A Kidnapped Mind

by Pamela Richardson

  “And boogie board. So we’re on for Maui, nanoo nanoo?” I laughed.

  “Yes! And nanoo nanoo to you, too!”

  When the time came for me to book the tickets, Dash and I came close to talking about how he had to manage his life.

  “Dash, you know that we need to get permission from your dad for me to take you out of the country?”

  “Oh,” he said quietly. Then he spoke with a resolution to his voice I had never heard before. “Then how should I tell my dad I want to come?”

  Astonished, I had to collect my thoughts for a second. It’s not like I’d ever had any success with Peter either. “I think it would be best done in a letter, from me. What do you think?”

  “Okay, Mom,” he said, conscious, surely, that he had just let me glimpse the way he had to live his life. I faxed off a letter as soon as I had hung up the phone. It was mid-November and, with the busy travel season approaching, I didn’t have much time to buy his ticket, so I was anxious to hear from Peter. Days passed with no response. A week later I faxed another letter, but got nothing. I called the airline daily, checking that there was still space for Dash on our flights. Miraculously, they kept telling me there was, but when two weeks passed, I put the idea away. It wasn’t going to happen. To my surprise, Dash came to trim the tree with us again that year and, as we sat that night, again, at the kitchen table, the time felt right for me to raise the issue. I was tense. It had been years since I had asked how things were at home, but now that I had him in the house, I was just about out of time to get him a ticket and I wanted to give it one more try.

  “Has your dad said anything about the trip to Maui yet, Dash?” I asked. “I have to buy your ticket really soon.”

  “Dad? No. He hasn’t said anything.” From his look of total confusion, I assumed that he thought his dad had worked it out with me and that the trip was booked.

  Oh, no. I scrambled to not say the wrong thing. “Well, um, did he mention the two letters I sent, trying to set it up?” I asked, not knowing what I should and shouldn’t say. Have I already said too much?

  “No,” Dash said, looking blankly at me.

  Peter was just waiting it out, letting the trip drift into oblivion like everything else. Damn him! I was furious. If Dash and I hadn’t talked about it, Peter would have been able to blame me, as I’m sure he always had. She never said anything to me about it, Dashy. Come on, I’m not a mind reader. Guess she doesn’t really want you to go with them after all. Years of fury scorched my blood, and I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. When I opened them, I looked over at Dash and my rage evaporated. What was the right thing to do for this boy with the miserable life? What could I do? I had never before involved Dash in my dealings with his father, but just then I decided to show him that at least I had followed through on my promise to organize the trip. I wanted to salvage something from the debacle. For the first time, I wanted to offer Dash some proof that I wasn’t an unreliable or treacherous person. I gently took Dash’s hand and led him into my den and pulled the two letters out of my desk drawer. Dash glanced at them, then at the floor. I had in my hands confirmation that his father had deceived him, and that his needs and wishes and happiness had been ignored. I watched Dash carefully. I kept holding his hand.

  “Dash, I need your father’s permission, and I don’t think I’m going to get it.”

  “I still really want to come though,” he said quietly, a whisper of desperation entering his voice.

  I had wanted Dash to understand that I had held up my end here. I had wanted him to see the truth, to feel and acknowledge his pain, but his loyalty to his father did not allow him to compute what had happened. He couldn’t express normal feelings of anger and frustration toward his father, even when it was crystal clear that, instead of answering my letters and allowing Dash to go on a holiday he desperately wanted, his father had chosen to ignore them. Instead of saying, “Mom, can you call Dad right now and get this sorted out,” or bursting into tears and shouting, “I’m mad at him for forgetting about this!” the look on Dash’s face showed me that he knew his needs and wishes were unimportant, that he wasn’t good enough for his desires to be met. Dash should have been a mess, but he choked it back as he always did. He kept his head down, and the quiet acceptance in his body showed me how much he had been through.

