On Monday, Adam Scull of Write On America interviewed me as part of his interesting series of conversations with writers across the country. I’d originally introduced myself to him as a technical writer, since (can’t deny it) tech writing accounts for the bulk of what I do with words. So I expected questions about that side of the sport. But then somehow I blew past his only reference to that, and we focused instead on memoir writing.

Please click Adam’s photo to listen. If you prefer reading, the transcript is here.

When something important in life goes wrong, it colors our reaction to later experiences.

For example, back in the late 90s I owned a bunch of stock options that had been granted by my employer. One day, to everyone’s surprise and delight, the price of that stock began a very steep and seemingly endless climb into the stratosphere. Within a few months it had made me a millionaire (on paper). But then, just as unexpectedly, the bottom fell out. By the time I understood that this wasn’t just a temporary dip, it was too late.

Therefore, a few years later when home prices in my city began emulating that stock, I resolved not to make the same mistake twice. My wife and I sold our house at the peak. Smart move? Well—maybe. The two situations weren’t entirely comparable, because we still had to reside somewhere, and I’ve never been comfortable with my living situation since then. But selling was an effort to stay in control—to be a participant at least in unfolding events, to hold onto value even at the cost of giving up something else.

I’m telling that story simply to illustrate the effect past disappointment can have on future decision making: Once bitten, twice shy. Pain avoidance motivates the most basic kind of learning.

And there is pain, and loss, to be experienced in life, often with consequences far more dire than a mere financial setback. We don’t like to think about it, but each of us is vulnerable to drastic upheavals. Look at your own life or look at the headlines over the last month. Bad stuff goes down, and no one seems able to foresee or prevent it.

The experts in whom we like to put our trust typically appear to be as surprised and helpless as anyone else.

Naturally, each of us wants to minimize pain and improve life. But in trying to control outcomes, we tend to have imperfect results (as happened when I sold the house). And here’s the idea I’m struggling to express: In view of the fragility of peace and comfort, maybe we need to revisit our priorities. Perhaps we ought to try first of all to remember and appreciate the good in what we now have—as opposed to taking that for granted while grasping for something else.

Another personal story may illustrate this. Prior to my family’s misadventures in the dot-com and housing bubbles, we had a baby with acute problems that profoundly affected his development. Something bad—nobody knew just what—had happened to him prior to and/or during birth. My memoir is the story of our uphill struggle to make things right again. Or at least to make things less bad. Typically, anything lost (health, trust, etc.) is very difficult to restore fully. Even a partial restoration is no sure thing. But we knew the cause was worthy. And the campaign we launched on Joseph’s behalf led, for a time, into some of the most intense and stimulating and even exhilarating living I have ever known. But as he progressed along the pathway toward a condition that we viewed as his birthright (wellness), the going became more difficult, for all of us, and the impact on Judy and me became impossible to ignore. There came a point beyond which it made no sense to continue sacrificing assets we had in pursuit of something we might never achieve.

There may be differences of opinion as to just where that point was—but we crossed it. At speed.

I believe Judy’s death was one consequence.

Even so, despite knowing that we crossed it, and knowing what was lost when we did, I remain susceptible to temptations that could put our family on the same course once again. I must be careful.

Sometimes, having anything good at all seems almost miraculous. I hope this doesn’t sound like a platitude. The mindfulness I’m thinking about involves renewed commitment every day to maintain, yes, even defend, blessings that we will most certainly miss if we no longer have them. Examples of this overlooked maintenance might include:

• Getting exercise and enough sleep, managing stress, eating properly, etc.
• Using seatbelts and generally avoiding needless risks
• Following a budget, eliminating debt, reviewing financial goals
• Participating in and contributing to the community
• Seeking communion with the higher power

By the way, I write in order to understand, so this is addressed to myself as much as to anyone else. But as long as I’m writing it, allow me to wonder whether, in straining for outcomes that aren’t always realistic, we as individuals and we as a society are perhaps throwing away anything now in our possession that might be exceedingly hard to recover.

