Parents Try to Cope in an Imperfect World

“Moving was dreadful,” our friends write. “Danny had a very bad time.”

Danny is a little boy, a year younger than our own little girl. He has sandy blond hair and an impish grin. In the letter before this one, his parents tucked a snapshot of him and his baby brother inside. The boys were giving each other a kiss. In another, Danny had a sailor suit on.

The last time we saw our friends was at our house. We’d all just come back from Disneyland, which I remember as a lot of waiting in lines. We left early, went out for brunch, had drinks. We talked about our lives, about what hold the past would have on our futures. We made the usual stabs at deep meaning when there is not much time.

We also gossiped and laughed.

Our friends were en route to San Francisco, then they’d be going home. They were living in Hong Kong at the time. They’ve recently moved to New York.

“He had gone relatively quiet once we mentioned the possibility of moving,” our friends write of Danny now.

“But it got darker and scarier until mid-June when, having all other medical things ruled out, he was diagnosed as suffering from ‘secondary autism,’ a condition that usually sets in at 3 years old and is as puzzling and incurable as regular autism.

“Needless to say, we were devastated.”

Those are indeed needless words. We know what our friends are feeling, or we assume that we do. We are thankful that we are not in their shoes. We are afraid of hurting that much.

Even before our older daughter was born, a part of me worried that something might go “wrong” with our child. I did not drink and I’ve never smoked. I do not take drugs.

When she was born, however, our daughter was perfect. Most babies are, if it is their parents who judge. Danny, like the children of all our close friends, was that way too.

As she has grown, our own daughter’s perfection has remained. She is healthy and happy and her beauty goes far deeper than her skin. She is one of the biggest reasons that I believe in God.

Our next born, also a girl, was the same. Healthy, beautiful, all smiles. A perfect delight. A wall in my office is covered with pictures of my girls. There are drawings that the oldest has made, pictures with glitter and hearts and the words I love you.

I stare at this collection countless times each day. If I don’t take my good fortune for granted, I tell myself, then maybe it won’t change.

“The good news is that despite the fact he still doesn’t speak and that he has abandoned knife and fork, toilet skills, crayons and a variety of regular kid activity, he is improving, and although we don’t know what it is that he has, we don’t believe it is (regular) autism nor completely incurable,” our friends write.

“The best guess we have--and that’s all we have--is that he has a form of ‘elective mutism’ in which part of the brain shuts down for a period of time. . . . He started to shut down as we moved home--speaking less and less each day. (In January, he was trilingual: English, Spanish and Pilipino, with some songs and menu words in Chinese.)

“We just wrote it off, figuring ‘Once he gets to the States. . . . Once he gets to Grandma’s house. . . . Once we move in to our new house. . . . Once he gets his toys back. . . . Once he settles in . . .’

“Anyway, none of that ever happened.”

Danny is now in a special-education school. A bus picks him up weekday mornings at his home, returning him at 4 o’clock. Our friends say they see some improvement. They call his teacher great. They see many specialists too.

Our friends describe themselves, now, as middle-class poor.

“He is focusing his eyes again, looking me in the eye, giving hugs and kisses on command,” Danny’s father says, “but still very little speech. He said daddy last week for the first time in six months. Out of the blue, he said, ‘Daddy, I don’t want to go to America.’

“Anyway, we are coping. . . . “

As best as anyone can.

There is no other choice, of course, not among decent people, not when it is your child whose imperfection cannot be overlooked. Self-pity cannot get in the way of love.

My husband and I, when we received this letter from our friends, could only feel sad, our own feeling of good fortune tinged with a little guilt. Why did this happen to them? Why does it happen to anyone at all?

I don’t know.

Danny’s father says that it seems their family is a bit more isolated now, that friends with children aren’t stopping by. He wonders if they think their children could catch whatever it is that Danny has.

Danny’s mother says she can’t really say how she has been, up and down, becoming inured to a routine so alien only months ago.

Should she go back to work? She doesn’t know. Why does it seem that she isn’t getting anything done? She says sometimes she feels like she’s in hiding, from what, she is not entirely sure.

My firstborn just called me on the phone. She has the day off from kindergarten. “I can read now, Mommy,” she says. “I can! Really! I know all the words in my book.”

“Great, honey,” I say. “I’m really glad.”

And I am. Our conversation makes me smile. I glance once again at the gallery of photographs on my wall. I appreciate such gifts.

Dianne Klein’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Klein by writing to her at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7406.