  I gently pulled him to me. “Let’s see what we can do to sort this out, shall we? I wanted you to see those letters so you would know that they were sent and that I have tried to work it out with your dad. But I’m so sorry, Dash.” I pressed my lips into his tangled hair and kissed him quietly on the head. I hated myself for showing him the letters, for making it so clear that his father hadn’t cared about his happiness. How much more can he take? He doesn’t have the capacity to deal with this.

  “I don’t want you to think this is your fault. I wish I knew a way to make this holiday come true. Dasharoo, you mustn’t think that you have caused any of this.”

  “I won’t.” His voice was muffled in my shirt.

  “You’re the most wonderful boy in the world. I want you to know that I feel that way about you. None of this is your fault. None of it.”

  “Okay,” he said, but his voice was flat. There was no feeling in it at all.

  “I wish I could squeeze all my love into you so it will always be there and whenever you need some you could just press a button!” I pulled back a little and smiled. “Let me look into those chocolate eyes of yours. Come on.” He did, but there was nothing in them. Just blankness. I held him again and felt no melting, no softening. He did not pull away and he wasn’t stiff, but nothing gave. In trying to help, I had hurt him — again.

  How much time did Dash have? I kept hearing things from people about how Dash was faring in Grade Six. People knew I didn’t see him and wasn’t allowed contact with the school, so some friends looked out for him a little, through their own dealings with the school and reports from their children. They said Dash’s school work was suffering; apparently his teachers were concerned. Though they all agreed that Dash was an intelligent child, and I know he had been an outstanding younger student, by Grade Five he was well below average. Dash had already dropped to the reading level of a Grade Four child, and by the following year he would be a C student across the board (with the sole exception of physical education, in which he excelled). By the end of the year he would have a bagful of “lates,” many absences, and the first genuinely low grades of his school career. Though I wouldn’t see the report card for another eighteen months, I knew Dash did very little work, showed no pride in what little he did, and was beginning to struggle to keep up with the rest of the class.

  Dash’s teachers felt that he wasn’t as emotionally resilient as he should have been at eleven, which was reflected in a lack of self-esteem and an inability to concentrate. They worried that he was always tired — he told his teacher he “never” slept. The teacher told my friend Elizabeth MacKenzie, and she told me. When Dash was asked to draw a picture of his family, he drew himself doing a flip on his skateboard and his dad shooting a video of him. I wasn’t there. Other parents said to me, “Dash has a hard life, doesn’t he?” He hung out on the streets alone most afternoons and evenings. He looked uncared for. Suzanne and Peter had separated that summer and wouldn’t reconcile, but Dash didn’t mention it to me, not even once, even though Suzanne had been in his life for six years at this point, and it should have been a big deal. Another mother told me that children at school often told Dash he smelled bad, and “he just takes it,” she said. “He says nothing. He never gets mad. It’s like he’s shutting down, emotionally.” Dash’s teachers wanted to speak to me, but the principal had told them they were not allowed to, even though they had spent months trying to get Peter to meet with them or take their concerns seriously. He didn’t. I worried, but what could I do with information like that? I had to choose between living my life tied up in knots or just living my life. I put the information on the shelf and left it there.
r />   My dad died that month. It was October 1995. I was forty-six years old and, although we knew Dad had pancreatic cancer, it was still a staggering loss. My brother, Dave, and I had taken turns visiting him every day, first in the hospital, then at Dave’s house in June, then in the hospice where he died that fall. I felt overwhelming loss. Everyone had loved big, barrel-chested Jim. A Welshman through and through, he loved to sing and drink a pint, and had a wonderful, warm sense of humour. When he retired in Vancouver after a roving career as an engineer for the World Bank, based for years in Ankara, Turkey, he came home to be a grandfather, a father to me and Dave, and a good friend to my mother, even though they had divorced years ago. Every Tuesday when Dash was little, Dad had come over for lunch. He would fix things for me around the house, and after lunch Grandpa would settle into the wing-backed chair by the fireplace and Dash would run off to get his favourite books for Grandpa to read to him. They had read them together so many times that Dash would get excited when they were nearing the parts of the book they would repeat together.