Yes, of course, aspiring for improvement is natural and good. That’s why I’ve never regretted the effort Judy and Joseph and I made to give him more options in life. This is simply an acknowledgment that common sense still applies.

It’s difficult to process news of the atrocity at the Boston Marathon, and the unspeakable malice behind it. Even worse is the fact that horrible stories come along so frequently now.

This one hit almost simultaneously with the news media’s reluctant acknowledgement of the ongoing trial of the abortionist.

Meanwhile, the country is still unbalanced by the most recent school shooting.

What’s next? Missiles from North Korea?

When I was young, everyone knew war with the Soviets could erupt at any time, and yet even that possibility (because it was only a possibility) pales next to the certainty that there will be further localized but grisly developments like the above.

Normal people recoil from these things. At least, I do. I cannot bear to read about the practices in Gosnell’s “clinic,” and I cannot imagine how people who worked there could sleep at night.

On the other hand, when I write about something, I know it’s good to be specific—to provide details, invoke the senses, to augment the reader’s experience. But nobody wants a heightened experience of that stuff. I sure don’t.

And yet accumulating events like these demand a response. I cannot hope to prevent the next expression of evil in this world, but I can examine my thinking and assumptions to see how they fit into the big picture—to evaluate whether I’m even a tiny part of the problem. Because it’s bountifully evident that the society of which I’m a part is not well. And reading about Gosnell reminds me of the position I argued during the med school admission interview described in chapter 4 of What About the Boy?.

In that long-ago interview, my questioners asked what I as a doctor would do with a hypothetical frightened teenage girl who came to me asking for an abortion. That wasn’t something I wanted to talk about. Assuming I became a physician, I did not expect to provide abortions. But when pressed I did finally say that someone determined to get one should not be denied.

For many years, I’ve believed that my failure to get into the medical school was due to that answer or at least to the way in which I expressed myself. But I say in the book that I still hold the same basic view. Because if doctors don’t provide something that a patient believes is necessary, doctors shouldn’t be surprised when patients then turn to less reliable resources—and suffer for doing so. (That story is included in the memoir to illustrate what was going on when my son’s doctors likewise declined to help him.)

My position was based on various unspoken assumptions, e.g., that, as President Clinton later put it, elective abortions should be safe, legal, and rare (rare, I guess, as amputations are rare) and that, as pro-choice people have claimed, the thing we’re talking about is just “a clump of cells.” Somehow, I never gave much thought to what was involved, nor did I imagine that the issue would lead in the direction it has.

For the first time since its publication, I feel an impulse to go back and alter something in my book. I don’t want it to convey the wrong message.

The girl asking for an abortion most definitely needs help. No doctor has any business shaming her or giving the impression that she’s being turned away. That does not mean that an abortion is the help she needs. I’ve finally reached the conclusion that my response in the interview merited the rejection I subsequently received.

Yes, abortion is legal. But it’s a stretch to call it safe, and it’s most certainly not rare. In most cases, at least, it’s far outside the scope of what caregivers or humane society should countenance. I was wrong have evolved.

Legislative bodies seem to enjoy designating this or that day, week, or month as a time for everyone to acknowledge the importance some worthy cause. To me, those proclamations generally seem like pointless exercises and a distraction from the things elected representatives ought to be doing. For example, I like plumbers as much as anybody, but who really cares if March 11 is World Plumbing Day?

National School Lunch Week, Great Outdoors Month, and their like come and go without affecting me in the slightest.

However, April, that cruellest of months, happens to have been set aside for commemorating two issues that have had devastating effects on my family and a great many others.

National Autism Awareness Month

A new study from the CDC tells us that the autism rate in the U.S. is now 1 in 50. That’s 80,000 kids each year. The population of, say, Gary, Indiana. Every year. And since boys with autism outnumber girls by a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1, slightly more than 3 percent of all American boys have an autism spectrum diagnosis.

With numbers like that, it’s entirely appropriate to call for us as a society to recommit to dealing with the crisis.

