Boys and buckets
This is the story of you. The quintessential little boy. And your crab in a bucket.
Perhaps it is my story too. I saw myself so clearly reflected in you, the stubborn set of your shoulders, your bustling energy, exploding sense of right and wrong. Stalwart fierceness and shining intelligence.
And once, when you raged in a tantrum, then shuddered into wracking sobs, and fell into an awkward hug. Then came back days later, shuffling your feet, uncertain, and asked me shyly if I would clasp you again like that. Like a weighted blanket.
It felt good, you explained. I don’t think you knew why. But by then I did.
I had held you like a straitjacket until your emotions broke. No one had ever contained you like that before, so you could experience the full brunt safely and feel the release after they peaked. You missed your developmental tantrums at two. You were busy surviving.
You were pretty tough at that time. I think you were eight. Big enough to be too big. Honestly, you kind of needed a straitjacket. I know kids shouldn’t, but you were still on several psychiatric medications, your dad secretly double-dosing you with them randomly when he felt like it to turn you off. My first experience with that kind of child abuse. I’m so sorry. I stopped it when I figured it out. And I mean I really stopped it. But we hadn’t sorted it out yet.
But we did, and this story is why.
So, how to tell this story? I am telling it so one day you can find it and see yourself reflected like a jewel in my eyes. Without telling too much — telling what’s not mine to tell.
I came for all kinds of complex adult reasons of my own. But all you probably knew, and what is probably the truth, is that I came like Mary Poppins on an umbrella.
And I came for you.
They didn’t tell me anything, of course. I learned later that you had hit the former nanny in the head with a rock, and she had to go to the hospital. But given the adults I found around you, I kind of support that. Most adults wouldn’t, but you did what you had to.
You were fighting your own child’s guerrilla war.
So this day on the beach, our first day. All I had to go on were vaguely worded warnings that you could be tough. (I had been hired off an online listing, which was very irresponsible of all adults involved, including me.) But all boys are tough, and I was tough, and I needed the placement. So I took the job, and the first day, you were bundled into my car with your brother and various beach stuff, and we went to the beach.
The adults weren’t going to warn me, but they sort of tried. Some vague hints about “behavioral problems” and that you shouldn’t travel in cars. But I was the nanny, and didn’t listen any better than you did. I had been in the frozen winters of the far north for too long. So we were going to the beach and we did.
Later on, I saw you and your brother unbuckle and rage around the car, try to jerk the steering wheel from your dad on the freeway. Really dangerous stuff. But that was with your dad, and you had your reasons.
But they didn’t tell me that then. It was our second day. They just sent us off in the car. No warning. And there you were, sitting next to me, buckled up reluctantly. Clearly ready to explode with impatience. But you and I negotiated a deal for car gum, and for the music, and you liked New York by Jay Z, and I did too, so that was that.
And I looked over at you to the right of me, and it suddenly occurred to me, and I said in startled realization — because you were tapping the windowsill, and looking at the sea, and immersed in the song — “There is nothing wrong with you!!” I saw so clearly in that moment that you were a totally normal kid. And you looked at me, your gaze direct. And I think you realized for the first time in your incredibly short life that it was absolutely true.
And that was that.
But the beach. This story is about the beach. It’s about the beginning. Because we broke you out of your prison. And maybe now, if you read this as an adult, you still wonder what happened. Maybe you won’t forgive me for abandoning you. And there are all kinds of adult reasons why I had to. But there are all kinds of adult things I did when I left that changed your life forever too. And I will tell you here, in our public private, and then maybe you will know that I didn’t abandon you at all.
But I want you to know why I didn’t abandon you. Why I fought for you with all of my adult-power.
It was the crab.
We went to the beach. And you and your brother went wild. You ran and ran. You rolled in the sand. You ran into the waves, you just flew across the sandy water, and you were covered in sand from head to toe. Your sandy blond hair was sandy sandy. And you were wild with the sun and the freedom, and I just watched.
Too much time in the house? I thought. I had no idea.
I will briefly sketch your history, which I learned later, so it makes more sense. But there was a mansion, and an addicted mother, and her addicted friends. And years and years of early childhood abuse. Them high with you and your brother, and sexual abuse because she didn’t protect you. And no one to see, no one to care, and movies no child should see playing over and over in the background. And finally, they put her away.
