I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia

by Su Meck

  I was making Benjamin’s bed up with clean sheets on a Friday afternoon early in February 2003 when I discovered a notebook between his mattress and box spring. I pulled it out, opened it, and the writing inside made my heart stop. There were pages and pages of Benjamin’s distinctive handwriting: “I hate my fucking life,” “I hate going to fucking school with such fucking idiots,” “I wish I was dead,” “Why does everyone in the world hate me?” “Life Sucks,” “Fucking High School sucks,” “I want to die!” This kind of stuff, plus lots of other indecipherable scrawls, was written on page after page, over and over again. The entire notebook was filled to near capacity with Benjamin’s raw emotion. At that very moment, sitting by myself on his half-made bed totally in shock, I decided that Benjamin was done with the Montgomery County Public Schools.

  When Benjamin arrived home that afternoon, I told him that I had inadvertently found his notebook, and I held it up. He went immediately into his legendary “Happy Benjamin” patter: Oh-Mom-it’s-nothing-don’t-pay-any-attention-to-that-everything’s-fine. I interrupted him and asked him if he would be okay with me making the decision to pull him out of school. He stopped talking and looked at me with such an expression of relief. But not even a minute passed before he looked worried again and asked, “Is Dad okay with this?” Truthfully, I hadn’t even thought about whether or not Jim would be okay with it. And frankly, I didn’t really care what Jim thought. In my gut, I knew that I had to take my son out of school, or something really bad was going to happen. Like always, I had no plan, but I knew that this was the right thing to do.

  The following Monday morning, Benjamin and I marched into the main office of James Hubert Blake High School and asked to speak with Benjamin’s administrator. When he eventually appeared, he wished me a good morning and asked how he could help me. I told him that I was there to fill out whatever paperwork was necessary to pull Benjamin out of school. He stared at me with a smile frozen on his face.

  I have little recollection of precisely what I said, or what he said, or what Benjamin may have said, or what exactly happened next. I do recall that at one point the administrator argued that I couldn’t pull Benjamin out of school for the simple reason that my son’s PSAT scores were among the highest in the school’s history. Regardless of that fact, not too long after the fun little powwow in the administrator’s office, I was filling out paperwork and withdrawing Benjamin from school. Just like that.

  Afterward, Benjamin and I went to Checkers and got french fries and milk shakes. When we got home, Benjamin went to bed and slept nearly straight through two full days and nights. On the afternoon of the exact same Monday that I pulled him out of school, he received a letter in the mail informing him that his PSAT test scores had qualified him as a semifinalist for a National Merit Scholarship. When his SAT scores came in the mail later that summer, he learned that he had missed two math questions. Total.

  How did I tell Jim about all of this? He remembers a long and intense “dog-walk conversation” one evening. I told him about what I had found (the notebook) and what I intended to do (pull Benjamin out of school). We must have walked those dogs around those soccer fields at least half a dozen times while I talked. Jim also remembers that it hadn’t been so much a discussion as my informing him that this was happening. He adds that he hadn’t heard that kind of urgency in the tone of my voice, or seen such determination in my demeanor, for a very long time. I’m not entirely sure if he was totally on board with the situation initially, but to his credit, he didn’t try to put a stop to it.

  Benjamin took his GED exam and (surprise, surprise) got a perfect score. I knew he would have to figure out his next steps at some point. Was he going to get a job? Was he still going to try to get into college? Would he try to pursue acting full-time? I knew he had to figure some of this stuff out, but I also wanted to give him some time to recover. I wasn’t sure exactly from what he was recovering, but I was aware that something about him was not quite right. We were both traveling through uncharted territory and for several weeks he followed me around like a lost puppy. He occasionally joined my morning classes at the gym, and almost always came with me on the midday dog walk. It was during these long, peaceful walks that he began to open up to me and tell me what school had really been like for him. I was shocked and horrified. Benjamin had been beaten and bullied all through elementary school, middle school, and into high school. He had his PE clothes flushed down the toilet and thrown out of the bus window while in middle school. He always told me he had lost them. He had an English teacher repeatedly “send him to Siberia” when he didn’t have his homework. She would have him sit in an unoccupied desk underneath a hanging plant. As he sat there, she would water the plant, and the water would seep through the dirt and stream down onto him. He was often shoved into his locker and pushed off of his seat on the bus. If he was at lunch reading a book, it was often grabbed from him, torn up, and thrown into the trash or a toilet. If it was a library book, or textbook, he told me he had lost it, even when I made him pay for the “lost” books himself. So many dreadful and appalling stories poured out.

  I asked repeatedly why he never told me, and he always gave me a similar answer. “Mom, you had enough to worry about.” Or, “You wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway.” Or, “Mom, you don’t understand what it’s like at all!” Or, “Telling you would have just made stuff worse.” Or, “Mom, what exactly would you have done even if I had told you?” Or, “You don’t always do too well in stressful situations.” In essence, he was telling me that he had always been more concerned about stressing me out than he had been concerned about his own safety and well-being.

