There’s nothing suspenseful about this story. I’m telling you right

up front that he died when he was ten. I’ve learned some things

since giving birth to Spenser, a child with a developmental disability.

Quite a few, actually.

Voices. Words. Sometimes in the pauses of long distance telephone

conversations, words of other speakers, distant and disembodied,

seep through. Words not intended for me. Words bridging

time zones, geographic regions, territories of the heart. Likewise in

subways, department stores or theatres as the lights dim, more words.

We are always blanketed by the soft, reassuring drone of words, too

muffled to be understood, that tell us we are not alone. It is the chorus,

the low constant buzzing, that connects us.

I bring to mind Spenser’s words, the sound of his voice, but can

only hear a few conversations distinctly. The soprano of his voice

is becoming garbled, far off. He did make cooing sounds as a baby.

Sometimes he yelled “No” when forced to do his spelling words. His

constant congestion caused his vocal tone to be nasal and mangled

his words. In his usual school outfit of a turtle-neck pullover and blue

jeans, he would make emphatic declarations, but I don’t remember

what they were, because I was too busy, grabbing for the phone or the

cookbook.

I sift through my memory bank for visual images of Spenser,

framed with longing, as I slide my thumb over his photograph, my

face reflected in the glass. My baby. My boy. His blonde hair is as fine

as corn silk. His almond eyes are set slightly apart, on either side of

the flat bridge of his tiny nose, diagnostic characteristics of Sotos syndrome,

his disability.

Spenser, where have you gone? He doesn’t answer, but his smiling

expression in his portrait on the desk never changes, whether the

glass reflects the east light of dawn or the long afternoon rays of the

sun, which extend and then recede like the tide through the seasons. I

pretend that the elementary school photo was taken only months ago,

that I can hear him playing downstairs, that he never died.

But he is suspended in mid-sentence, says nothing. I study the details

of his face, his eyebrows darker than I remembered, a small crater

of dimple that indents his cheek, which he inherited from me.

In a newsletter, a bereaved mother suggested cataloguing memories

on notecards, four by six inches, which she stored neatly in a

compact box. I don’t want to write on notecards because my recipe

boxes are a disaster, overflowing with partially alphabetized clippings.

This manuscript is my memory box. In it I reconstruct Spenser from

the memories of family, teachers and friends. I record his whispers,

carried by the wind. I might glimpse him, darting past the twining

clematis in a brightly-colored cap on a summer afternoon. He can’t

have gone that far.