  “Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” Dash would shout. At other parts he would mimic Grandpa’s deep timbre, and in that voice he would read with my dad all the story lines he knew. When Dash was older, he loved listening to Grandpa’s stories about the ships Dad had been on during the war and the countries he had visited on duty with the British Royal Navy.

  “Grandpa, tell me again about Egypt! What was it like to be on that big ship? Did you work there?”

  “I worked in the engine room, which is the room that makes the whole ship go! It was hot and steamy and there were no windows and I couldn’t see out.”

  “Ooh, so you didn’t see the big waves going up and down?”

  “No, which is lucky, because what if I was seasick, Dash?”

  “Oh, that would have been bad.”

  “It certainly would have been.”

  “And then what did you do, Grandpa?”

  “Well, after the war was over, your Gramma and I went to live in Montreal, and that was where we built our first house and your mommy and Uncle Davie were born!”

  “It snows in Montreal, Mommy told me.”

  “It certainly does, Dash! It gets brrr cold and both your mommy and Uncle Dave would love to go skating outside and build big snowmen in our garden.”

  “Did they make snow angels, too, Grandpa?”

  “They did, snow angels and lots of snowballs,” said Grandpa with a chuckle.

  And so it went. An exceptionally loving man, my father was excited by and engaged with world history and politics. A voracious reader, he spent his whole life learning. He never proselytized; he just loved to know things. It was through my mother that I learned discipline and endurance, but it was through Dad that I learned the great strengthening and healing power of laughter and the skill of remaining positive through hard times. My father had been on the high seas at war for seven years; my mother had lost her brother when his ship was torpedoed, and she had slept in bomb shelters and basements during the air raids that decimated Liverpool. My mother and father emigrated to Montreal with nothing but suitcases, and prospered, working as a team, starting an air-conditioning business and raising a family together. They remained close and my mother called my father at his Vancouver apartment every morning at nine o’clock until she died. They cherished their family and loved unconditionally. Dash had absorbed that love too, and responded as all children do, with trust and joy.

  “Grandpa, Grandpa! Will you take me to Stanley Park to feed the ducks?”

  “Of course! But do we have any bread for them?”

  “Um! Yes, look! A whole loaf over there on the bench!”

  “Then let’s go, Dash! Come on, before your mommy sees we’ve taken her fresh bread!”

  “’Bye, Mommy!”

  And off they would go. They often went to the Vancouver Aquarium to watch the dolphin and killer-whale show, seating themselves in the front row where everyone got wet. They wised up quickly, and wore their outdoor gear whenever they went, coming home wet on the outside but dry on the inside, with Dash giggling and pretending for the rest of the afternoon to splash into the water like Bjossa the whale.

  Dad had a free and loving relationship with Dash, but once the estrangement from me took hold, Dad stopped making impromptu visits for lunch and he stopped asking, “When will Dash be with you next? I want to take him to the Jungle Gym at the park.” For a long while I tried to make up for or explain Dash’s strange new behaviour — and then, as time passed, his absences — but Mom had taken me aside one day and said, “Pam, you have done a wonderful job raising Dash and he is a credit to you. Dad and I know Peter is using Dash to hurt you, and our relationship with him is drifting because of that. We love Dash with all our hearts and don’t blame Dash for not wanting to see us. This is not Dash. It’s Peter.” A year before she died, Mom developed a serious heart condition. One Saturday morning she planned to come for coffee and a visit with Dave and me, and Dash, who she hadn’t seen for a number of months. Sadly she died of a heart attack the evening before her visit and Dash never did see her again.

