Following Ezra (14 page)

It began innocently enough, when he received a gift of a single two-inch-long wooden Thomas figure. I rarely see him actually play with the train. Rather, he carries it around the house, sometimes holding it close to his face, intently examining its details. He shows more interest in the sheet that came folded inside the plastic box, a roster with photos and descriptions of half a dozen other train characters. He carefully guards the sheet, and before long knows each character, identifying it by its distinctive coloring and unique facial features.

Soon, we buy him a second character, and Ezra does the same thing: closely scrutinizes it, puts it away in a box, and then carefully studies the sheet of other trains. In time, I watch his passing interest transform into passion and then infatuation, until giving Ezra a cute wooden train is like handing a crack pipe to an addict. The more Thomas he has, the more he craves. Something about the tactile sensation of holding these characters in his hands, or something about owning them—simply having them in his possession—seems to give Ezra an emotional lift. He shows so little awareness of other children—or anything else—that Shawn and I are happy to see him interested in something that other four-year-olds like. So we feed his habit, one train car at a time.

I realize that the Thomas fervor has gotten the best of me, too, the afternoon I pick Ezra up at preschool and drive him to a model-train specialty store housed in a building that is a replica of Los Angeles’s train station. By the time I notice the sign just inside the door warning parents to watch young children—or pay for damage—Ezra has dashed ahead of me, displaying not a trace of interest in the aisles of train equipment and the intricate, minutely detailed scale models of villages and cities. He keeps running until he finds what he is hunting for: a toddler-size table with an elaborate Thomas display featuring dozens of his beloved characters arrayed on endless curves of interlocking wooden tracks, on bridges, in train sheds.

“Thomas!” he cries with glee.

“You like Thomas?” asks a salesman, who appears out of nowhere. Before I can stop him, he has produced a chunky blue box, holding it out for Ezra to see. “Have you seen the Mountain Tunnel Set?” he asks. “Sixty pieces, two engines, the helicopter, you get a bridge . . .”

“Not today, thanks,” I say, trying to distract Ezra’s attention from the hundred-and-forty-dollar kit and back to the table with its tracks.

Too late.

For days and weeks, our family lives with Ezra’s newest fixation: the Mountain Tunnel Set. It becomes a mantra. “I want the Mountain Tunnel Set,” he repeats day and night. “But I
love
the Mountain Tunnel Set. I
neeeeed
the Mountain Tunnel Set.” I begin to understand how prisoners of war can be worn into submission through the mere process of repetition.

I suggest that he make it a birthday request, hoping that might put a stop to his incessant begging. Instead, it causes a new obsession: He begins compulsively counting the days to his fifth birthday. At least, I figure, that period will end when his birthday arrives. It is a few weeks away, but I can live with that. As the day nears, I imagine Ezra’s happiness at finally realizing his dream, smiling to myself as I picture him playing with his brothers on the playroom floor, guiding the little wooden trains over the tracks and through the tunnels.

When the day comes, Ezra awakens in the predawn hours, stumbles from his bed, and appears at our doorway in his blue dinosaur-print pajamas, then dashes to the living room and discovers a box half his size wrapped in the Sunday comics. Tearing it open, he squeals with happiness.

“The Mountain Tunnel Set!
It’s the Mountain Tunnel Set!
”

I smile at Shawn as we watch him peel away the wrapping paper, feeling a surge of happiness at seeing such joy in our son—such spontaneous elation in a boy who so often seems uncomfortable and discontent. I kneel down to help him open the box and set up the tracks. Ezra shows scarcely any interest in arranging the wooden train tracks. Instead, he takes out the train car characters that came in the box (and a few others we have thrown in), lines them up in a row, saying each of their names as he places them on the hardwood floor, and then begins perusing the back of the carton, looking at pictures of other Thomas sets. He’s not going to
play
with the set—at least, not the way that most kids do, creating imaginary adventures for the little engines. Having this set only seems to make him crave more: more bite-size wooden engines; more predictable characters that fall into neat categories—friendly, grumpy, young, old; more contrived facial expressions.
People
can fill Ezra with anxiety. Little wooden trains calm him down.