  That knowledge was a huge wake-up call for me. The fact was that Benjamin, Patrick, and Kassidy did a better job taking care of themselves, and of me, than I did taking care of them. They regularly took care of me without even thinking about it, doing everything from occasionally tying my shoes and zipping up my coat, to coming to my rescue if I was having trouble with a conversation, to putting up with my “lightning” headaches, my frequent forgetfulness, and my erratic behavior. Yes, I watched and listened to what other parents did and I tried to do a lot of the same “parenting-type” things. I nagged my kids about their homework, I insisted they keep their rooms cleaned up and help out with chores around the house, I bugged them about going to bed “at a decent hour,” and I complained when they didn’t get up in the morning. If they missed the bus, I drove them to school. If they forgot their lunch, I drove their lunches to school. I did do a million little things for them every day just like every parent does the world over. But the difference was they ended up having to do a lot of stuff for themselves, too, as well as for me. And they probably didn’t even think about it. It was just the way it was.

  Except it was obvious to me now that Benjamin didn’t really think he could count on me, his mother, to be there for him. And he had very good reason to think that. Since he had been a toddler, he had somehow understood that he needed to pay attention and look out for me. He was always “a little bit different” in school, in the neighborhood, and to the rest of the family. His grandparents and his aunts and uncles and cousins lovingly razzed him about his excessive talking, his constant questioning, his big confident personality, and the uncontrollable volume of his voice. But in reality it was me who was always a little bit different. Benjamin was extremely precocious early on. No doubt about that. He tended to push boundaries, he talked (loudly) all the time, he was not afraid to ask questions, as well as declare exactly what was on his mind. Well, duh! Of course he did! He had to make sure he knew what was going on all the time! Most of Benjamin’s “annoying traits” may have simply been survival skills that had evolved in order to take care of me and, initially, of his younger brother. I am certainly no child psychologist, but it’s easy to see how skills like self-confidence, assertiveness, and even his loud, exuberant tone of voice would have had to be developed in order for him to do his job in the family.
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  Each of my kids, in different ways, formed little parts of their characters and personalities that they could use to effectively look out for me. Patrick is an extremely skillful, patient, and compassionate teacher and coach. The kids he has coached throughout the years, since he was fourteen, in both diving and gymnastics, have always adored him and respected him, and their strength and skills have improved under his instruction. I often wonder how many millions of times he had to either tell me or remind me of something or show me how to do something. Patrick is also extremely competitive and can, at times, be fierce, stubborn, and aggressive. I wonder, too, how many millions of times he had to stand up for me even when he was little. And Kassidy. Kassidy can be tough and bossy, but she has always been there, explaining things to me, asking if she could help me with dinner, asking if I wanted to play a game, asking if I wanted to read or watch TV with her, asking if I needed help at the grocery store, and always asking me how my day was. In essence, Kassidy and I really did grow up together.

  Because Jim was gone most of the time, first the three of us, the boys and I, and then later, after Kassidy was born, the four of us, all played together. We read together. We took hikes beyond the backyard, exploring the creek and looking for “quicksand.” We sometimes just ate cereal or toast or ice cream for supper. We often laughed together about goofy stuff. There were a million little inside jokes that we shared. We listened to tons of music at the house and when we were in the car going somewhere. We frequently danced around and sang, totally uninhibited. Even Patrick sang along when he was little. As the boys got older, into later middle school and high school, they went off and did their own thing, but they continued to always check in and check up on me. By that time, too, Kassidy had stepped in and had started to take over a lot of the responsibility for my welfare. Just as with Benjamin and Patrick, I doubt I knew that she was even doing it, and I doubt she knew she was doing it.

  Listening to Benjamin open up and really talk to me on our walks during the spring of 2003 made me realize for the first time how much I depended on him, and in fact, on all three of my children. This is the first time that I actively thought about how much they did for me almost every day. I began to think about how crazy and disorganized and disruptive a mother I really was. Our household rarely had any kind of consistency. As much as I needed and loved daily routine and structure, more often than not I wasn’t able to actually pull it off, and chaos often ensued instead. I began to feel absolutely horrible about myself, and the way I had raised my kids. And I began to take Benjamin’s battles in school as the thing that proved my point. Maybe not in so many words, but I began to tell myself that I had to figure out once and for all how to grow up. Not to act like a grown-up, but to be a grown-up.

