from Michael Berube Online: Was I ever wrong

In the opening pages of Life As We Know It, I wrote that most of my time with Jamie – that is, when I’m actually with him, doing stuff – is lived pretty much moment by moment. And I wrote this specific passage just under ten years ago:

Occasionally it will occur to Janet or to me that Jamie will always be “disabled,” that his adult and adolescent years will undoubtedly be more difficult emotionally--for him and for us--than his early childhood, that we will never not worry about his future, his quality of life, whether we’re doing enough for him. But usually these moments occur in the relative comfort of abstraction, when Janet and I are lying in bed at night and wondering what will become of us all. When I’m with Jamie, by contrast, I’m almost always fully occupied by taking care of his present needs rather than by worrying about his future. When he asks to hear the Beatles because he loves their cover of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally,” I just play the song, sing along, and watch him dance with delight; I do not concern myself with extraneous questions such as whether he’ll ever distinguish early Beatles from late Beatles, Paul’s songs from John’s, originals from covers. These questions are now central to Nick’s enjoyment of the Beatles, but that’s Nick for you. Jamie is entirely sui generis, and as long as I’m with him I can’t think of him as anything but Jamie.

The clear implication here – and you don’t have to be a literature Ph.D. to see it – is that Jamie will never have the intellectual capacity to understand the Beatles’ oeuvre, or even to understand that some songs preceded others, were written by different band members, and so forth.

Well, this is long, long overdue, but I owe Jamie one enormous apology: I couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the past ten years Jamie has become so fascinated with the Beatles that he’s memorized almost the entire songbook. He still has trouble identifying late Harrisonian ephemera like “The Inner Light,” “Old Brown Shoe,” and “Only a Northern Song” (all of which suck, anyway), and he’s not crazy about Abbey Road (with good reason). But in every other respect, his knowledge of Beatles music verges on the preternatural. (more)

Oh what a wonder he shows us! So warm, loving, and beautiful. The joy, the sadness, the worry, and most of all the sweet pride he has in his son.

Stories like this make me question the wisdom of my well reasoned, ethical decision, made oh those many years ago, to forego having children. What a world I am missing! Thank you, Dr Berube, so very much for sharing your part of it.