Since I had made plain my ambivalence about motherhood in my twenties, my family was naturally skeptical when I announced that Bob and I were expecting. My sister kiddingly questioned me, “Frankly, Gail, are you sure you’re mother material?” borrowing a famous turn of phrase my mother had coined.
“You know, I’m just not mother material” was our mother’s way of explaining away occasional maternal lapses and an allergy to all things mandated or participatory, such as PTA, Brownie Scouts, graduation ceremonies, and mother/daughter teas.
My family’s doubts about my commitment to motherhood were needless, and although I was beset with concern for the kind of world into which I was bringing new life, I never doubted my ability to be a good mother.
I loved my infant children with intensity and ease, it was like discovering a latent talent for the cello, or waking to discover that overnight you had mastered the Italian language and that you spoke it with elegance and fluency. My children made me a person of substance: finally, I was somebody. Motherhood made me a take-charge kind of person; it was my personal charter cruise into a Jules Verne voyage of discovery.
That is not to say I was never challenged. I was, as all parents are. Challenged constantly, mercilessly, and unwittingly.
If I thought I should be overly concerned about one of my children, it fell to my wonderfully intense, sometimes cranky, oldest child, Max, to ratchet up my anxiety on a regular basis.
The first time I ever held my newborn son Max, he stared at my face with a focused intensity that pierced my inner core. He screwed up his tiny worried brow and sent a penetrating stun-gun glare my way, as if to say, “Oh my God, Mom! It’s you…I sure hope you know what you’re doing.” I hooked him up to my right breast, we revved up our engines, and off we went on our dizzying adventure.
As the firstborn, Max fulfilled all of the requisite birth-order postulates. He was serious and occasionally fearful. He was a demanding little perfectionist who insisted upon strict adherence to a rigid routine with regard to all things elemental: same bath time and bedtime, one favorite pair of pajamas, the standard-issue sweat suit (an inconspicuous navy blue jersey with a hooded sweatshirt, hood tied under the chin at all times), and the same children’s book at bedtime every night for a year, Maurice Sendak’s beloved and quirky Where the Wild Things Are.
When Max was two, Bob bought a kiddie seat and attached it to the back of a bicycle. We thought Max would enjoy cruising around our Capitol Hill neighborhood with Bob. Before Bob pulled up with the bike in front of our house, I strapped Max into a yellow child’s bike helmet, twice the size of his head, making him look like a bumblebee on steroids. Max loved the helmet, but as soon as he laid eyes on the bike, with its mounted child seat, he backed away, eyes widening with terror as he sputtered, “Ooops! No thanks. Too scary for me!” and scurried upstairs to hide under his bed. And Max asked the deep, difficult phenomenological questions like “Whose mother is this pea?” or “What if Willy pops?” or “Why is the airplane teeny-tiny in the sky and big on the ground?” He constantly challenged me to explain precepts about the natural world I thought I’d left behind in high school physics class.
Even though Max entertained each new encounter as though approaching a potentially explosive lab experiment, he could be as stubborn as a wino with a lottery ticket. He compensated for his timidity in public by morphing into a hard-to-handle terror at home. He famously graced family reunions with such outrageous behavior that after one such gathering, my mother remarked, “Gail, you’re going to have to do something with that child.” Yes, I conceded, it was true, but what to do? Is there such a thing as a Jesuit military academy for four-year-olds? Classically, when Max was good, he was exemplary, and when he was bad…what a monster! He never managed to find a middle ground.
With Max staked out at one end of the family behavioral matrix, it came as no surprise that Will gravitated to the polar opposite. What was exceptional, however, is the way Max welcomed Will into the dynamic.
At age two, Max was the center of his own universe, but he met Will’s arrival with awe and delight: he thought that Will was his baby, a gift lovingly bestowed by his parents. As Max said the first time he saw and held Will in his arms, “This is my little tiny, tiny Willy, Will.” Who is to argue with the logic of a two-year-old? We decided not to disabuse him of the notion.
