Following Ezra Read Free

the morning off from work and driving six miles to hear how my children are interacting with their Play-Doh.
    I decide it is important, though, more to check on the school than the children. After moving from New York to Los Angeles just a few months earlier, we enrolled Ami and Ezra at the neighborhood preschool without much research besides soliciting recommendations from a couple of friends. The conference will give us a chance to get to know the teachers and to introduce ourselves.
    We’re impressed with Ami’s instructor, an upbeat woman who regales us with stories about how well our oldest son has adjusted to the new environment. Ami, at four, has quickly forged friendships with virtually every child, distinguished himself by routinely volunteering to set up the apple juice cups, and charmed instructors with his smile and manners. “In fifteen years teaching preschool,” she says, “I have rarely had a child like this.”
    Warmed and cheered by an educator who obviously knows what she is talking about, my wife and I smile at each other as we make our way a few doors down the hall to Ezra’s room. Karen is in her mid-thirties, with short blond hair, and a languid manner that might be calming to young children, but her halting speech immediately makes the conversation feel as awkward as the chairs. After an initial nervous smile as she welcomes us, she quickly becomes more somber, looking over her notes.
    “Let’s start with the positives,” she says, not smiling. “Ezra has a lot of energy and”—she pauses—“he’s a very loving child.” Then a long, difficult silence. I’m waiting to hear the rest of the positives, but none come. Just this: “I do have some concerns.”
    On only a few occasions in life have I felt time slow down. At our wedding, the births of our children, the moment I pulled onto Fairfax Avenue at the wrong second and watched another Toyota minivan careen into mine—events that stretched out, seemingly out of time, existing in their own reality, apart from the ordinary pace of the universe. This conference is becoming one of those moments. I hear some of the words— spacy , inflexible , autonomous —and the phrases— hard to get him to connect , not very responsive. I catch one image: Before snack, when the children get in line to wash their hands, Karen says, reading from her handwritten notes, Ezra simply stands at the sink, motionless, seemingly not understanding what to do. I picture my little boy, lost in thought as water flows from the tap and his classmates press up behind him, eager to get to their Ritz crackers and apple slices.
    As the teacher describes our middle son, I look up at Shawn. We both understand what Karen is talking about. In recent months, we have begun to notice quirky behavior ourselves. Ezra has been spending long hours alone engaged in strange, solitary routines. He lines up his toys in precise patterns in the backyard, then turns on a garden spigot, leaving it running as he watches the water form a small rivulet across the concrete. Then he drags a plastic laundry basket outside and folds a multicolored comforter into it, then climbs in himself, tucking his body into the quilt and lying in silence as he listens to the running water. He repeats this ritual day after day. Occasionally he has gone missing in the house for fifteen or twenty minutes and we frantically search every room, finally discovering him hiding, awake but motionless, under a mound of stuffed animals he has crammed into his younger brother’s crib.
    To us, he seems remote and a bit unusual, but we figure that’s just Ezra. He acts and responds to almost everything differently than Ami, who was outgoing and friendly seemingly from the moment he emerged from Shawn’s womb. Isn’t that to be expected? Doesn’t every child have a unique personality?
    My initial response to Karen’s description is to smile. Yep, that sounds like Ezra, all right. Shawn, too, breaks into a grin of