The second born

When C. was nine weeks old, my mother dropped him. On his head.

We were at my alma mater for a reunion weekend, and my parents were with us, in part to serve as babysitters and in part because my dad is an alumnus of the same lovely campus.

There is one problem with going to a university that is over 250 years of age: sometimes the walkways are a bit uneven. On that afternoon, we were walking down the main thoroughfare when my mother, who was holding tiny baby C. in her arms, stepped into a divot in the pavement and her knees buckled beneath her.

I, ever the control freak, was walking right beside her, pushing the stroller. When she went down, I was so close to her that I couldn't see what exactly happened, but I did see her let go of C.'s small form and I saw him hit the ground. I couldn't tell how hard he hit because of the angle, or what hit first, but I could see his head and his back bounce a bit when they hit the ground. (Thus, it's true: babies do actually bounce.) I scooped him up quickly and checked him for blood while he screamed hysterically and my mother keened beside me.

After a ride in an ambulance and X-rays and a lot of traumatic everything, it was determined that baby C. seemed completely fine. His mother and his grandmother, however, were forever scarred. We now refer to the incident as "The Day Grammy Fumbled C." Of course, it wasn't my mother's fault, and it was unavoidable, and she probably protected him from worse by not falling on him. But as with anything, it's hard not to replay the scene and run through all the what ifs.

It was also hard not to think of that day every single time something came up with C. over the last six years and wonder if he was truly "fine." Firstborn was crazy verbal as a toddler, but C. was not. Eventually, he had to go through three years of speech therapy. "Was it because he was dropped on his head as a baby?" my mother would ask me, tears in her eyes. "Did you tell the therapist I dropped him?"

Unlike Firstborn, C. is sensitive and dramatic. When he is upset, he has a tendency to throw himself on the floor and wail and yell. At times, Husband and I have looked at each other with questions in our eyes. Is something wrong with him? Is it because he was dropped on his head as a baby -- literally?

While I didn't have an issue sending Firstborn to Kindergarten "on time" even with a summer birthday, I wondered about C. Was he mature enough? Could he handle it? Would he be able to withstand a long private school day and adhere to the expectations?

I admit it: For much of his young life, I have wondered if C. is okay. I have tortured myself over how to protect him, how to keep him out of his big brother's dazzling shadow.

About a month ago, the phone rang. "We're going to test C. for the gifted program," the school psychologist explained. "I have been hearing some great things about him." Immediately, my reflex was to start hedging my bets. He doesn't warm up right away, I warned. He's shy. He needs to build rapport with a new adult. He might be too young for this kind of testing. Maybe we should wait until he is older.

"It will be okay," the psychologist said. "I will make sure he is comfortable first."

A few weeks later, we were in the guidance office at the school, having our meeting about C. The psychologist started talking about C.'s test scores, and I almost had to ask if she was talking about the right child, the right C.? It's not that I didn't think C. was bright, because I did. I knew he was bright, and artistic, and that he has a huge smile and an even bigger heart. I knew that children at the private school and now the public school loved C. and saw him as a leader. But I am being brutally honest when I say that I wondered if C. would always live in Firstborn's academic shadow. For Firstborn, things come easily and quickly... just like they did for me. My own little brother struggled his whole school career to live up to me, just missing the entire time. In my heart, I feared the same fate belonged to C.: that he would always be the also-ran. In the back of my head, the image still lingered too -- that while Firstborn has the privileged only-child, white-gloved babyhood, C. was dropped on his head. I wasn't able to protect him then, and I feared I wouldn't be able to protect him in the future.

Obviously, academics matter to me, but they are not the most important thing to me -- that spot is held by my children's happiness. My only goal in elementary school is for my children to love school. Entrance into the gifted program for me only holds value because it means that one day a week, my children go to a classroom where they are allowed to study subjects outside the box and play brain twisters and finish puzzles. It's an oasis away from the curriculum dictated by standardized testing and state standards. Every child should get the same opportunity, and it makes me a little sick that isn't the case. In the meantime, though, I am greedy because I want my kids to have it. Firstborn started the year in the program, and C. knew that.

So there we were, sitting in an office that used to be the classroom where I went to my own gifted class back in the '80s. The psychologist pointed out C.'s scores to us, and I had to hold back tears. The little baby who fell on his head, the toddler who dutifully went to speech therapy for three years and blew into horns and bit on sticks so that other children (and his own parents) could understand him when he spoke, the child who has to endure a cocksure, relentless older brother, scored as high as a child can score on the verbal section of his test.

He scored higher than his older brother did.

And I don't care if he is considered "gifted" or whatever, I know the tests are arbitrary, and I don't care what that means to society, and I know that it is hard to talk about how our children score on tests without sounding like McBraggalots and I know in the grand scheme it doesn't mean anything at all and it might even mean that he could have a harder life because sometimes these kinds of labels are hairshirts of their own and... and... and...

For that one day, it felt like a big, reassuring neon sign that said, "HE IS OKAY." And right now, I am hanging on to that. Tomorrow I will forge ahead and worry about the next issue, but I am going to hang like crazy onto the small signs that say something, anything, might be going well.