Each obsession arrives mysteriously and unannounced, like a phantom that sneaks into our home in the night and seizes my son, snatching his focus. I cannot predict when one will depart and another will arrive. Nor can I ever imagine what might catch his attention next.

After Thomas comes Gumby.
Gumby
, the bendable green clay man. We are visiting the home of one of Ami’s best friends when Ezra sneaks away to explore on his own, and emerges from one of the bedrooms holding a flexible Gumby figure he has stumbled upon. None of the children seems particularly attached to the toy, so the parents suggest that Ezra take it home. It quickly becomes his constant companion. He carries it with him to school, to the park, to the supermarket, and to bed.

Unlike Thomas, Gumby is unheard-of among the preschool set. To them, Gumby is practically extinct, a toy that has gone the way of record players and Lincoln Logs. Ezra doesn’t care (or notice) that his peers are taken with Game Boy and Yu-Gi-Oh! Ezra likes Gumby. Something about the simple body, the bright color, the fixed smile, and the friendly eyes appeals to him, and he wants more.

I search on eBay, placing bids of a dollar or two on two-inch rubber figurines that anonymous strangers are discarding from their garages: Pokey, Gumby’s orange horse sidekick; a pair of red bad guys called the Blockheads; and Goo, a blue, yellow-haired, bloblike mermaid. Ezra celebrates each new arrival. Late at night, in the glow of the computer monitor and in the midst of bidding wars over hunks of rubber, I occasionally pause to wonder why I am doing this—why I am helping my son to pursue his eccentric interests. Other boys Ezra’s age are trading Pokémon cards or are starting to play soccer and learn karate. When Ezra pulls out his Gumby collection, they just stare, as if he has pulled liverwurst from his lunch pail. As Ezra accumulates characters and videos and builds a mental storehouse of Gumby’s animated adventures, he is doing so entirely alone.

Of course, Ezra doesn’t even realize how isolated he is. One Saturday afternoon, I am walking in the neighborhood with him when we cross paths with a doctor we know.

“Say hello to Dr. Becker,” I whisper to Ezra as we approach.

He smiles. “Hello, Dr. Becker!” he says with enthusiasm. “Do you know about Gumby?”

The man just looks puzzled.

It isn’t difficult to see what captures Ezra’s focus and brings him comfort. His sensory wiring makes normal sensations painful: He covers his ears at sudden noises and seems agonized by eye contact. Gumby doesn’t change much, barely moves, and asks nothing of him. It is Ezra’s small effort to exert some control, to make his world easier to take.

That might also explain the red period. For two years of his life, Ezra insists on wearing only red clothing: red tops, maroon sweatpants, bright red Stride Rites. He has a red fleece jacket and a red backpack and red sweatshirts. It starts with shirts—in particular, a red T-shirt he began to favor around age four. After a while he insists on that shirt exclusively. If Shawn or I try slipping another one over his head, he wriggles out of it, shouting, “Red shirt! Red shirt!” We buy him a half dozen red shirts. On days at the end of the family laundry cycle, when the red items are scarce, he wails and squirms and tosses clothing across the room.

Anytime he has a choice of color—crayons, felt markers, bedsheets, baseball caps—he chooses red. He insists on Red Delicious apples, ripe red tomatoes, Hawaiian Punch Slurpees at 7-Eleven, cherry Popsicles at the park. He methodically sifts through the Froot Loops like an archaeologist searching for treasure to separate out the red ones. He favors red characters in movies and TV shows—Lightning McQueen, the race car in
Cars
, Bob the Tomato in
Veggie Tales
, the entire family from the Pixar movie
The Incredibles
. He literally leaps with excitement when fire engines race by. Not because of the sirens and lights; he is simply thrilled to see so much bright red paint all in one place.

The red phase has its advantages. It is easy to shop for him, less stressful choosing his clothes in the morning, and when he wanders away from us and the other boys—as he so often does—at the supermarket or the park, we have only to search for the red blur streaking past.

Why red? I sometimes ask him. Ezra never has a reason. He just likes red. Press him more and he says: “It’s a bright color.” Ezra doesn’t like surprises, resists change, and craves sameness.

