When the Weak Show Strength
I step outside to enjoy the storm’s reprieve from the scorching August day. Suddenly, a wall of rain advances like an army, the wind its battle cry. Phone in hand, I start to video the drama, but when whole trees hurtle past me like javelins, I run inside and cower in the basement. It’s brief—five minutes, maybe ten. Then, chirping birds signal the army’s retreat and I slink upstairs. The first thing I notice is water streaming down the interior walls under the closed windows, sobbing to release their fear.
***
A microburst is a localized column of sinking air within a thunderstorm. Small in size—two and a half miles or less in diameter—and lasting only five to ten minutes, microbursts may have life-threatening wind speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour. Precipitation may be significant.
***
Over a decade ago, when my son Stephen was a teen, he called me “leaky faucet.” He witnessed tears slip out when I allowed them to—when they were an overflow of joy, when I heard Pachelbel’s Canon or saw a man cry on TV, or any combination of cute kids and sappy music. And, of course, when a child was sick. I don’t know what Stephen would have called me had he seen the deluge I released behind closed doors when he was little. No one witnessed those tears because I shed them in the bathroom with the door closed and water running in the tub. Working motherhood had exhausted me then. But what dropped me to my knees on the bathroom floor was worrying about Matthew, my older boy.
Matthew was eight in 1994 when he developed facial tics, which became whole body gyrations by the time he was nine. By ten, he couldn’t remember the answer to a math problem long enough to write it down, and didn’t know if Nana and Grandpa visited last week or last month. He became clumsy. Then lethargic.
For two years, I didn’t push back against my husband or the pediatrician, who urged me not to worry. I didn’t stand up to them, because maybe they were right. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe Matthew was just a little quirky. Self-doubt zipped my lips, and not knowing how to be assertive threw away the key. Growing up, my well-meaning parents impressed upon me the importance of being agreeable. And agreeableness suited me, as conflict was often loud and prickly and scary. As a mother, insisting my husband take my concerns seriously, and demanding the pediatrician order tests or make referrals or do something was unfamiliar ground. Speaking up for myself and standing up for Matthew as he deteriorated became a precipitous mountain for which I lacked the training to climb.
***
After mopping up the living room walls, I tiptoe outside and gasp. Branches bury the lawn and driveway so thickly, I can’t tell where grass ends and blacktop begins. A maple tree has snapped in half, its jagged edges left to stab the sky. But there, resting on a berm, exactly where I had placed her in the spring, is my favorite terra-cotta garden statue, my “meditation lady.” Maitri, which loosely translated means “loving kindness,” is ten inches tall, with chubby cheeks and a Buddha belly. Her face is serene, her eyes closed. Gingerly, I high-step my way over to her and pick her up. She has weathered the storm without a scratch.
I had thought Maitri was the type to shatter easily. I thought she was like me. But maybe she’s more like my women friends who aren’t fazed by conflict, who aren’t afraid to fight. They’ll offer an opinion—“The mayor’s an idiot”—without concern for others’ reactions. They’ll look you right in the eye and say, “You’re pissing me off.” They like big parties and loud music and horror movies and women’s marches. I think they came out of the womb holding protest signs. If I came out holding a sign, it would have read, “Fragile. Handle with care.”
***
Rapidly rising anvil-shaped clouds are a sign of an approaching thunderstorm, usually accompanied by strong winds and often producing heavy rain, snow, sleet, or hail. Regardless of precipitation, however, thunderstorms are always characterized by lightning and, of course, thunder.
***
When Matthew was ten, we sat in the kitchen one night, working on his fifth-grade homework. It had been an hour since we started, a typical night. With every passing minute, Matthew became more forgetful, and as he grew tired, he got silly and squirmy, almost tipsy. With every passing minute, I became more exhausted, my gut churning with frustration and despair. But I kept my cool. Until I couldn’t.
“Most parents wouldn’t put up with this nonsense!” I bellowed, jumping up from the table. “Most parents would do this!”
And I dragged Matthew out of his chair and dropped him to the floor. Rolling onto his side, he laughed. And I fumed. Not because I wanted to hurt him—I didn’t want to hurt him, did I?—but because I wanted control of my life, and if pulling my son to the floor made him laugh, I was clearly not in control.
“Most parents would do this!” I yelled, picking him up roughly by his arms, shaking him. He giggled in my face. I pictured steam hissing from my ears, and pulling my lanky ten-year-old over my lap to whack his behind.
Yet, as much as Matthew’s curious affect boiled my blood, it also relieved my guilt. His silliness meant I hadn’t hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt him, did I? I wanted to love him, but with every passing day, it became more difficult, and, at that moment seemed impossible.
I stormed from the room before I erupted again. A sliver of self-control distanced me from Matthew before I inflicted real damage.
