介绍： 032 | For the Boy Who Makes Waves

PROSPECTIVE buyers must wonder about the hard-packed runway of dirt in our backyard where grass won't grow. And the hasp and padlock on the refrigerator. They must wonder why the gate on our six-foot-high picket fence is p.e.r.manently bolted shut.

Deb and I hardly think ab...

介绍： 032 | For the Boy Who Makes Waves

PROSPECTIVE buyers must wonder about the hard-packed runway of dirt in our backyard where grass won't grow. And the hasp and padlock on the refrigerator. They must wonder why the gate on our six-foot-high picket fence is p.e.r.manently bolted shut.

Deb and I hardly think about these things. We've been with Michael for 11 years.

There are two runways inside the fence. One traces the edge of the house. The dog made this one. He sprints from window to window, tracking my location. Am I in the kitchen? Leaving the kitchen? Walking to the living room? Walking back to the kitchen? D'Artagnan's head pops up in each window as I pass. It might be cute if it weren't for the destroyed windowsills and muddy paw prints on the siding.

The other runway, in the center of our tiny backyard, belongs to Michael. It's a 10-by-3-foot stretch of shiny earth. There are three layers of sod beneath it, each one representing Deb's hope that this time the grass will take hold, this time the grass will take hold, this time ...

Once she placed lawn chairs over the spot, but Mike moved them. She tried a heavy picnic table, but it blocked the sunlight and the grass almost died anyway. So we moved the table and Mike finished the job with his pacing.

First thing in the morning, whether at 2 or 6 or 8, you can depend on Mike finding one of my leather belts, sneaking out the back door, and starting to pace on that patch of dirt, a brown packed surface, hard on dry days, slick on rainy days. What could be better? A belt that, if you grab it by the buckle and move it back and forth at a certain pace, will make sine wave after sine wave, its tail lapping the ground ever so gently as it releases the previous wave into the universe.

It is a mesmerizing thing. So absorbing. So incredibly fantastical that Mike can't help releasing loud shrieks of delight. Or agony. Or pent up frustration. Or joy. In that muddy patch. In that sinusoidal belt. In that release into the universe.

Typically he will be naked. Or have only boxer shorts on. He will be screaming or singing or howling in a shatteringly high pitch; he is a supersonic Tarzan, an alarm clock we cannot ignore. Because we have sleeping neighbors: a veterinarian and his wife, a guy who is the head of some department at the University of Iowa, and another who works in the penal system.

And one of us, Deb or I, cursing beneath our breath, will peel ourselves out of bed and hurry down the creaking stairway.

"Michael!" we will say in our most authoritative voice. "Michael. Get in here!"

And Michael will drop the belt and do as we say. He will leave behind the thing he loves most. More than food. And he will do what we say. Until we are back in bed. And then he will return to his beautiful runway. With his magical belt. And he will make the world understandable in a sinusoidal way.

It is a poor substitute, we have learned, for the real thing, ocean waves. When Mike first saw the ocean, two summers ago on a beach in San Francisco, he was enthralled. He dropped the belt he always carries, threw himself on the sand that was warm and fine, and listened to the sound of the surf. It was as if he had finally found someone who spoke his language. The Pacific Ocean. Mother of all sine waves.

We visited the beach everyday for five days, but this was only vacation. And despite what boys want, vacations end. Soon Mike was back in Iowa and it was the belt again, lapping against the brick walkway while he waited for the school bus with his father.

One evening Michael's twin sister, Lucy, said to Deb and me: "The teachers will think I'm stupid. Like Mike."

"Mike is not stupid," Deb said.

"Mom," Lucy said, patiently. "You know what I mean."

"Yes," Deb said. "I know what you mean. But you've got to know what I mean, too. Imagine if you found yourself in the middle of China somewhere. And everyone was trying to talk to you. But you couldn't understand them. And everyone thought you were stupid. But you were still just like you are. How would you feel?"

I have had glimpses of the kind of man I should be. Such are the revelations we are afforded. Passing glimpses, like the small, hidden pond you pass while driving on a particular road for the first time. Suddenly opening up and then closing once again. So that it can be instantly forgotten, or recalled only in part.

I have had these glimpses. Once, while attending some frighteningly capitalistic rally for Amma, the hugging saint, her face magnified and simulcast throughout the convention center in Coralville, Iowa, and printed on mugs and glossy paper and everything else, I had such a glimpse.

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