"Nothing at all-except he's the only one you might have learned fathering from. Did your father ever hug you?"
I thought about it. I tried to remember. I wanted to say yes, but I couldn't find any memories of him hugging me. Not ever.
I remembered one time . . . I had been leaving on a trip. It was my first real time away from home on my own. I felt proud that my parents trusted me. I hugged my Mom and she hugged me back, but when I hugged my Dad, he had just stiffened.
He hadn't hugged me back.
Birdie was looking at me. "What's that about'?" she asked.
"What?"
"That expression on your face. What were you remembering?"
"Nothing. "
"Uh-huh. He didn't hug you very much, did he?"
I said, "Not ever. Not that I can remember." I added, "He loved me. I know that. It's just that he wasn't a hugger."
"Uh-huh." She nodded. "So, don't you think that has something to do with how you're handling Tommy?"
I felt angry. "Are you telling me I can't raise my own kid?"
She grinned. "Yeah. I am. And you know something? I could say the same thing to ninety-nine percent of the people I meet. Anyone can make a baby, it doesn't take a hell of a lot of skill. Little Ivy made two of them. Does that qualify her as a skilled parent? You tell me."
I shook my head.
"Very perceptive. But she thinks she's doing okay, because she doesn't know any better. The truth is, she's doing the absolute very best she can. So are all the other parents in the world. That's the joke. The commitment of a parent is so total, so absolute that they give one hundred percent of themselves, one hundred percent of the time. I've seen whole families mortgage themselves into bankruptcy to buy an extra year of time for a child with an incurable disease. This is it, Jim: you do everything you know how to do, because you can't do anything more. My job is to let you know that there's more to know. There's always more. When you know what it is, you do it."
I folded my arms across my chest. "Cute," I said. "I have to tell you, I really hate this kind of stuff. It's always so glib."
She looked upset. "You really are well defended," she said. "There's not a lot of space there even for yourself-so how could there be any space left for Tommy." She held up a hand to cut me off. "No, I'm not going to explain that." She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then ran her hand through her already rumpled hair. "Jim, I don't know what's going on with you or where you came from, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to; but you've got a lot of big fat red buttons sticking out all over you, just waiting to be pressed. And every time someone presses one, you go off like a skyrocket."
I wanted to tell her about Jason and the Tribe. If she'd have asked me the right question, I would have-but she didn't. And I didn't volunteer it.
Why not?
I didn't want anyone to know what I had been or what I had done.
She must have seen it on my face, because she changed her tone abruptly. "All right, let me come at it this way. You think you know quite a bit about the Chtorrans, don't you?"
I nodded.
"And it's your considered opinion that the teams in Denver don't know as much as you do, isn't it?"
"Yeah." What was she leading up to?
"That's because you have firsthand knowledge that things are very different than they believe, right?"
"Damn straight," I said.
"Good. So why aren't you willing to give your own adopted son the same benefit of a doubt that you're giving the worms?"
"Huh?"
"Don't you think you ought to examine the human race's tentacles and strange habits with the same kind of unbiased observation? You've saddled yourself with the exact same kind of arbitrary judgments that you condemn the men and women in Denver for having."
"Birdie, I was raised old-fashioned . . .
"Good. That's a great excuse. That'll keep you stuck for a long time. You won't get results, but you'll always have a wonderful reason why not."
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I felt frustrated. I wanted to punch her. I wanted to cry. How did I get into this anyway? "Dammit, Birdie! I thought the job of a parent was to help a kid grow up to be a good human being."
"Who said it wasn't?"
"Well, then what are we arguing about?"
"I'm not arguing, Jim. You're the one who's raising his voice." I sat down again. She was right.
She said, "Look, Jim, you've got this whole thing confused with programming. Do you think your job is to make a duplicate of yourself? Don't be stupid; you'll just be condemning the kid to a lifetime of failure. He'll never be able to be as good at being you as you already are. See, here's the joke: you have no voice in how that kid turns out. It's entirely his responsibility."
"I'm sorry, Birdie, I don't get that."
"Good. So, let me ask it another way. Did your parents have anything to do with how you turned out?"
"Uh, not really."
"Right. They only provided the space for you to grow. You were in charge of the growing. Pretty lonely, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, it was."
"Yeah," she agreed. "That's the essential human condition, loneliness. Remember that. That's why we do everything we do. So, look, if your parents had nothing to do with how you turned out, why do you think you have anything to do with how your kids are going to turn out?"
"I hear what you're saying, I get what you mean, but I don't. I mean, it doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't. So, just remember what it was like for you as a kid. Do you get it, Jim? You can't teach your kid anything; he can only learn it for himself. All you can do is provide the opportunities for him to learn. Being a parent doesn't mean you own the child; it means you're entrusted with the responsibility of teaching him responsibility. Nothing more. You're performing a service for an adult who is still in the process of getting there-and that service is the creation of continuous opportunities for selfactualization and empowerment. What he does with them is up to him. The best you can do is be an example. He'll learn from what you do, not from what you say." She smiled. "That's the annoying part. You have to take care of yourself."
"It sounds selfish."
"It is," she agreed. "Listen, the only thing you can ever give your kids is your own well-being. They're going to look to you as the source of all well-being in the universe. If they don't see it in you, they're not going to know it's possible. You know, most parents go crazy with that. They think their job is to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice for their kids. Don't do that, Jim. You'll just drive them crazy, particularly when you start thinking that they owe you something for all that sacrifice. Don't expect it, because you're not going to get it. Growing up is a full-time job. They're not going to have much attention for anything else for a long time to come. Let them be the way they are, because they sure as hell can't be anything else."
"So, you're saying that it's all right if Tommy is . . . that way?"
She shrugged. "He's thirteen, maybe fourteen. Do you know how to change him?"
"No."
"Neither do I."
"So what do we do?"
She looked at me with a blank expression. "Nothing. We do nothing at all. Tommy's fine just the way he is." She went on, "See, this isn't about Tommy at all, it's about you. It's about your judgments. They're getting in the way of your willingness to express your commitment. The problem isn't with Tommy. Tommy doesn't have a problem with being gay-if he is. Maybe he isn't, we won't know until he's ready to tell us; but whatever he is, he's already handled it in a way that works for him. You're the one with the problem. And if you're not careful, you'll give it back to Tommy. Right now, you're telling him you don't love him."
"But I do!"
"I know you do. Or we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"But you're telling me there's nothing I can do!"