Along the path of life, milestones line the sides of the road to help us mark the passage of each step. Some of them are bigger than others, and they are different for each person. As parents, we use these milestones to keep track of the progress of our children. The first smile, first tooth, first step, first word.
For my daughter, the first word was early, every milestone was in its proper place. I used to think she had read Dr. Spock before she was born.
For my son, the first word came agonizingly slowly. He crawled and walked and teethed and smiled and laughed and sat up, all at appropriate times.
But the words didn’t come. And then finally, they did come. And they were bizarre. Out of context. Hard to comprehend.
Jeff had a communications handicap. He was born with global dysphasia, the inability to process receptive or expressive language.
Never mind the details. What’s important is he had excellent and extensive therapy, meeting with Mrs. Bette (Bette Molinari DeFusco, language pathologist) a minimum of once a week for five years. His schooling until the middle of second grade was in special schools with very special teachers.
One day, I was called into his school for a meeting, and told it was time to “mainstream” Jeffrey. I felt as though I were giving birth all over again.
After Jeffrey’s first year in public school, the child-study team told me it was going to declassify him. That meant, no more individualized education plan, which the teachers are obligated to follow in order to ensure he received the most thorough and efficient education possible. No more special requests. Jeff was to be treated like every other child.
Nervously, I called Mrs. Bette, who had guided Jeff’s education for the previous five years. “Do you think he’s ready?” I asked.
“Actually,” she said, “I was going to tell you Jeff doesn’t need to come to me anymore either.”
Suddenly, without warning, the umbilical cord had been snapped. I felt frightened, alone, and intimidated. But that was my problem. Jeff was fine.
For five years, Jeff had been my occupation.
My job was “mother of a learning-disabled child” and the job description included such tasks as doing at least an hour of therapy homework with him every day; translating his language into words; finding social situations he could handle and arguing with the child-study team, teachers, therapists and doctors.
It was a full-time job. And suddenly, I had been fired.
In his Hebrew classes, I had always made it a point to discuss Jeff’s learning styles with his teachers. I couldn’t picture him standing on the bimah speaking in English, let alone reading from the Torah. But his Hebrew school teachers assured me he was doing well and would be able to become a bar mitzvah.
His bar mitzvah on May 6,1995, therefore, marked more than a passage of time. It marked the passage of a miracle.
I never heard Jeff practice his Torah portion. He swore to me he was studying, but he didn’t want my help or interference, only coming to me with specific little problems. He had trouble memorizing one line, and we worked on it over and over. His d’var Torah was a little harder, since language still occasionally posed problems for him. But with very little help from me, he wrote it by himself.
He even wrote some of the rhymes for his candlelighting ceremony.
In keeping with the tradition of our synagogue, Congregation B’nai Tikvah in North Brunswick, N.J., Jeff led the Friday night service the night before his bar mitzvah. He was confident, competent and seemed completely at ease. It was hard to keep back the tears.
At his bar mitzvah, Jeff did a good job. Even when he stumbled during the Torah reading, there was no panic, just a calm kind of pause while he carefully sounded out the words to himself.
At this point, it had been several years since Jeff had seen Mrs. Bette. She and her husband came to his bar mitzvah. Bette even lit her own candle during the candlelighting ceremony. The photo of that moment hangs in her office, for other parents to see. “If Jeff Heller can master the language,” she tells the parents of her young patients, “your child can too.”
Jeff is now 16 years old, a junior in high school. He is learning to drive, another milestone. Academically, he has done very well. His classes are honors classes. Verbally, one wonders when he took the plug out. The words come fast and furiously, mostly appropriate, always highly intelligent.
He loves to read, to talk, to chat with friends all over the world on his computer. Oh, and he is helping Mrs. Bette learn how to use her computer.
His bar mitzvah was the turning point for me. It was then I began to accept the fact that Jeff could stand on his own without constant support.
He makes his own decisions, guides his own life and handles his own problems. And sometimes, he passes life’s milestones quietly. Just like the rest of us.