping around on this unknown surface. I was seriously beginning to doubt the whole endeavor. That’s when Don gave a strong tug on the tethers, jerking Rex forward too quickly. He lost his balance, and with my automatic maternal reaction mode always turned on, I dove to catch him before he fell into the snow. The weight of my falling son threw me down instead, with his own fall cushioned by my body.

  Just as I was feeling proud of my fast reaction, I caught the instructor’s look, as he watched mother and son lying in a heap. He had a smile tugging at his lips, as he raised his eyebrows once again. “I wanted Rex to fall,” he explained, extending a hand to help us up. “So that he will know what it is—and so he’ll know it won’t hurt. That’s the only way he’ll be able to ski without fear.”

  I stood back, then, to allow the instructor to do his job. He was the expert in teaching children of all abilities to do this. He promptly caused Rex to lose his balance again. But this time, even though it went against my mother’s instinct, I just watched my son fall. And as he plunged into the soft, cold snow, I braced myself for him to say that was it, that he was done with skiing now. But he did no such thing. In fact, it was just the opposite. To my utter amazement, he squealed with delight, laughing, his tension broken by the fall. The relief made me laugh as well.

  “Did you like crashing into the snow?” I asked, thrilled, helping him back to his feet.

  All fear was gone from his face, replaced by new wonder and anticipation of what lie ahead. “I want to crash into the snow some more,” he said. This time, I was the one who raised my eyebrows!

  There were many different aspects of skiing that made Rex temporarily freeze up again, and naturally so. It was all unknowns he couldn’t see. He was being asked to trust, to step out in faith during each step of the process. Boarding ski lifts, exiting the lifts with a fast sliding motion, the first small descents when he felt as though his skis were out of control. But he learned that Don’s command of “weight on the left foot” meant he would turn to the right, while “weight on the right foot” would make him go left; and he began to feel the control he could exert on his own skis, slowing his speed down. By the end of the two-hour lesson, the tethers were there just as insurance.

  It was on our last run, suitably called “Home Run,” after we had followed a cat track for some time, that Don had Rex ski down a sharper and steeper corner than he had on the previous runs. My son’s face lit up, and the slopes suddenly resounded in his laughter. “Rev up the motor!” I shouted, adding fuel to his joy fire.

  “I want to go faster,” he said, still laughing as the slope flattened and slowed him down, all remnants of robotic Rex now dead and buried. Don looked to me, as though for permission to grant my son his request.

  I motioned back to my boy as if to say, “He’s the boss.”

  “All right, Rex, you’re in charge on this last run. You know how to make your turns, and how that slows you down. So I’m not going to call out turns to you unless we get in trouble. Okay?”

  “Okay, Don.”

  “Are you ready, Rex?” he asked.

  “I’m ready!” And he was. Clearly. Ready to take control, whatever that meant. On his own skis, feeling the exhilaration of speed, his body flew down the slope unchecked by the tethers that were there just for insurance and remained slack in his instructor’s hands. As I skied by his side, his face was alight with the thrill and excitement of it all. And I felt it too. Gone was my own fear and reticence. This was about really living.

  “I’m bombing down the ski slope!” he shouted to the world as he flew faster and faster. This reminded me of the day Rex had first taken off running, the exhilaration of breaking free from his chains. That is, until I realized just how fast we were going and how close we were to the Center. A man who saw the “Blind Skier” label on Rex’s chest removed himself quickly from my son’s path, just as Don was about to pull on the tethers. But taking my son’s freedom was his last recourse, and instead, he shouted, “Turn to the right, Rex,” just as we approached our destination.

  Rex delayed a second, two, maybe even three, not wanting to have his wings clipped, wanting only to keep soaring. I watched a momentary struggle between heart and mind as his mind was following orders, applying pressure to his left foot, but his heart was still flying free, bombing down the mountain. I knew what was going to happen in the split second before it did, but I could do nothing to stop it. His internal hesitation sent him pitching over his skis to tumble into the snow. I heard muffled sounds coming from him as he lay face down in the snow.

  Popping my own skis off, I bounded to him, not able to bear his tears. I pulled him up, already berating myself once again for allowing the whole thing to happen, for pushing too hard for real life. But that’s when I realized that the sound wasn’t crying, it was laughter, breathless and choppy, but escalating as I sat him up. “I bombed down the ski slope, Mommy, and landed with a crash!” he said, laughter racking his body now. “I want to bomb down the mountain again!”

  He not only survived the crash landing but was begging for more. I felt my heart swelling. I knew Rex would have many more ski days—hopefully he would learn to execute a more controlled “bombing down the mountain.” But I also knew, as my son reached out toward normalcy, there would be many other arenas where he would need to learn to fall. Don had gotten it right, because that was the only way he would ever be able to fly.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Meeting Derek

  Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:

  “What! You, too? Thought I was the only one.”