What we really want, of course, is visible progress toward (1) an understanding of the real causes, (2) effective treatments, and (3) prevention. Over the years, I’ve read a lot of articles and have attended a lot of presentations that gave the impression that we were further along the road toward those goals than we really are.

To the extent that progress is influenced by outlays of government money for research, perhaps legislative bodies might hasten things along. We can agitate for them to try, and many of us do, but I believe the people controlling the purse strings will always have other priorities.

Aside from that, the only option I can think of is to be aware. Those of us with children in our future ought to know as much as possible about the risk factors and early warning signs. (Lists of either are beyond the scope of this piece, but to pick an example here’s a rather scary item you might want to read.) I disagree with those who go out of their way to avoid scaring people, when fear could provide motivation to do something constructive.

Everyone contemplating having children should understand that screening and early intervention is key to improved outcomes for kids with developmental problems. Regardless of what your pediatrician may try to tell you.

And those of us as yet untouched by all this can endeavor to be understanding and patient when we inevitably encounter it in public.

Cancer Control Month

Cancer is the second most common cause of death in the U.S., exceeded only by heart disease. One out of every four deaths in the U.S. results from cancer. By my figures, that’s 625,000 people dying each year, some still young. The population of Boston, every year. Screening and therapies have improved over time, of course, and lots of people diagnosed with cancer do not die from it. Still, the number of new cases is increasing. As with autism, there’s an urgent need for continuing research, aimed at finding real-world solutions, and for awareness. As with autism, the reality of a diagnosis may be closer than any of us thinks.

Again with the scare tactics. Forgive me. Normal human thinking seems to involve an optimism bias. That is, we know bad things happen to other people in situations like ours, but we tend to believe they won’t happen to us. However, learning a little about those bad things might prepare us for making wise choices.

There doesn’t appear to be one single cause for either of these threats. Genetics is evidently involved in both, or more likely there’s an interaction between genes and circumstances. Looking at my own family, I see a few risk factors for both autism and cancer. (There’s some overlap.) But no doubt other families manage to get by just fine with the same cocktail of hazards. My family also made conscious decisions to reduce our risk—unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

These are very complicated subjects, and it’s not surprising that confusion still reigns. (I do think we’ve got it in us to do a little better.) I guess, if the government can’t pay for a resolution, their calling attention to the crises is at least a nice gesture.

TS Eliot’s poem The Waste Land notes that April is the time when our world should be regenerating after a long winter. In the poem, that renewal brings pain, because it suggests a more carefree time in the past. For me, and for a great many others, fresh spring air evokes memories of a time before autism (or something like it) took my first child and cancer took my first wife.

Now, my daughter (a perfect representation of new hope in my own life story) reminds me that I shouldn’t end this with such a defeatist note. Given that we do live with the threat of these things, and sometimes more than a threat, we also need reminders that there may yet be profound joy on the other side of loss. In that spirit, here’s the concluding scene of The Joy Luck Club, which is often in my mind. Just click the image below.

Hat tip to Talk About Curing Autism for the graph above.

An edited version of this article appeared in The San Diego Reader.

Please don’t misunderstand. I’ve always thought the space program was a great thing. I watched TV coverage of America’s first manned space launch with my fourth-grade class, saw the Moon landing with high school friends, and as an adult worked many years supporting unmanned launches from Cape Canaveral. Over time, this effort has resulted in dramatic changes in the way we all live that are now taken for granted (e.g., satellite TV). It has often prompted a shared sense of pride and community. And the demonstration of sheer brainpower is impressive for its own sake.

But here’s a question that has bothered me for years.

Since we, as a society, can do what is depicted in this astonishing video (please do click the image and watch it), and since similar massive efforts are also deemed necessary to understand the causes of anomalies and mishaps such as airplane crashes…

Is it unreasonable to expect the same level of smarts to be deployed, with the same sustained focus, in the cause of improving our response to developmental disability?

When my son Joseph was born in 1985, I naively but naturally expected to see that happen. Then, as his mom and I began pursuing leads in hopes of finding the answers he needed, I realized how very many other families were grappling with the same problem. Generally, they did so with no help from the acknowledged experts.