But for you, the damage was done. You were ‘damaged’ and your dad saw it as a continual honeypot for rotating foreign nannies, and the other kind of abuse started, or maybe continued. More sophisticated medical and emotional abuse with twisted disciplines. The medicated, standardized, pathologized, doctor-teacher enabled abuse and labeling.
The endless suffering of a psychologically traumatized child “victim” who can never be anything else.
So in the car, when I said, “There is nothing wrong with you.” It might have been the first time an adult ever said that to you. But I could see in your defiant gaze in that moment that it was something you already just knew.
You were so bright, so brilliant. Even then.
So on the beach, when I finally let you out. Out-out with the sun and the sand and the endless ocean you ranranranranranran. And I didn’t know why, but I just let you run. Boys need to run, I thought. Good for ‘em.
But that wasn’t the moment that mattered. The moment that mattered came later. It was when it was time to go. You weren’t very good with any kind of discipline then. It unlocked the anger and the uncontrolled will that had been so bent and twisted by authority figures.
And it came down to the crab.
You had been collecting hermit crabs. Running in zig zags and throwing them into the water, and you had one in a blue bucket. And you wanted it. Crabs aren’t that… conscious. You wanted to take it home, and I said, “No.” And you began to shake. You weren’t very tall, only came up to my waist. But it was a real shaking. An adult shaking. Your eyes narrowed, and I saw real adult compressed fury.
“It’s mine,” you said. “If I can’t take it home, I will crush it. I will kill it. I caught it and it’s mine.”
And there it was, some eyestalks waving, totally confused in a blue bucket sloshing around in some seawater and sand. And I looked at it, and I could tell by then that it was going to be a long, tough ride home. I could see you weren’t responding like a normal kid to normal things. I didn’t see the full picture then; it took a few months to map it and untangle the psychology web you’d been snarled into. But I could see that day that I had to pick my battles, and I was sorely tempted.
I can kill a crab. I’ve killed crabs. It’s a crab. There are thousands of them. There were thousands of them at our feet right then. I mean, it was a good specimen, you had selected well — I was impressed with your hunting abilities. But I thought, is it really worth this dumbass crab? Am I really going to pick this battle?
It was my first day on the job. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. There were all kinds of adult reasons why it wasn’t worth pissing you off — yet. I knew we were going to have it out — I just wanted to pick the place and time. Not with an uncontrolled and unpredictable child who was still practically a stranger on a public beach.
And I looked at the crab, and I looked at you, and I thought, no, we are going to have this fight right now.
“That is not your crab. That crab belongs to itself,” I said. “It lives in the ocean.”
And I looked at you and I really, really meant it.
And you lost it. I mean, you were really great at losing it back then. You had taken the standard of “disturbed child” and constructed a monument to it. You were smart as hell, and the adults had only given you one way to succeed. So you were quite the fireworks show.
It was impressive.
But I noted, because I am the oldest of nine children, that you never once dropped the plastic bucket.
So I stood there as stubborn as you were — are. A will like ours can’t be tamed. Yours hadn’t been broken, and mine never will either.
And I waited.
And when you calmed down. I said, “That crab belongs to itself, just like you belong to yourself. You don’t own the crab, and I don’t own you.”
And that plunked you like an arrow in the solar plexus. You stood there dumbstruck, and you looked at me, and I looked at you.
And you put the crab carefully on the beach. And we left, and we made it home. (Thank god for Jay Z.) And after that, we had a real alliance.
And we did the work. It took about three months. But you did it. We did it. Because we had an agreement.
You belonged to yourself.
I know your life changed after I left. I heard from others that you were doing better. There were all kinds of adult reasons I had to leave. But I didn’t leave you without protection. I put the guardrails in place. I marched you over to the best neighbor, and I had a real talk with him. And I made him promise, adult-to-adult, if you needed shelter, you could go there, no questions asked. I made sure the authorities and people around you knew what was happening. I talked to your teachers. I told your doctor that you had changed, and he was grateful. He said he knew you just needed ‘behavioral interventions,’ and he couldn’t give them to you. I said I did, and you were better, and he agreed, and he said he would stop medicating you. And from what I heard, it worked.
But I want to tell you what we know. You didn’t need behavioral interventions. You needed love.
You needed real,
blistering,
hardcore,
LOVE.
And you got it from me. And that was ALL you needed.
And now, when I work on the environment, I think about that. I think about all the broken little boys in the world and their stupid crabs in buckets. And I tell them all the same thing.
There is nothing wrong with you. And it is not your crab.
The goddamn crab belongs to itself.