Caryn Cardello
Normal Kids
We were in the sandbox, during the normal time before Covid, and I was texting my partner about the possibility that our son might be profoundly gifted, when the child in question leaned over the mound of sand he’d been piling and plunged his mouth over it like a snow cone. I clapped my hands to shock him out of doing it, an old move of mine that never worked on the cat either.
“I want to fly up in the sky now?” my son had asked earlier, watching pigeons leap and take off into the air. He was not quite two, and according to the pediatrician, his sentences should have been two to three words. Things like, “Mommy, up” or “Daddy big.”
A woman in Admissions at an expensive daycare had suggested he might be gifted, and I kept circling back to those funny sentences of his and what they might mean about his future. Realistically, I knew the daycare administrators probably told everyone their kid was gifted. And I knew speech development happened at different rates, so it didn’t necessarily mean anything. But what if he did need the fancy daycare with billowing, leafy plants and pillows shaped like soft gray stones? Maybe his potential giftedness justified the cost? If I’m honest, something else kept tugging at me, too. I wanted to keep him safe.
I had good reason to worry for his safety. When he was seven weeks old, my son nearly died. One night, we noticed he was having trouble breathing and dialed 911. He was rushed by ambulance to the hospital and admitted to pediatric intensive care, where he stayed more than a week. He was on oxygen, plus a feeding tube, surrounded by monitors that glowed and beeped. The diagnosis was bronchiolitis, fluid on the lungs. Sitting in the hospital with him, I watched his oxygen numbers dip. When he finally recovered, going home felt like escaping prison. But we went back to the emergency room for more labored breathing (and one case of anaphylactic shock) half a dozen times over the next year.
For a long time after that, the hospital lived on in my mind. I replayed walking its corridors, what my baby looked like hooked up to machines. When I’d pass the hospital going somewhere else, I felt something hold itself still in my chest. By two years old, my son had grown tall and slender and strong, with blonde puffy curls that made him look like a dandelion. He was as healthy as anyone.
Still, when I’d thought that someday he’d drive a car, or get on a boat, or come across any other ordinary danger, I almost couldn’t take it in. I was going to make sure this kid was never in danger again.
So, when the Admissions woman offered my maybe-gifted son a spot in their fancy, highly hands-on daycare, I watched him play in the neighborhood sandbox and decided it was worth it. We splurged and sent him.
Then the pandemic happened.
The world fell apart around us, as it did for everyone. Daycare, of course, was closed anyway. We tried to keep our explanation of what was going on simple: There’s a sickness going around, so we wear masks and give people space to help keep everyone safe.
We figured out when the sprinklers came on at the soccer field at the park to run through them, since all the playgrounds were closed. But even passing the playground nearby was too much.
“I don’t want to be sad,” he told me. “I just want to go home.”
We put limits on TV but didn’t stick to them. Watching cartoons, I worried about his future, his development, his sense of safety in the world. I cupped his skull in my fingers as if holding a crystal ball.
“What do you need, kid?” I asked.
He turned from the TV and looked at me brightly.
“Can we go see the rake?” he asked.
He loved the rake. We went to the garage to see it.
Six months later, my son was suddenly afraid of traffic. When strangers walked toward us, he’d reach for me.
“People!” he yelled.
We’re not always in charge of what kids learn. Was this new fearfulness an ordinary developmental stage, or was the pandemic making him neurotic? Or was I doing it? There’s no doubt I was fearful. I knew overall that kids had better outcomes with Covid than adults, but that some kids still don’t fare well, and there was no way of knowing if our kid would be among those numbers. And with a history of respiratory distress, I wasn’t about to gamble. I also knew I didn’t want him to grow up to be afraid of the world. I wanted him to be carefree, but also careful, somehow, much more than I wanted to swaddle him in safety. We needed to find some middle ground and live lives within reasonable boundaries. It occurred to me then that we’d explained everything wrong, or maybe not fully enough. We’d been listening to his funny sentences but not doing enough to answer back.
“You know that sickness going around?” I asked him, and I tried to explain better. Why we should make smart choices, but also have fun, and shouldn’t be afraid. He looked out the window. I couldn’t tell what he was taking in.
What’s that noise in the sound? He used to say, back when we marveled at everything that came out of his mouth and worried only about his physical safety. The rain is a dinosaur.
Now, though, he wouldn’t tell me what he was thinking.
When the library opened up, I asked what he wanted to read about.
“Germs and monsters,” he said, without hesitation.
We got the books. And then the germ game started. Sometimes he was a white blood cell fighting off germs but more often, he was the germ, the bad guy who got to have all the fun.
“Can we be Jock itch?” he asked when he wanted to play. “Can we be Lyme disease?”
Once it opened, he still stuck close by me at the park. He didn’t leap around confidently like he used to. One uncrowded afternoon, when it wasn’t required anymore, I told him he could take his mask off if he wanted.
“No,” he said. “I like the rules.”
I thought maybe I needed to explain why the rules were changing now, with numbers down, and more people vaccinated. So I tried again. I talked, and my son poured sand into a sock he called his “bandit bag.”
“Do you hear me?” I asked, as I often ask when he’s focused on something else.
“Let’s infect the body!” he said and swung his sock full of sand.
I wondered then if my son had figured out his own way of handling the pandemic. He wasn’t afraid of germs. He was a germ. Everyone should be afraid of him.
Finally, one evening in the park, something shifted. He ran straight up the path to the park playground, past strangers, past everyone. We had to hustle to keep up. He climbed the path above the sandbox where older kids sometimes jumped, a good six feet up, then leapt into the cool sand below. No hesitation. Then he climbed up and did it again.
It was almost sundown, soft light streaking through the park’s ancient palm trees, but there was no way we were rushing home for dinner. His joy was catchy, and other kids started leaping off too, playing together in that funny way kids do, just adding themselves to the conversation mid-sentence, no fancy preschool necessary. Which feels like hope – watching him, and everyone else, just getting to be normal kids.
Caryn Cardello’s writing has been in The Sun, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere. She received a notable mention in Best American Essays in 2022. She taught for years, and now works as a copywriter in tech. You’ve probably deleted emails she’s written. She lives in San Francisco.