Splinters

My first real job as an adult was for an organization called Early Intervention. We provided services for children in the early childhood stages of development who had possible developmental, cognitive, and social delays. It was long before you needed an actual degree for such things; it was enough that I was enrolled in my senior year of undergrad. They provided all the training, and I made 60.00 an hour- unheard of, as a 23-year-old used to making 10.00, filing paperwork for the local dentist. I was sold. That’s when I was assigned to Sam.

Though Sam was only 4, he already carried an intricate diagnosis. Sam was classified as level 3 on the Autism spectrum. He had zero impulse control. Flapping and stimming. No spontaneous verbalizations. They sent me to a Child Study Center in order to learn a relatively new (at the time) method of teaching such children, called A.B.A. as well as Greenspan’s Floortime Theory before allowing me to come to his home. I’m not sure what it was supposed to prepare me for, but this, for certain, was not it.

Sam was one of five children, four out of the five with special needs. His mother was young, beautiful, and scared. Her dark circles were hollow. Her fingers looked like pretzel sticks. I couldn’t appreciate then the feat of what toll it must have taken to keep a kosher kitchen and darn a sock with expert precision with five, non-verbal humans running amok.

I was meant to engage in occupational activities and life skills with Sam; he was four and couldn’t use a fork or the toilet. When he spoke, it would only be scripting from a particular Winnie the Pooh movie he would watch over and over again when his Mother gave up all resistance and brought the VCR down from the attic.

He was wildly aggressive. Throwing punches, plates, sometimes, his own poop. He would bite everyone. A gluten-free diet was recommended, but Sam had a sweet tooth and only preferred Challah and apple juice, so he would steal food he wasn’t allowed to have right off their counters leaving a wake of crumbs and dribbles. He would howl like a coyote when he felt like he wasn’t being understood, which was basically all the time. I was in over my head but true to form even now, I’d never admit it.

I had been there a few months, three times a week, and felt like I was finally gaining some ground when I showed up one day to Sam, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Sam had never sat down the entire three months I had been with him. I approached carefully so not to frighten him and sat down in front of him. He was hyper-focused on a familiar puzzle set in front of him, but wasn’t putting the pieces in the appropriate order. Normally, this would frustrate him and he would fling himself into a fit of rage, but he was not getting up. In fact, when I leaned down far enough to be level with his eyes, I could see silent tears teeming track marks down his dirty face.

I found his mother at the kitchen table, coated in breakfast remnants, her head in one hand, silent tears down a face that looked just like her son.

“What is wrong with Sam?”

And in a torrent of guilt-ridden grief that only now, a mother myself, could identify, she told me the story.

She had noticed Sam limping several days prior and had enough energy to wrestle him and check his legs. She didn’t find anything until she reached his feet.

Sam had a habit of walking around barefoot- he disliked the sensation of socks and frankly, there were too many battles to fight this one that day. As the weather had been warm, he was barefoot outside quite a bit. Mom rationalized that barefooted children are a mild infraction comparatively. Sam, as we both conjectured, must have tried to balance on an old, dead log in the backyard a week or so back and had gotten several (more like 10) splinters in the soles of his feet. Without any ability to express discomfort, his ailments went unnoticed and led to festering, infected splinters in the tender parts of his feet; rendering him now, unable to even walk on them.

Mom had called several doctors, all of whom aware of Sam and his resistance to treatment, and refused to treat him unless he was put under. That was costly. A cost she didn’t have, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to consider anyway, just imagining how he would respond to needles, or the waking after. We stared at each other, two women in their early twenties with very different lives. I took the kitchen chair next to her and cried as well.

I faint in hospitals, puke at the sight of bodily fluids. I am not the one you want in a medical emergency. I told Mom to go get needles, peroxide, towels, Neosporin, and bandages. She obeyed without thinking, grateful for a directive. When I explained the plan to her, she only nodded in agreement.

I had watched her thread needles amidst chaos. Balances soup bowls, unwavering. She would be the surgeon for her son, and with her permission, I would hold him down. It was not the job I signed up for.

He was the strongest four-year-old I had ever encountered but his injuries made him easier to overcome, and I wrapped my legs around his, my arms around his torso, and held him tightly on the floor, as I was taught to do for children with violent behavior.

His fingernails bit the undersides of my arms bloody. He wailed an unearthly sound I can still hear at night, when I am afraid my own children are hurt or scared.

I whispered the only thing that made sense at the time. “Sam, I know you’re not going to understand this but your Mama and I love you. We love you. We love you so much. We can’t take this hurt away but we can be here with you and help you heal. Sometimes the healing things hurt. It is the worst. And it is true.” My fingers stuck on jam and twigs and other things as I tried to run them through his hair.

His Mother worked as deftly as I’d ever seen her. The muscles in my arms groaned and strained, but together, we freed Sam of every, single splinter. We disinfected each sore and wrapped his feet as best as we could manage. We bribed him with sweets he wasn’t allowed to have and Winnie on an endless loop so that he could sit still and heal.

It was the first time she ever poured me a cup of tea in her kitchen. It was the first time she held my hand. It was the first time I remember seeing her smile. I knew in that moment, I was sent for him- but I stayed for her.

---

I stayed with Sam as long as they would allow before he aged out of the system. During my last week, he gently placed his hands on both sides of my face and said, “Bye, Jen,” unprompted. I can still hear it now.

It remains one of the proudest moments of my entire life.

But it’s his Mom who has stayed with me; as I became a mother myself. As I learned much later than she did, how much healing can hurt, how lonely motherhood can be, and how beautiful it is to have someone show up in uncertainty and in love, to stand with you in it.