Important work is being done, here and there. I know a highly motivated researcher at George Washington University, who tells me much of her time is spent trying to secure funding for continued work. Last year I wrote about attending the very stimulating “Frontiers in Neural Disorders” conference in San Diego. The speakers had interesting things to say, but I perceived no sense of urgency. Occasionally an upbeat report appears in the news. But actual breakthroughs–the sort of thing that would give people like Joseph additional options in life–appear to be generations away.

We as a society all suffer as a result. Just saying.

Last year, a reviewer of What About the Boy? observed that the story is in the tradition of the “reluctant hero.” I wasn’t familiar with that term. I felt vaguely uncomfortable with the suggestion that my deeds or motives in trying to help my son were being seen as heroic. The alternative (not trying to help him) had been unthinkable, and so (along with my wife Judy) I simply did what had to be done. Surely, that merits no special credit. But perhaps my uneasiness with the word lies in concepts absorbed from the general culture.

The traditional image of a hero originated with the ancients, who created semi-divine figures like Hercules, famed for subduing monsters and otherwise rising to challenges beyond the capacity of ordinary mortals. Some modern figures are in the same tradition. Thus we have Superman (“faster than a speeding bullet,” etc.), as well as quasi-super characters such as Rambo or those for whom success is never very much in doubt (Indiana Jones, James Bond, et al.). In short, these guys are tough, fearless, clever, confident, and probably good-looking to boot. They’re also not particularly realistic (at least, not outside elite special-ops units in the military).

Their tales may be entertaining, but don’t intersect with life as I’ve known it.

I began writing What About the Boy? when I realized that my family’s situation was not unique, and that many families with developmentally disabled kids were, like us, moving heaven and earth in all-out attempts to improve their children’s options. In writing, I was simply putting a face on the experience of a chunk of the population that was and remains far too sizable.

OK, so what heroes are realistic, or recognizable? Actually, these exist in our culture as well. Examples in recent movies would include:

• Frodo, in the Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Billy Bean, manager of an underdog baseball team in Moneyball
• Vincent Freeman in Gattaca
• My favorite, Wei Minzhi, the 13-year-old substitute teacher in Not One Less

These are people who wrestle with personal weaknesses, doubts, or shortcomings. They have no special gifts, other than an understanding of what they must do if they are to live with themselves. They all face moments at which the easier course, by far, would be to admit defeat.

• Who could forget Frodo’s agonized expression as he acknowledges that no one else can accept the unwelcome task given to him? Despite the astonishing visual effects and pageantry of this saga, its strongest aspect is a message that staying the course costs Frodo almost more than he can bear.
• Billy still relives the points at which his life went off the rails, and responsibility for a losing team opens old wounds. The effort to save the team is powered by his undimmed determination to make things right–for himself and indeed for others like him who have ended up on the margins. But this means ignoring conventional wisdom, infuriating his colleagues, and taking a huge personal risk.
• Because of his genetic makeup, Vincent is expected to accept a menial job and second-class status. By far, that would be the easier course for him. But by an act of sustained willpower, he overcomes that limitation and proves that by golly he does control his own destiny.
• Unwilling to lose even a single student from her rural Chinese school, Wei Minzhi sets out on an odyssey to the city to rescue a runaway 10-year-old boy and bring him home. Every step of the way leads to a new obstacle, but incredibly, she never considers giving up

I like these stories, but each of them reaches an uplifting conclusion within a reasonable time frame. In life, things can remain more problematic. We can choose to do the right thing, confront personal demons, make sacrifices, and still not see the hoped-for reward. Or we can achieve enough to know that we’ve made a good choice but still not enough to claim victory. The struggle goes on.

I think the struggle goes on throughout life. I think this is a large part of what life is all about. That being the case, everyone who shoulders a burden that really cannot be ignored—as opposed to running away from it—is a hero. A reluctant hero, perhaps. I guess this is why we identify with stories that define this problem.