Yet his obsessions change unpredictably and mysteriously, coming and going like seasonal influenza viruses or diet fads. I can never discern why he grabs onto a particular fixation, can never predict when he will abruptly drop it, and can never imagine what he might seize upon next. Mysteriously, Thomas gives way to Gumby, Gumby to
Veggie Tales
,
The Simpsons
, and
Star Wars
,
Star Wars
to geography. For a while around age seven, he obsessively draws maps of the entire Western United States from memory, neatly fitting Montana into Idaho, precisely interlocking the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, producing detailed hand drawings with remarkable recall over and over and over.

Then come breakfast cereals. It isn’t so much about eating them. Ezra talks about Cheerios and Cap’n Crunch, reads their boxes, commits their ingredients to memory, yammers about their mascots, and launches into discourses about cereal taxonomy, drawing elaborate family trees of the Kellogg, General Mills, and Post clans. Toucan Sam—the Froot Loops spokesbird—and the Trix rabbit feel larger than life to him. He treats the nutritional panel on Rice Krispies and Life like sacred texts, reciting calorie counts and grams of sugar per serving like holy mantras.

Visiting the homes of friends or relatives, Ezra blurts out a question to the first person he encounters: “What kind of cereal do you have here?”

Usually he is met by stunned silence, as the host tries to make sure she has heard correctly. “Cereal?” she says. “Oh, can I get you a snack?” By then, Ezra has scurried past and found his way, uninvited, to the kitchen, where he is rapidly opening and shutting one cupboard after another, quickly scanning in single-minded pursuit of Cocoa Krispies.

“You want a cookie, sweetie?” the hostess will say. “How about some yogurt?” The first couple of times this happens, I am as mystified as anyone. I feel alternately chagrined at his behavior and frustrated that I can’t figure out how to turn off whatever it is that compels it. I understand that it has little to do with eating cereal. Ezra simply feels a need to see what products are there. Being in a house without knowing what cardboard boxes lurk in the cupboards fills him with an intolerable anxiety. That knowledge makes his world more complete. Weeks or months later he will spot adult acquaintances at the library or in the drugstore and recollect their breakfast choices with perfect recall.

“Hi, Bonnie,” he says. “Do you still have Post Honeycombs?”

Those encounters leave people both stupefied and charmed. And so am I. As Ezra grows and develops, I live with a juxtaposition of feelings: concern about what might capture his fancy next and fascination and pride in my son’s ability to master a topic and use it to engage with other people. Even if that subject is breakfast food.

I do understand the instinct so many parents have to fight battles, trying to nudge children toward more mainstream pursuits. I gauge our other sons’ progress by the kinds of standard measurements most mothers and fathers use: We have watched Ami’s evolution through the ever-larger trophies he collects at the end of each baseball and soccer season, a series of student government positions, and friendships; Noam rises through the ranks at the karate studio, each new belt and patch marking another level of accomplishment, and makes his way through the Suzuki violin book, showing ever-increasing ability and focus. Tracking Ezra’s advancement is different. With each passing month and year, he grows more singular.

At some point I realize that is precisely the way to build a relationship with my son: through the trains, the Gumby figures, the endless trail of red. Instead of seeing his obsessions as traits to change, Shawn and I come to view them as opportunities to build a bond—a quirky, unpredictable, whimsical bond, to be sure, but a strong one. Instead of lamenting that we can’t have an ordinary conversation with our son about the Dodgers or sitcoms or what happened in school that day, we join him. We follow his lead.

Sometimes that brings me to unexpected places. I find myself sending my hard-earned dollars via PayPal to a guy in Missouri selling decadesold clay-animated characters, or standing in line at the Target store, my shopping cart filled with red jerseys and pajamas. Sometimes I pause and wonder whether we are doing the right thing.

Over time, though, I come to realize a reward: Ezra understands that another human cares about what he cares about. Slowly, over time, our connection grows, and so does his potential to have other relationships with people, friendships based on something more than Gumby.

That is why it is worth enduring what comes to be known in our family as the Homer incident—that awful outing to the Aahs!! store, an adventure that concludes when I finally drag him, sobbing and wailing, across Westwood Boulevard and back to the car. “I just wanted the
Homer
!” he keeps crying, his face distorted in exaggerated pain, his hands clenched with tension and pleading.