How can you be so stupid? I almost screamed. You used to be so smart!
The incident woke me from my agreeable stupor. This was not normal. My son needed help. I needed help. Over the next year, I dragged Matthew to myriad specialists, each one taking aim at their diagnostic dartboard, each wild shot piercing my heart. Then finally, when Matthew was eleven, a bullseye.
Brain tumor.
***
I move Maitri to the porch for safety before my husband Mike gets home and we start cleanup. She’s tough, but not unbreakable, after all. She’s strong, and at the same time fragile. After clearing a path to the street, Mike and I walk around the neighborhood. There are flattened vehicles and crushed garages, but no personal injuries. Not even a scratch. Our own damage is minimal—a bent gutter and small hole in the roof of our detached garage. Indoors, the weeping walls dry quickly. We get off easy.
Our house is brick. Solid old construction. They don’t make them like they used to. Our garage is concrete block. I’m not surprised these structures withstand the storm—they’re made that way. They were built from the ground up to be strong. When the strong survive, it’s what we expect.
Maitri, on the other hand, should not have survived. The tiniest stone hitting her at the right angle, the slap of a branch, a tumble down her berm, and she would have been a pile of shards. Yet her smile, her belly, her peace, is intact. When the weak survive, what does it say about their weakness?
***
Following a rain shower, light leaves the air and enters the suspended water droplets, slowing down and bending the light, and separating it into its component wavelengths, or colors. When light exits the droplet, it makes a rainbow.
***
Matthew’s tumor—a pilocytic astrocytoma—was benign. Is benign. It’s still there, two decades later, clinging to his brainstem, too risky to touch. Inoperable. Matthew needed surgery anyway, to treat the hydrocephalus caused by the growth. Doctors told us our son would “bounce back,” as children with this tumor do. Matthew’s recovery was more of a twenty-year dribble. Through middle school and high school, he continued to struggle with short-term memory, disorganization, fatigue. I left my school counseling job to coach him to graduation. He muddled through college and graduated somehow, but his cognitive impairments cost him numerous jobs in the real world. Although his residual symptoms were relatively mild, they impacted him so profoundly, I wondered if he’d ever be truly independent.
***
The day after the storm, Matthew, thirty-three, comes over to help with cleanup. While Mike brandishes his chainsaw, Matthew and I trudge back and forth across our quarter-acre, dragging brush to the curb. We log ten miles, according to my fitness tracker. With each step, each trip, each load, our burden becomes easier. The path becomes more clear. Matthew fills his car with firewood for the two-bedroom bungalow he bought on his own earlier in the spring.
After Matthew leaves, I place my terra-cotta statue back on her berm, and wrestle with the question that plagues me: If I had asserted myself sooner, could I have taken the edge off our pain? If I were born strong, would it have changed my story? Matthew’s story? My soul-searching for answers sinks me to the cold bottom of an ocean where the pressure is crushing. Sometimes, I avoid thinking about it. Other days, I dive down, craving self-punishment.
Maitri’s peaceful smile raises new questions: When strength comes easily, is it truly strength? Isn’t the test of strength that something is hard? I think about my women friends, born and bred to be tiger-moms, for whom fighting comes naturally, for whom standing up for your child is easy. But, if by nature and nurture you’re a doe, being strong is antithetical to who you are. Fierceness isn’t part of your DNA. It wasn’t part of mine.
And yet I survived. I weathered a life-altering storm. And, although I was weak, I pulled my son from the wreckage of his brain tumor, and pulled our family from the wreckage of my agreeableness. In an act of will every day, I pull myself from that rubble still.
I imagine the “fragile” sign I’ve waved since birth. It was a means of self-preservation for many years, but now it feels like a white flag of defeat. So I imagine a new sign, one that feels authentic, that honors who I’ve been, who I am, and who I will evolve to be. It proudly states: When the weak show strength, they are stronger than the strong.
My small garden statue epitomizes this new understanding of myself, and her unassuming presence in my garden reminds me of it daily. And when the next army advances with a roar, dumping a storm on my life, I am ready.
-Karen DeBonis
A version of this story first appeared on an episode of the podcast Writing Class Radio (writingclassradio.com). Listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/writing-helps-you-figure-out-how-you-think/id1049460553?i=1000464669076
Karen DeBonis lives with her husband of thirty-eight years in perpetual quarantine, or so it seems, in upstate New York. She writes to confront her people-pleasing and its tumultuous consequences. Karen's essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, which published her Tiny Love Story last year. This micro-essay has been selected for inclusion in an anthology the NY Times will publish in December. Links to this and other essays can be found here: https://karendebonis.com/essay-links/. Karen's completed memoir, Benign: When Nice is Bad, is available for representation. Instagram: karendeboniswriter. Twitter: @KarenDeBonis.