Last year I posted a list of the most interesting new books I’d read during 2011. With one or two exceptions, I focused that time on brand-new works by unknown writers. Many such writers continue to deserve every break they (we) can get. However, I’ve also been reading plenty of authors who are well-established or even famous. Usually, doing so reveals the reasons for their success, and that’s instructive. Therefore, my list for 2012 includes several who need no introduction as well as a few who’ve yet to be noticed (and with less concern for the date of publication). For expanded reviews, click the titles.

By the way, just a reminder: Books make excellent gifts.

Patrimony, Philip Roth

The big news about Roth is his recent decision to write no more. Fortunately, he has produced more than enough edifying prose to keep readers busy well into the future. I worried that this memoir about his father’s declining years might be depressing. (Some readers have been hesitant about tackling my story for the same reason.) But in life, trouble comes to us all, and the interesting thing is the human response–whether it makes sense, whether the people responding are recognizable, whether there’s a takeaway. For me, the takeaway of Patrimony is that despite all the suffering involved, death and loss can be endured and more than endured. In a way, they can even be a way of defining and appreciating life.

Oxygen, Carol Cassela

Because of my background I’m a sucker for both nonfiction and fiction on the subject of medicine. That goes double when a disabled child is involved. But aside from this novel’s specific appeal to me, it should make good reading for anyone. The writing is exceptionally good. The dialog is perfect.

Our Lady of the Forest, David Guterson

This story revolves around a character who is a vital presence at the outset, with disturbing memories, and then, as she is seen more and more from the perspective of others, gradually becomes objectified. When Guterson’s characters speak, the dialog is wonderful. Our Lady should be read aloud. The story should be enacted. To me, it feels almost more real than actual life.

Replica, Lexi Revellian

This novel gets an A+ for convincing characters and dialog and–especially appreciated–for a wonderfully unique story idea (to which I cannot do justice in the space available here). The main drawback is that, having finished, I found it sad to think how many more books I’d have to read before finding another as enjoyable. Quite likely her Remix, which is in my queue, will provide a fix…

Yearning, Marcela Mendez

What I like best and especially recognize here is Amanda’s ever-renewing hope that all her efforts will finally be rewarded. At first, the reader can see it coming: She thinks this month she’ll finally become pregnant, and we know she won’t. Later, her success seems so inevitable that I at least thought the story was basically over. But no, it’s not that simple, either in life or in good fiction. That part is particularly well handled.

Goodbye for Now, Laurie Frankel

Inspired by the grief his girlfriend feels for her recently-deceased grandmother, a software engineer applies his rare talents to the challenge of dynamic video chats and emails with the dead. This turns out to be possible because of all the digital data people leave behind nowadays in the form of Facebook posts, emails, photos and video, etc. As one of his partners in the enterprise cleverly observes, “You are what you tweet.” The story is a serious effort to explore questions like the nature of consciousness and the correct response to death and sorrow.

The Cave, José Saramago

This novel shows how modern life is robbing our lives of meaning, or even reality, until we are in danger of reenacting Plato’s allegory of the cave. If that message sounds overly didactic, it’s softened by the human warmth in the relationships between the four principal characters–five, if we include their dog, as we should. It’s great writing. But I wish the author had inserted paragraph breaks and used conventional punctuation.

The Girl Who Tweaked Two Lion’s Tails, Pierre Van Rooyen

This is a riveting story that kept me up late at night. Further, I’m confident that in the right hands it could be made into a blockbuster movie. It has the feel of being based on actual people and/or events. But maybe that’s due only to the way the story is presented.

Strange Worlds, Paul Clayton

The variety from one story in this collection to the next is refreshing, but what they mostly have in common is depiction of a society that could plausibly be in the future for ours. Perhaps a future that’s uncomfortably close. The prospect of stepping into it in our own lifetime may have been the author’s motivation for writing. That is to say, these are cautionary tales.

Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West, Blaine Harden

The justification for any government’s existence is to enable its people to have more abundant lives. Any government, any leader, will miss that mark when it recognizes no authority beyond its own lust for power. Then, like the Kim regime, it begins lying to its citizens and demonizing and then persecuting those who might stand in its way. I believe it’s vitally important to acknowledge the effects of this very extreme example. My heart breaks for the multitudes still living the life Shin escaped. And I pray that my own country doesn’t move further in that direction.

I thought, at first, we were there. He looked directly at me, a steady, relaxed gaze, which in itself would be a remarkable thing for him to be doing, and should have been a clue. Standing in the washed out glow of a streetlight, he leaned back against a yellow VW Beetle with both hands thrust deep in his pockets and regarded me, smiling faintly. As usual, I could only guess at what he found amusing.

Then I understood that it was really I who was looking at him. I pulled my attention away for a moment, not wanting to run the show. It seems I was straddling my old 10-speed, resting sweaty forearms on the handlebars. I looked down and prodded the toe clip, idly spinning the pedal on its axis.

“I never taught you how to ride a bike,” I murmured sorrowfully. I looked up again to see him striding through the garage and into the house.

Now we were in the dining room, still standing, the table between us. It was my own dining room, a place in which we’d both been innumerable times, but not like this. On the other hand, I sensed something archetypal about this encounter, an elemental cross-generational thing, possibly even a scene we’d rehearsed before.

He said, “I think someone is dreaming about this, and maybe planning to tell the world about my inner life.” He winked.

I switched to my earnest voice. “The important thing would not be telling secrets, but rather our simply being able to do this, you know, really.”

He nodded. “We could do this. If the me who’s here met the you who’s there.”

Zany laughter bubbled inside me. “But the you who’s there is the one everybody knows. There’s not much difference between the me who’s here and the me who’s there. Is there? But nobody has seen the you who’s here.”

He opened a varnished wooden box on the table, put his hands inside, and concentrated on doing something behind the raised lid.

“Um, yeah,” he said absent-mindedly. “Maybe people need glasses.”

I said, “I hate to say this, but there’ve been other dreams when you were dead. We were grieving!” My words stumbled out. “I thought those dreams meant, you know, that it was all over, and there was no more hope of reaching you.”

He glanced up from whatever he was doing in the box. “Ever hear anyone say you take yourself too seriously?”

I could feel a line of sweat moving down my forehead. “God, I’m hot,” I muttered to myself. “What is wrong with me?”

“Why don’t you turn the pillow over?” he suggested.

“That does help. Say, I used to do that all the time when I was a little kid. It’s nice and cool. I’d forgotten that trick.”

He smirked. “I’m closer to being a kid than you are.”

“True. OK, you have any other words of wisdom for me?”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Well, look. I know for a fact that people say stupid things all the time. So it kind of stands to reason that there could be the opposite of stupid.”

“You should know that words like stupid rub me the wrong way.”

I mumbled an incoherent apology, something about the excessive latitude we allow some words. He wasn’t listening, so I said, “Son, has anyone ever said you were stupid?”

He looked up from the box and gazed into the distance with a noble, longsuffering expression, immobile as finely polished marble.

“I’m like a statue to you,” he observed finally.

“You’re no statue. You’re my boy.”

“People don’t have expectations of statues.”

“We see something made by man, we look within ourselves. If it resonates, then we admire it.”

He sighed. “What you have in your head, about me, is made by man.”

“But not you yourself.”

“Not me.”

“You’re not made by man.”

He snorted derisively, looking back inside the wooden box. “I’m sure you think man could’ve done a better job of it.”

“I don’t get it. Do you want people to have expectations of you, or not? Have you never had expectations of yourself?”

He rolled his eyes. “We go way back. I remember, same as you, what that was like. Thank you for trying.” He inclined his head formally. “Some of it was good. You should know by now that’s ancient history.”

“Because the you who’s there–”

“The me who’s there doesn’t give a shit any more. I learned you don’t pin everything on–.” He lifted a hand and made vague circular motions above his head.

“Now that you mention it, that’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you. What do you give a shit about? I’d like to know. Because all I ever wanted to do was help you succeed.”