  My parents must have talked about it often, and jointly they did the one thing that helped most: they never pushed and they didn’t complain. When Dash was difficult to be around and distant or rude to them, Mom and Dad understood. When seven- and eight-year-old Dash dropped out of their lives, they understood that, too, and kept loving him. Gramma kept sending little cards and notes in the mail as she always had. My parents were hurt, but, like me, they didn’t take it personally and they didn’t question that Dash still loved them; they knew that he was just trying to deal with the pressure coming from his father’s house, and this was the result. Still, they were angry about it, angry with Peter, and helpless. Though they were old now, these two dynamic, strong people, survivors of war and émigré poverty, couldn’t do anything about their grandson’s troubled world. And they couldn’t do anything about mine.

  By the time my father was diagnosed with cancer in the spring of 1995, Dash had seen so little of his grandfather that it was a struggle to decide whether or not I should take Dash to see him in hospital. Grandpa wouldn’t be with us much longer and they should see each other and say goodbye, but their connection had been severed years earlier. I wrestled with it for weeks, while my father declined. Would seeing Grandpa provide Dash with solace, or just more trauma in the form of seeing someone he once loved and knew as a vibrant individual lying in a hospital bed? Dash had already suffered in so many ways. Would it be too much?

  I remembered my mother’s funeral three years earlier, which Dash had attended and to which he had responded well. Peter had refused to allow Dash to go on the grounds that he was “too young” (even though at an even younger age he had attended the Winnipeg funeral of Peter’s father, a man with whom Dash had virtually no relationship). Then, my lawyer John Fiddes had called Dr. Elterman in hope that he could convince Peter that attending his Gramma’s funeral was important for Dash. John said Dash was not too young and that going to his grand-mother’s funeral should help provide Dash with some closure. Eight-year-old Dash had gone, and he had grieved. Even though he hadn’t seen her for more than six months before she died, Dash had cried when I told him, and he had sat quietly, between Big D and me, at the service. With all of us he sang her favourite hymns, including “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” his high voice tiny and sweet. At the reception afterward, he chatted easily with the people he knew, which were many. He was open and interested and sad that Gramma had gone, but he responded well to our celebration of her life. After the reception we went outside.

  “The minister is going to sprinkle Gramma’s ashes in the garden.”

  “Does that mean we can come and visit her here, Mommy?”

  “Yes it does,” I told him, tears in my eyes, so grateful for his sweetness, and so sad to have lost my mom.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy. It’s okay. I’ll give y
ou a big hug.”

  I crouched down for his hug and told him how kind he was to think of me. “You must be sad, too, Dash.”

  Dash looked up at me with his big brown eyes all serious. “I’ll miss Gramma, but she was your mom, too.”

  “She was a really good mom, Dash.”

  “She was a really good gramma.”

  Now, with my father’s approaching death, dealing with Dash was like communicating with someone who was in a semi-coma: I never knew what would reach him and when or if he would ever release some — or all — of his burden. It had been years since I’d seen him cry, since he’d let me into that part of his world. What I did know was that underneath Dash’s self-preserving attitude of distance was a young boy who cared very much for this old man. It was important to me that he respond to his grandpa’s death, painful though it might be. Bottling it up would be worse. I already feared that his heart was closing over. I had raised him to care about others, especially those less fortunate than himself. Until he distanced himself from my family, he had carried with him a healthy respect for others, especially the elderly and the infirm — which my dad now was. But as the years had rolled on I had found this empathy noticeably diminishing in Dash, as he put more and more of himself and his pain in inaccessible places. I didn’t want him to forget the importance of loving other people and caring for them, and I looked for opportunities to remind him. With Grandpa in hospital, it might ignite some feeling in Dash and dust off the images he had in his darkened memory of the family he once loved. And so I decided that, even though it was going to be painful for Dash, I didn’t want his grandfather to die without Dash feeling anything, or facing it in some way. He had buried so much. He needed to let something out.

  I called Dash that morning. “Hi! You’re up early for a Saturday.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I’m glad I caught you.”