  –C.S. Lewis, author

  Just two years after the filming of “Musically Speaking,” when Rex was nine years old, the mystery of Rex’s gift, and fascination surrounding it, led to a follow-up profile by Lesley Stahl and the 60 Minutes crew. The segment was simply called “Rex” this time, and as with his first profile, it included an older, now twenty-six-year-old British savant named Derek Paravicini, as a sort of bookend, a glimpse of where Rex might possibly end up as an adult. This young man was described as “a human iPod” for his ability to store in his brain every piece of music he’d ever heard. Derek was an extraordinary jazz musician, blind, and even more cognitively impaired than Rex, as demonstrated by his inability to show what the number three meant, or any number for that matter. He was also blond and handsome, a chiseled, older version of my son’s cherubic and childlike beauty.

  A boy and a young man leading parallel lives—separated by sixteen years and an ocean�
�had never met. Then came an invitation to meet Derek. Rex was ten when he was asked to come to London to meet his older counterpart as part of a British production called “The Musical Genius” for the series Extraordinary People, produced in conjunction with Discovery Health, which would air the episode in the States under the title “Musical Savants.” It was a chance to gaze into the looking glass of my son’s future, his musicality of course, but also into his being. How far had this twenty-six-year old made it down life’s road emotionally and socially? Might not Derek provide me with a benchmark for Rex?

  As chance would have it, Rex and I would be in Germany in the spring of his tenth year to receive the Winspiration Award for his inspiration in helping others to take whatever hand they’d been dealt in life and using it to win. That enabled us to make only a minor adjustment to our travel plans and make the Channel leap to meet the British musician. At the same time, Shari Finkelstein from 60 Minutes was flying in from New York to film the meeting of the two musical savants for the first time, presumably to be used for the next episode of the “Rex” savant saga on CBS. By policy and philosophy, 60 Minutes didn’t orchestrate the displacement of the subjects of their segments, but if the people displaced themselves into newsworthy meetings, they would happily have cameras there to film.

  In preparation for meeting Derek, who was renowned for his jazz, Rex began dipping his fingers into the genre, which had previously been a bit too free-form for his classical brain. To date, he had only been able to take it in small doses before requesting a Beethoven break or some other such classical brain reset. But he had been given George Gershwin’s “I’ve Got Rhythm” to work on in anticipation of the meeting, so the two musicians could play together and eventually collaborate for the culminating documentary piece, which would be a jazz performance featuring the two pianists at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, a mere ten days after their initial meeting.

  With two sets of cameras rolling, the British documentary team and CBS, Rex and I walked into the Belsize piano studio in the north of London where Derek would be waiting with his piano teacher and mentor, Adam Ockelford. I had visions of Schroeder, from the Peanuts comic strip, when we entered the room. The young man was bent over his piano, his white shirtsleeves billowing out as his arms rose and fell with such intensity and concentration that I wondered if he even realized we were there. But as soon as Adam signaled our arrival to him, he stood up, and with his teacher’s assistance, moved in our direction and extended his hand. “I’m Derek. Hello, Rex. I’m Derek.” He was outgoing but seemed repetitive and a bit disoriented away from the piano keys. Like Rex, this young man needed grounding in his piano, almost as if he got his balance from the keys, the notes. “Would you like to play some piano, Rex?” he asked, already moving back to his instrument.

  “Sure, Derek,” replied my son to the invitation. Rex played “I’ve Got Rhythm” just as he had learned it. But when the older musician took over the same piece, playing it in a more flamboyant style, Rex covered his ears and protested. At twenty-six, music had clearly become a social vessel for Derek, enabling him to play with other musicians, either jamming at the piano or as part of an ensemble; but for my ten-year-old son, it was still mostly his private domain. He struggled when asked to listen to a different musician playing an alternative version of a song he already knew. On the other hand, Rex could take a song and mix it up, playing it in a variety of styles. He even liked to quip, “I can turn a sonata into a waltz, or Mozart into Chopin, or even a Russian dance.”

  Rex demonstrated a similar aversion to another musician invading his space later in the day upon a visit to the famous Beatles studio, Abbey Road Studios, when Derek began singing my son’s beloved “When I’m 64.” Rex again covered his ears with a plaintive, “Stop singing, Derek!”

  Musically, Derek was prolific and commanding, seeming to feel a deep need to fill the silence in any room with myriad notes, and two questions popped to my mind within the first few minutes with this young man: Would my little boy be able to hold his own in a collaboration with such a powerhouse? And how would the musical Derek translate into Derek the person and social skills?