“Boo hoo. There you go again. And shame on me. A boy gets to my age, he’s supposed to start helping the old man, right?”

“I’m not asking for that,” I said, a sob welling up within my throat.

He smiled brightly. “It’s almost breakfast time. Hungry yet?”

“I’d rather talk while we can. We never talk.”

“One of us never talks. The other one talks too damn much.”

“Hey, hey, a little respect wouldn’t be amiss.”

He grinned even more radiantly and leaned across the table to clap a surprisingly large and strong hand on my shoulder. “Come on, I think you can take a joke.”

“You want me to shut up?”

“Know what? I want you to eat. Here.” He stepped away from the box, holding a black tray arranged with crisp Japanese precision–a large brown bowl flanked by a pair of long, lacquered chopsticks. He moved around the table and set it before me.

“Well that’s lovely.” I slipped into a chair and lifted the lid from the bowl, discovering I was suddenly desperate for refreshment. “Is it–is this yogurt?” He wasn’t there. I regarded the chopsticks with concern.

I heard his voice, behind me now. I wanted to see him again but couldn’t muster the energy to turn over. “You don’t have the right tools. That’s been my problem all along. I don’t have a spoon to give you. You don’t have what I need, either. We make do with what we’ve got. Or else let it go. That’s OK too.”

“But people can find tools. Make tools. Invent something new.”

His voice now came from such a distance I scarcely heard. “Good luck with that.”

Morning had arrived. The day was breaking over Mission Trails Summit, where he and I had never once gone biking together. Breaking over the neighborhood streets, where backpack-laden kids would soon be heading for school, and where short school buses would be plucking up those who followed my son’s footsteps. It’s morning there. And there is no here.

If there has been a theme for this month, for me it has been caring.

Caring as in feeling anxiety and frustration when, for example, through a series of unfortunate events my younger son Braxton put a gash in his chin, requiring seven stitches—and then managed to reopen the wound the day after the sutures were removed.

Caring as in dreading the implications of an upcoming conference scheduled to address the fact that my older son Joseph no longer fits in at the center where he has spent the last few years. (I’ll say more about that later, when I know more. But right now the situation does not sound good.)

It’s human nature to feel some variety of care, about one thing or another, on an ongoing basis. I care just as much about my daughter Susannah as I do about her brothers, but these days (as far as I know) her life proceeds with little turmoil, or at least she’s able to handle issues as they arise with minimal interference from her mom and me. She brings me an algebra problem from her homework or she asks for a few bucks, and then all is well. These issues are neither urgent nor dire, and—also much appreciated—are easily solved. So far. I know not to take that blessing for granted.

In my life, the most acute examples of caring have come in connection with my role as a parent. Beyond that, life presents an endless menu of other potential concerns. Some of those opportunities merit more focus than others, but living means attending to them all in some fashion. Likewise, caring about an issue can lead to situations in which I can’t avoid noting a lack of care given it by other people.

We could all provide examples. Here’s one. An autism research center in Canada contacts me from time to time for input to support the various studies it runs. Most recently, they sent a questionnaire to be filled out by the developmental professional who works with Joseph. It came with a postage-paid return envelope, and consisted of a few sheets of questions with multiple-choice answers. The therapist accepted the package and said she would do it, for me (as if I were the beneficiary)—and then dropped the ball.

The study itself is a small matter from our point of view, in that the outcome is unlikely to affect Joseph’s life, but it’s disturbing to see a certain consistency in the professional’s failure to take that request seriously. Going back quite a few years, her colleagues have had a similar response to every request I ever brought them. (I allude to that here.)

The month’s theme probably got its start a few weeks ago when I reread a novel by Daniel Quinn. In a way, that story dramatizes a variant of an issue that’s at the heart of What About the Boy?: Life can present you with a problem that calls for a serious response. You can care very much about providing that response, even to the extent that providing it becomes bound up with your concept of who you are. If you can be satisfied with the extent of your own response (as I am at the moment with my responses to Susannah), all well and good. Disappointment begins if you think it would be appropriate for someone else to take a similar interest.