My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
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The dinner was a very casual affair — jeans and T-shirts, hamburgers and hot-dogs — an ordinary, unmemorable event until Tony pointed out that Allegra wasn't feeding herself.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, look at her. She's old enough to use a fork."
She was, but she was still eating with her fingers. She was sitting in a high chair at the table. "So?" I asked, surprised by his observation. It didn't seem that big a deal.
"So nothing," he said. He then smiled at her and said, very casually, "I just don't understand why she isn't able to feed herself at this age. There must be something wrong with her."
It was a simple statement, with no harm intended, but I was shocked. Something wrong with her? I don't remember how I reacted, although I'm quite sure I said nothing. I may even have consciously tried to hide my reaction. I don't remember what I said or did, but I do remember this: by the time the next family dinner came around, I made sure Allegra could feed herself.
I was determined that no one would ever again say there was something wrong with the way my children ate. "Here you go, Allegra," I said over and over again. "Hold the fork like this. No, no, honey. Like this." We practiced it until she got it down, and once she got it down, that was that. She used a fork from then on.
She learned without complaint. In my memories, she did everything easily and on time. But note those words: in my memories. "Rummaging through old photo albums and looking at school records, I am astounded to read this in one of Allegra's earliest neurological reports from 1977: "Her developmental landmarks are recalled as being consistently slow. She was late to turn over and to sit. She did not walk until age two and she did not speak in sentences until age four."
There it is in black and white. "Recalled as consistently slow." Since it says "recalled," I must have been the one who was doing the recalling. But why do I remember it so differently now? In my memories, she walked on time, she talked on time, she learned to tie her shoelaces on time.
The comment at the dinner table was a minor incident, but it does hold a place of importance for I am certain it was the day on which Charlotte first suspected something was not quite right. She knew long before I did. I still didn't have a clue. The comment hurt me in the way any mother is hurt when something negative is said about her child. It was far more a matter of mother's pride than of worry or alarm.
Charlotte did not say anything to me at the time. What could she say? There was no outward sign of a disability, nothing to indicate how serious the problems were. Later, when the disability began to surface more clearly, she remembered that evening as the time she first suspected that her husband was right and that there was, indeed, something wrong with her niece.
We sat down together recently and I asked her things I had never asked before. We were at lunch and I tried to make my questions sound as casual as I could, knowing it was important for me to hear the truth unaffected by a sister's concern.
"Do you remember when you first thought something might be wrong?" I asked.
"I remember thinking it," Charlotte said, "but you never mentioned that there were any problems until much later. I thought you were avoiding it, and it's such a delicate thing to say to somebody when they haven't mentioned it first."
"That's understandable," I said. "I'd be the same way. Do you remember any specific incidents?"
"I remember when she was three or four, she didn't seem to be doing what Alessandro did at that age, or my daughter Elena did. Little things, like the alphabet or numbers. Kids test each other. They ask each other things like, 'Do you know what two and two equals?' I remember she never played those games. And if someone asked her, she didn't seem to have the answers."
Another hint came the following January, when she turned three. By this time, Allegra had fully evolved into the child I think of whenever anyone asks what she was like back then: curly red hair, freckles, an unstoppable vitality and joy for life. She was so much fun!