Will, in Max’s eyes, was the gift that kept on giving. Will was there in the morning when Max woke up and throughout the day to amuse or fuss over. Max behaved like a mini-parent: “Mom, Will needs a new diaper,” “Mom, Will doesn’t like those little peas,” “Will needs a nap,” or “Did you give Willy his vitamins?”
Max tore up the household and threw tantrums; Will looked on beatifically. Max careened through the “terrible twos”—and threes and fours—like a power mower; Will rolled along as cheerful as an ice cream truck. Will could do no wrong.
But I am sure he could have—or, more appropriately, I am sure he should have. Being the “good kid” in a family, constantly teetering at that end of the seesaw, can be a burden. There is a price to pay when you are “adorable,” the kid everyone holds up as an example, when you are sweet and friendly and make no enemies on the playground. And later, when you make the honor roll (almost always), and make your friends laugh and your parents proud—all of the time.
I carry an indelible memory: We were in Jack’s Volkswagen van with all four kids on the way to visit the Baltimore aquarium. It must have been spring break, 1992 or 1993; Will was about ten years old. As our van pulled up to a stop sign, a vagrant wobbled into the crosswalk. The old man was decidedly drunk. He stopped in the middle of the crosswalk, turned and faced the car, and began an incoherent rant. Cars behind us began honking ferociously.
I remarked, “That poor old drunk guy better find a safer place to give a speech than the middle of the street.” The kids were hanging over the back of our seats to get a better look, waiting to see what would happen next, when Will remarked, “Yeah, or he’s gonna be a old dead drunk guy soon.”
Jack and I exchanged a sideways glance. “Was that Will?” Heads swiveled and all eyes were on Will. We were stunned, and slightly amused. It was such an uncharacteristically caustic remark for Will.
“Whoa, Willy! That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” I exclaimed.
“Uh-oh, could this be a new, leaner, meaner Will?” Jack teased.
“Yeah, it’s the New Will!” the rest of the kids chimed in.
Will looked mortified and stung by everyone’s reaction. His was a harmless remark—nothing really out of the ordinary for a ten-year-old boy, but the rest of us jumped on it, half jokingly, suggesting that Will was finally exhibiting an age-appropriate, edgier side to his unassailably sweet nature.
“Ooooh, ooooh, the New Will,” the kids chanted tauntingly. As I recall, we didn’t hear much from Will the rest of the day.
In the intervening years, when any one of us teased him about some minor transgression and suggested that it was further evidence of the “New Will,” he took umbrage. He made it plain that he did not appreciate the reference.
“Don’t say that ‘New Will’ thing anymore, okay?”
“Okay,” we agreed.
Will never managed to own up to his failings—normal, everyday, universal human failings. How big were these tiny lapses anyway? He was only a kid—he never grabbed an opportunity to be outrageously over the line. But the die was cast: he was a “good kid.” In his late teens, his sense of who he was would crash headlong into who he thought he had to be—for his own sake and for ours—and the consequences would be calamitous.
If Will had a difficult time coming to terms with failure, he had an even harder time dealing with pain or anger. He never appeared worried. But all kids worry. According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, roughly thirteen percent of children between ages nine and seventeen are troubled by worries that border on full-blown “anxiety disorders.”2 I was a worried child; my son Max was a worrie
d child. But not Will; Will never seemed worried.
I had anxious, hideous worries, bedtime worries that, by age seven, developed into a nightly ritual of tears. One night the worries would be prompted by a scolding (unjustified, of course) by my first-grade teacher; the next night I was beset with terror about the atom bomb. I can’t say that I’ve ever successfully conquered “the worries.”
Max also worried big worries and small. But over time Max and I developed a routine for confronting and managing his worries. Before bedtime, the hour in which most children’s laundry cart of worries tips over, Max and I would take inventory. And then we would walk the worries back: “If that [dreadful thing] were to happen, then what?” “And what would we do about it [the diminished dreadful thing] then?” “And then what would happen?” until we stripped away all of the dastardly possibilities and were left holding on to each other and anchored to the rock of family.
