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Heather's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 6/21/03 -------------------- 5/5/03 3/19/03 3/5/03 1/25/03 1/9/03 12/20/02 11/30/02 11/7/02 10/31/02 10/19/02 -------------------- Heather's Introduction

November 7, 2002

p>Was it the straight needles and inoculators, sweet Ivan, that did this? Was it the inhaler in the summer before you were born, the pink pills that killed the headaches, or the red ones that never did? Was it the heavy-oiled summer air, the car-exhaust clouds, the ant-spray in the kitchen? Was it the bleach I spilled on my hand that one night in August? The water-leak in our apartment and the black, black mold that crept out the wall? Was it the time I left you on the bed, just for a second, and you rolled off and hit your smallish head on the floor? Was it the holes in the ozone, the hormones in the milk I fed you, the pesticides in your cereal? Was it the coffee I drank? Did I talk to your sister too much? Did I ignore you? Did you know that you were second? Did I want too much? Did I think I was beyond tragedy? Was I too afraid to be a mother or not afraid enough? Was it the years I spent quiet or the ones I spent loud, none of them really myself? Is it fate? Is it the wish of someone I hurt? Is it punishment for the lovers I had before, the sweet-smoke I remember and the laziness of San Francisco? Is it my family, my genes, a little Punnett Square exemplified in you? Did I marry the wrong person? Would this have happened with someone else? Or did I marry the right person and somehow fate or whoever, whoever’s fault this is, did they or it or whatever decide that I could do this? Was it me, was it me? Was it me?

I know enough to understand that blame is not a fixed thing – it always defers. Blame always defers blame infinitely, forever. Sometimes at night I go into your room when you’re asleep and look at you and wonder about who or what might be responsible for this. Sometimes I just want to kill that thing, I want to wring it free and stomp it and curse and scream but mostly, mostly I’m afraid it’s me. But I know that this year they’ll say it’s one thing, Ivan, but ten years from now they’ll shake their heads and wonder how or why anyone could have thought such silly nonsense. And there will be another theory and another grand plan and wonderful intentions and foundations and television spots and books to buy and debates and then another theory and another and another.

But no one ever answers the real question. Why all mothers never really learn how to believe it’s not our fault. I could memorize all the medical journal articles about autism, I could stack them end on end on end. But part of me will always believe it’s my fault. Blame defers blame, yes, until it stops at a mother. And we have no place to put it, we just pull it in, focus it out as best we can because what else can we do, who else can we be? Sometimes at night, Ivan, I go into your room and I think about blame. I wish I could abscond it, let float down and out. I wish I could be a man and deflect it to someone else, something else. It never works, try as I might, it never works.

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