Throughout the meal, Robin pecked away at his beans, cranberries, and militantly gravy-free potatoes. His grandpa Cliff kept riding him, from across the table. “Have a little turkey, man. It’s Thanksgiving!”
When Robin finally blew, it was geothermal. He started screaming, I don’t eat animals. I don’t eat animals! Don’t make me eat animals!
I had to take him outside. We walked around the block three times. He kept saying, Let’s go home, Dad. Let’s just go home. It’s easier to be thankful there.
We got back to Madison and finished the holiday alone together. He started the treatment the following Monday afternoon. He slid into the same fMRI tube his mother once disappeared into. The techs asked him to hold still, close his eyes, and say nothing. But when they played him the Moonlight Sonata, my son laughed and shouted, I know that song!
-
“WATCH THE DOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN.” Robin lay tiny in the scanner, staring at the image on the monitor above him. Pads held his head swaddled in place. Martin Currier sat at the panel in the control room. I sat next to him. He coached Robin through the earbuds. “Now let the dot move to the right.”
My son fidgeted. He wanted to click a mouse or reach up and swipe the screen. How?
“Remember, Robbie. No talking. Just relax and hold still. When you’re in the right mood, the dot will know it and start to move. Just stay with it and let it travel. Try to keep it at a middle height. Don’t let it go too far up or down.”
Robin held still. We watched his results on a monitor in the booth. The dot jigged and jagged like a water strider on the surface of a pond.
Currier walked me through it again. “He’s basically practicing mindfulness. Like doing meditation, but with instant, powerful cues steering him toward the desired emotional state. The more he learns how to get into that state, the easier that state is to get into. Get into it often enough, and we can take away the training wheels. He’ll own it.”
I watched my boy play a game of Blind Man’s Bluff with his own thoughts: Colder, colder, warmer…
Currier pointed as the dot jerked toward the upper left quadrant. “See? He’s frustrated. Now he’s getting angry. Maybe mixed with a little sadness.”
I pointed at the right-hand center, the place Robin was trying to reach. “What does this represent?”
Currier gave me that playful look that so annoyed me. “Step one of Enlightenment.” Half a minute passed. Then another. The dot settled down and drifted back toward the screen’s center. “He’s getting the hang of this,” Marty whispered. “He’s going to be fine.” Which made me anxious in whole new and creative ways.
I never knew what passed through my son’s singular head at any given moment. Few days went by when he didn’t surprise me. I know less about the planet he lived on than I know about Gliese 667 Cc. But I do know that when Robin settled into a groove, few things could deflect him. The dot swung in sullen, wary circles. It crept rightward under his nudging, even as it nudged him back. Massy and reluctant, the dot moved like a floater in your eye when you try to look at it. It crept, rocked back, and crept again, like a car getting pushed from a snowbank.
The prospect of victory excited Robin. Right at the finish line, he laughed, and the dot veered into the lower left quadrant. Inside the tube, Robin whispered, Shit, and the dot shot wildly around the screen. Contrition was instant. Sorry to curse, Dad. I’ll do the dishes for a week.
Martin and I started laughing. So did the techs. It took a minute for everyone to sober up and continue the session. But Robin had found the trick of it, and after a few more false starts and faster recoveries, my son and his dot achieved their joint goal.
A tech named Ginny adjusted Robin’s position in the scanner. “Wow,” Ginny told him. “You’re a natural at this.”
Currier tweaked the software and started a new run. “This time make the dot as big as the background shadow. Then hold it there.”
This new dot sat at the center of the screen. Behind it sat a paler disk, the target that Currier asked him to aim for. The dot shrank and grew in spasmodic concert with a different region inside Robin’s head. “We’re training intensity now,” Currier said. The dot bobbed like an oscilloscope wave or the bouncing volume-level lights on an old stereo. Robbie fell into a trance. The fluctuating dot calmed down. Gradually it grew from dime-sized to a half-dollar. He brought it into the target zone, then overshot. That upset him, and the dot fell away to nothing. He started again, lifting it on the wavering power of his mood alone.
Each time the dot aligned with the template size, it turned dusky rose. When the dot filled its background shadow long enough to glow, the scanner resounded with a short, victorious bell, and the dot reset.
“Now see if you can get it to turn green.” New feedback for new parameters of affect. I thought Robin might revolt. He’d been in the scanner for almost an hour. Instead, he cackled with pleasure and tranced out again. Soon enough, he’d learned how to run the dot through a rainbow of colors. Currier smiled his wry, dry smile.
“Let’s put this all together now. How about a green dot, the size of the background shadow, all the way on the center right? Hold it there for as long as you can.”
Robbie nailed the day’s final assignment fast enough to impress everyone. Ginny released him from the scanner, flush with success. He trotted into the control booth, swinging his palm above his head for me to high-five. His face had that look it got when I spun a planet into being for him at night: at home in the Milky Way.
That’s the coolest thing in the world. You should try it, Dad.
“Tell me.”
It’s like you have to learn to read the dot’s mind. You learn what it wants you to think.
We scheduled a follow-up for the next week. I waited until we’d left the building before grilling him. Currier could have his scans and data sets and AI analyses. I wanted words, straight from Robin’s mouth. And I wanted them for myself.
“How did it feel?” I wanted to hand him a picture of Plutchik’s wheel and have him point to the exact spot.
Still triumphant, he head-butted my ribs. Weird. Good. Like I could learn to do anything.
The words puckered my skin. “How did you get the dot to do all those things?”
He quit the billy-goat butting and turned serious. I pretended I was drawing it. No. Wait. Like it was drawing me.
-
THEY WANTED ROBIN ALONE for the second session. Currier thought I might distract him. As part of that painful feedback-training called parenthood, I surrendered Robin to the power of others.
I could tell things had gone well when I picked him up at the lab. Currier looked pleased, although he played his cards close to his chest. Robin was walking on air, but without the usual mania. A strange new awe possessed him.
They gave me music this time. Dad, it was totally crazy. I could raise and lower the notes, and make them go faster and slower, and change the clarinet to a violin, just by wanting it!
I cocked an eyebrow at Currier. His smile was so benign it made me queasy. “He did great with the musical feedback, right, Robin? We’re learning to induce connectivity between the relevant regions of his brain. Neurons that fire together wire together.”
Astonishingly, Robbie let another man tickle him on the most sensitive part of his ribs. Currier said, “‘For use almost can change the stamp of nature.’”