“Max, you will always have us, your mom, your dad, your brother, your family.” “We will always take care of you.” “We love you, and we have each other.” This technique (which I later discovered mirrors some of the fundamentals of cognitive behavioral therapy) worked most of the time. But Will never participated in our “soothing ritual” he never seemed to need to.
Will did, however, have a habit of falling victim to stomachaches on Monday mornings. On average, he missed a Monday every month or two. I didn’t think it was particularly significant. After all, not many of us are eager to go to school or work on Monday morning. Perhaps we should have taken it as a warning.
Just recently, I came across an article that suggests, “In the prepubescent child, depressive symptoms are commonly expressed as physical complaints, such as stomachaches.”3 Well, for heaven’s sake! Like so much else about successful parenting, I missed that signpost.
Will never worried overtly, but he did tell fibs, particularly when it came to schoolwork. He went to lengths to cover up missing assignments and overdue homework.
“Will, do you have any homework?”
“Nope.”
“Did you finish all of your assignments?”
“Yep.”
Often, a call or a note from a perplexed teacher forced him to ante up the truth. When presented with the evidence, he showed terrible remorse and embarrassment. He claimed he lied because he got in over his head and he didn’t want to disappoint us. Perhaps so. I don’t believe Will was lazy. Most educators refuse to apply that characterization to children, insisting that all children can be motivated to learn if given the right stimulation.
Bob and I suspected Will did not know how to manage his time, so we collaborated with his teachers to help him organize his schoolwork while he was still in elementary school. But in middle school and even into high school, Will fell victim to his own charm: teachers cut him slack because he was likable, and when he fell too far behind he made matters worse by covering it up. So what of “the good kid” moniker? When, in his teens, Will became ill, seriously depressed, he fell behind in all matters both crucial and insignificant, and he tried to cover up the depression, too.
It is important to talk to your kids about depression. Openly. Candidly. And at intervals as they grow up.
Since depression showed up in generations of family members on both sides, it was apparent that we were at risk of handing down a genetic predisposition for the illness to our children. It is chilling when you think about it in retrospect: As a person with depression, had I known that my children would inherit a fifty percent chance of being struck down with major depression, would I have decided to forego motherhood?
Knowing our genetic heritage is important because it tells us where we came from and who we are. It also provides a rough guide, a biological treasure hunt, mapping out who our offspring may be.
Researchers are getting close to identifying the “depression gene,” or genes. Although the “nature versus nurture” debate still occupies sizable bandwidth in psychiatry circles, there is enough evidence to suggest that depression begins with an underlying biological risk. The results of findings published in July 2003 were heralded as changing “the paradigm for how we think about genes and psychiatric disorders,” according to Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.4
Researchers focused on the gene, identified and designated 5-HTT, in studies carried out on a group of nearly nine hundred New Zealanders, tracked from age three to twenty-six, to measure which of the subjects were beset by depression and which were not, given the same set of life experiences, tragedies, and setbacks.5 The study demonstrated that the long variant of the gene 5-HTT provided “emotional resilience”6 the subjects with two long genes did not fall victim to depression after suffering adversity or tragedy, whereas the subjects with one short gene and one long gene, or two short genes, were more likely to become ill in the aftermath of a stressful event. Renowned psychiatrist Dr. Peter Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac, reports:
It made no difference whether the subjects had been mistreated severely in childhood, nor whether they had encountered deaths in the family, ill health or financial losses. But among subjects with one or two short genes, adversity, whether early or recent, led to an increase in depression at age 26.7
These findings were replicated in a U.S. study, published in 2004, which demonstrated that infants with the same variants of the 5-HTT gene identified with depression in adults, and who were reared in settings where documented child abuse had occurred, suffered an increased risk for psychopathology due to “environment interaction between experiences of stress and the serotonin transporter gene.”8
As I said earlier, depression is the result of no single thing, but what we can surmise at this point from the scientific investigations is that several things must go wrong at the same time. Or as Dr. Kramer concludes, “Depression has a firm basis in harm to the brain. Liability to that harm arises not only from pertinent events but also from inborn vulnerability.”9
After my own diagnosis of depression, I thought it was important to begin coloring in the outlines of depression for my children, filling in the details and providing information regarding family members and their different experiences with the disease. As they moved from childhood to adolescence I wanted them to be able to discern the difference between feelings such as “sad,” “angry,” and “discouraged” from “hopelessness,” “despair,” and “resignation.” We talked about symptoms and signals to watch for and what they should do if and when symptoms turned up.