  17

  Perfect

  —Alanis Morissette

  As I slowly realized how different I was from other moms, I began to think about and question other aspects of my so-called life. For example, maybe I wasn’t really that good of an aerobics or Spin instructor. I became obsessed with comments that I heard from gym members about my classes and compared them with comments I heard about other instructors and their classes. I became overly sensitive to other people’s remarks and opinions about the way I taught my classes. I would almost always pay more attention to what one person didn’t like about my music, my style, my routine, my shoes, whatever, and less to the twenty or thirty people who loved everything and thanked me for a great class! I started to pay attention to people who left my classes early and to notice when my regulars didn’t show up. And I took these things personally. I started cranking out dozens of new Spinning CDs, with fresh and often unusual tunes—one-hit wonders from the 1970s and ’80s, movie and TV theme songs, music from Broadway musicals, and always an abundance of classic rock! I was constantly trying to be fresh, fun, and original. I started to make my CDs longer, and my classes consequently became longer—and harder. I thought I had to prove myself as the toughest, most demanding, most dedicated, and strongest instructor wherever and whenever I taught. I think I was probably trying to prove how genuine I really was, somehow. Because inside I felt so much like a fraud.

  I began to question my marriage. I watched other couples that I knew more closely, and realized that Jim and I were different. Jim was demanding and critical when he was home, and yet he also chose to be away most of the time. I didn’t understand how those two qualities could exist at the same time in the family, and in our marriage. How could he want to control everything and yet still want to be gone all the time? Maybe it really wasn’t working. Or maybe I wasn’t working correctly. Maybe it was me that was the problem.

  I also never quite understood why there was never any money. Sure, Montgomery County was an expensive place to live, and I paid to have the kids involved in lots of activities like summer camps, dance classes, gymnastics, swim and dive teams, theater productions, piano and voice lessons. But because I was home, we never had to pay for day care. We didn’t take vacations, and rarely ate out. I was careful and watched every dime I spent, cutting out and using coupons for the grocery store, and shopping the sales, the secondhand shops, and clearance racks. Jim had a great job with a six-figure income, complete with corporate credit cards and comprehensive benefits and health care for all of us. I worked only part-time, but pulled in a decent five-figure annual income. Still, when I used my debit card at the checkout of the grocery store, I was often turned away for insufficient funds. Jim would get furious with me if I wrote checks to the school for class pictures, or to the exterminator for our annual termite inspection, without asking his permission first. I was often told, “That credit card is dead. Sign this new one and use it instead.” There were bounced checks, late fees, and furtive late-night trips to the bank so Jim could “move money around.” And then there was the chronic nighttime behavior. Jim was always remorseful afterward when I told him about a really bad night in bed. He went to several doctors, tried various medications, and willingly participated in several sleep studies over the years, but he didn’t ever get any conclusive answers or reliable treatment.

  I talked with my sister Barb, with my brother Mark, and with several of my friends at different times, not about any specifics of Jim’s and my situation, but in more of a general way. I was trying to figure out if what Jim and I had in terms of our marriage was common or normal. I didn’t really think so, but a lot of what I thought was often wrong. I was, after all, constantly reminded how naive, unreliable, and simpleminded I was. I am guessing that my sister, brother, and friends all saw pretty clear answers to my bumbling questions and obvious warning signs in my remarks about marriage and money as I searched for clarification, but nobody ever pushed me to explain further.

  About this time, I began to be the Queen of Volunteering. Everywhere—at church, at the studios and theaters where Benjamin and Kassidy took dance classes and performed in musicals, at the county pool where Patrick dove as part of a national traveling team, at our neighborhood pool where Kassidy swam and dove in the summertime, and at both the high school and the middle school. Many of these volunteer opportunities had an added financial benefit. If I volunteered at the studio, for example, I was offered a significantly reduced tuition for dance classes and performance fees. The ironic thing is, the more I volunteered, the more I worked, the more I tried to be the most perfect wife, financially responsible mother, dedicated parishioner, and best-liked fitness instructor of the entire world, the worse I became at every single one of those things.

  I had faked my way through my life ever since I had been hit on the head. I acted how I thought I was supposed to act. I did stuff because I saw other people do it. Jim always made his viewpoints very clear to me. I knew when I was doing something right or something wrong by the way he treated me and by the way he talked to me. I lived to see his genuine smile and not the scary one. I lived to hear the words “I want to grow old with you” instead of “You are always such a stupid frigid bitch!” I desperately wanted
Jim’s approval, and because of this, when he was home I was nothing but nervous and jumpy, which made things worse, and then he would disappear again on another business trip or another endless project. So as time wore on, I began to take my imitation to a whole new insane level. Yet at the same time, I still didn’t entirely understand what the rules were for this game of life. The results were predictably disastrous.

  18

  Hello, Goodbye

  —The Beatles

  In the fall of 2006, Benjamin was accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, California, for the January 2007 term. I had never seen him as excited as the day he got his acceptance letter in the mail. Patrick had graduated from high school the previous June, and had accepted a diving scholarship at the University of Maryland in College Park. I questioned Patrick’s choice of school, but he was thrilled with his decision and was positively beaming as we moved him into his freshman dorm. Kassidy was a freshman in high school, taking a heavy academic load and continuing to dance every single day.