The Prong and the Stone, and the Boy who Found it

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend July 29, 2011

To continue last week’s tale: My engagement ring had to be cut off because my ring had refused to cooperate and expand along with the rest of my being. The ring, although snuggly packed onto my finger, had to be removed because the diamond had fallen out, and the exposed prongs which made my every gesticulation dangerous to clothing, furniture, and small children.

My 16-year-old son Sergio found the dearly departed diamond. With a boy like mine around, I should have known not to worry. He’s been training for this task all his life. When he was two, every time we went to a park, he would dart off and immediately begin picking up shards of glass. It was a disturbing and distressing behavior; I did not see him as a future park ranger.


Other moms would look at me suspiciously. It was going to be a hard sell to say he was community conscious, and just doing this out of respect for nature, even in California. After all, he was two years old and looked entirely too excited. Also, I had to coax and cajole him to gently deposit his treasures into the trashcan, much as you might do when convincing someone to back away from a window ledge. He never failed to look back at me before releasing the shard. When you are that young, you are ever hopeful that, this time, Mom might let you keep your treasure.


Before he was born, I had produced two relatively civilized daughters. They liked shiny things, undoubtedly, but they never acted like this. Whether he was attracted to the glinting of glass in the light, or to the glass’ power to cut, I do not know. Nothing I could do would hinder his dangerous delight until the day he finally sliced his finger. I suppose even experts are fallible. He had been picking up glass for about six months then.


We have established the boy’s attraction to shiny things that can cut. In fact, Sergio’s first words (after the standard “dada” and “mama”) were “sharp knife.” His first sentence was “poke eye.” Most parents might have feared these early indicators of criminal behavior, but being of Indian origin, we knew better. Clearly, these actions pointed to a future in medicine. Laser eye surgery, perhaps.


Sergio spent practically the first ten months of his life glued to my hip. Any photos I took of him tended to show him screaming, because of course, it involved two seconds of separation from his mom. It’s good to remember these things when your son is sixteen and too manly to have much to do with you. It might be embarrassing for him to hear this now, so I’ll only tell you.


The first time that I could disconnect the child from my body was when my mother-in-law traveled all the way to America to come see him. Frail, diabetic, and 72 years old, she traveled by herself. I believe it was her first trip abroad. But she came to see her first, and at that time, her only, grandson. He was her tenth grandchild, but the first grandson from any of her six children. It’s not that she didn’t adore the nine granddaughters: It gave her inordinate pleasure to know that the family name would be carried on.


My mother-in-law, Lyra Maria Artemisia Ribeiro was a tall and elegant lady. She died in Mumbai, India on December 28th, 2008. I miss her. Throughout her 23 years of widowhood, she remained devoted to her husband and her home, rarely allowing herself to leave it or her memories of him. So for her to say, “I am coming to America to see my grandson” was extraordinary. When she began her four-month visit, the nine-month-old baby was practically an appendage of mine. She would peel him away from me, and would totter about with the protesting “Baba.” She sat and fed him bites of food, and played games with him. He learned to tolerate the separation. At ten months, we finally got him to crawl. I set down the little rice-cooker power cord as a lure. For that, and that alone, he was willing to crawl.


I may have been an accomplice, but I don’t think I programmed these bizarre behaviors into him. Our pediatrician said that Sergio was the only patient who had ever asked about the fire sprinklers in the ceiling above the medical examination table. Most of the other three-year-olds concentrated on the cartoon characters plastered overhead. But then again, not many other three-year-olds had a light bulb collection: dead and alive, curly and colored. Normally uncommunicative, he became quite chatty with any stranger if he happened to see a fused bulb. He would give them his winning grin and ask for the bulb.


So, when you see your child engaged in odd behaviors, don’t despair. Everyone is made in God’s image. I think He knows what He is doing – not that He needed my approval. Besides, you never know when your child’s bizarre interests will come in really, really, handy.