  The first question was answered when Adam suggested a new ragtime tune to Rex, one that Derek had been playing for twenty years, Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer.” Since this was a song my son had never played before, not only did he not have any proprietary claim to a certain version of it, but he clearly had his own deep need to get his fingers into it. Adam played it one time, and Rex had to jump in, unable to contain that need. With this new song, he had no problem allowing Derek and all his substantial George Shearing chords into the mix as Adam set the tempo on still a third piano. “Shall we swing it now?” the piano teacher suggested.

  As I watched the intent twenty-six-year-old sweep the piece up into quick-stepping jazz moves, Rex refused to be left behind by the more experienced jazz pianist. “It’s bluesy, baby!” Rex exclaimed, kicking it into a higher gear himself. And what a “meet and greet” it was, the room coming alive to the beat, with the bodies of the two musicians moving as much as the music, with Rex bouncing up and down on his piano bench while Derek rocked his head from side to side. A true audio and visual jam session!

  “Fantastic, Adam and Derek!” Rex exclaimed as they finished, with a sparkle in his eye, which boded well for the music these two would share over the upcoming ten days. What remained unknown was how the two would relate on a personal level. Would there be any meeting place for them beyond the music?

  Following our initial meeting with Derek in London, he followed us back to our home in Malibu along with his piano teacher and film crew. It was during this visit that we got to know the British musician better, and he answered my question about how his music translated into his person. If Rex was reticent to share his music with Derek, it was not the same with his musical world. And this world Rex happily shared with the young man, first taking him to Pepperdine University, where he had been studying music for the past two years, and then to the Academy of Music for the Blind, where he also studied piano along with dance and got to play with other gifted and blind youngsters. Wherever we went, as soon as Derek touched a piano, he took control of the room. But what was even more interesting for me to observe was his ability to interact socially. It was that ability that really came as a surprise to me. He had a clear grasp of social etiquette, polite forms, and such—thrusting his hand out as if he was drawing a sword each time he met a new person, accompanied by a rather starched and British, “Hello, I’m Derek.” But, in addition, I watched him sustain conversations, something that had been, until now, impossible for Rex.

  Adam Ockelford explained it to me. “Derek has learned all the forms and conventions of communication in much the same way he has with music. So he mixes them up and varies them and, presto, out comes conversation.” I found the analogy fascinating. Even more enlightening was the fact that back home, as Derek had gotten older, he had found another activity he actually preferred to music. I was stunned when Adam said, “He doesn’t play as much piano as he used to because he likes to go out with friends and just hang out.” I’m not sure whether my jaw actually dropped upon hearing those words, or if it did so only in my mind, but my heart yearned to be able to say the same thing of Rex. Would his genius be a conduit to normalcy, or would it keep him locked up in his exceptional extremes?

  Derek and Rex were both sitting around a lunch table full of adults and children at the Academy of Music for the Blind. Derek was garrulous and involved; Rex was silent and withdrawn. In contrast to the Brit, too many people talking shut my son down. He needed to listen so intently in order to process and be able to interject anything into the mix that he normally just refrained in such a setting. That is, unless he felt like throwing in a particular concern that was completely out of context. For example, when the group was discussing foods, Rex threw in, “Adam, are you Derek’s piano teacher?” He was drawing from the 60 Minutes piece he knew so well, and then he as
ked, “And did you work daily with Derek for more than ten years?” Perhaps in time Rex would reach Derek’s level of social interaction.

  However, the truth of Derek’s communication wasn’t immediately apparent. It was revealed at the end of that lunch, when I remarked wistfully to the British cameraman, “I love the way Derek can engage in a sustained conversation with people.”

  The man responded with a smile. “It is fascinating, I agree, and Derek is a lot of fun.” He then added, “But you never know what to believe of what he says. He will spin a totally believable yarn and get you going. And then you find out none of it is true.” He shook his head at the incorrigible Derek, who seemed full of surprises indeed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  The explanation was fascinating. Derek’s words were without comprehension; his conversations had a form and continuity but didn’t mean anything to one of the participants. I was determined to pay more attention to the content of what Derek said after that. The young man would throw in inflections, sometimes questioning, but speaking with certainty in his voice that commanded not only a response but belief he knew what he was talking about.

  I wanted to see for myself. So I asked, “Derek, will you come to our house and go swimming in the ocean?”

  “I would love to, Cathleen! I would love swimming in the ocean!” I caught a dubious look on Adam’s face as Derek continued. “I swim in the ocean back home.”

  “You do, Derek? That’s great! Well, there will be a lot of surfers in our ocean!”

  “A lot of surfers, yes! I love surfing too. Riding on the waves, you know. I love to ride on the waves.”

  “You’re a surfer, Derek?” I asked, playing his conversation game.

  “Yes, Cathleen. I am! Can we surf in the ocean at your house, Cathleen? I would love to ride on some waves like I do back home in England.” He threw in enthusiasm to match his words. “When can we go surfing in the ocean, Cathleen?”