If I were a betting person, I would have placed money on my irascible, temperamental, intense, and challenging son, Max. He was the one I watched for signs of depression. He was the one I thought had been tapped with the “at risk” genetic marker. But not our insouciant, lovable Will. Not Will. Never would I have imagined Will would be the one to take the hit.
4
LIKE MOTHER, LIKE SON
Three months after Will’s suicide attempt, Will’s father and I found ourselves face-to-face for the first time with Will’s principal psychiatrist at Montana Academy, the therapeutic boarding school in which he was enrolled for ten months. By the time we met Dr. Dennis Malinak for a cup of coffee in the lobby of a Hampton Inn in Kalispell, Montana, Will had been in Dennis’s care for six weeks. Although we had spoken with Dennis dozens of times by phone, this was our first family visit since Will began the program on May 1; I didn’t know what to expect.
I was pretty certain I spotted Dennis as he strode into the lobby at the appointed hour, 10:00 AM, Saturday morning, June 16. He had the carriage and demeanor of a man on a mission and he glanced around the reception area trying to figure out which of the many hotel guests congregating in the lobby might be Will’s parents. I judged him to be in his early forties, tall, handsome build and thinning brown hair, and he was dressed casually in jeans and a flannel shirt.
“Are you guys Bob and Gail?” We exchanged pleasantries and staked out a quiet corner of the lobby where we could talk privately. Soon
enough we would be able to see Will and take him off campus for an overnight visit, but beforehand, it was clear that Dennis had a number of questions he wanted to put to us. He had seen Will every day, individually and in group settings, for the past month and a half, but it was obvious that the shards of information he was gleaning from Will, scanty offerings by therapeutic standards, didn’t add up in Dennis’s mind, and he was hoping we could demystify certain fragments of Will’s emotional history.
“So tell me about when you and Bob divorced,” Dennis probed. “How did Will react to the news of the divorce?” Bob and I tried to remember the details.
There is no such thing as a “good divorce” for a kid. The effect of divorce on children is the medical equivalent of infecting them with a flesh-eating bacteria: they may, over time, become resistant to its effects, or it may savage them.
Academics have been investigating the effects of divorce on children since the late 1950s, but until recently, no one had undertaken a long-term look at the issue, tracking children from youth to adulthood. Over twenty-five years ago, psychologist and recognized authority on divorce Judith Wallerstein initiated the Children of Divorce Project, and documented her findings in the best-selling book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25-Year Landmark Study (Judith S. Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee, Hyperion Press, 2000). One of the study’s most significant findings suggested that long-term emotional well-being of children depended more on what happened in the aftermath of the divorce than on the family dynamics at the time of the breakup.
Nevertheless, Wallerstein reported:
For children and adolescents, the separation and its aftermath was the most stressful period of their lives. The family rupture evoked an acute sense of shock, intense fears, and grieving which the children found overwhelming. Over one half of the entire group were distraught, with a sense that their lives had been completely disrupted. Less than 10 percent of the children were relieved by their parents’ decision to divorce despite the high incidence of exposure to physical violence during the marriage.1
Will's Choice Page 10
