Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Endless (01/09/14)
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TITLE: Remembering Pi | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
01/16/14 -
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“3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164…”
Pi is my nightmare and my salvation.
Pi is what keeps my son Tadd going when he wants the world to stop so he can get off. I’ve been hearing that sequence endlessly this past year. Even in the middle of the night on my own I can hear his voice stuttering out the figures that pop into his mind.
Awake, I see his body tensing. The spasmodic tics jerk his head in an erratic miniature dance to the left. His eyes blink open and shut quickly.
“Hate Tourette’s!”
I envelope my 12 year old in a motherly embrace and stroke his auburn mop. “Sounds like you got over 50 numbers in Pi without stopping.”
“72. I got 72.”
“Hey, that’s 15 better than last time. You really don’t have to push yourself so hard. I love you Tadd Henry. Just the way God made you.”
“Mistake. No one wants a mistake. Ask dad.”
“Tadd. Your dad had his own issues he had to deal with. I’m not going anywhere. Now, how many numbers in Pi?”
“Endless. Pi is endless.”
“Exactly. Just like my love. Just like God’s love. Pi is your reminder that some things never end.”
“Will you see vice-principal with me?”
“Is this about the words?”
“They just happen.”
“Tadd, we know those words didn’t come from your heart. Mr. Adams understands. Being at a new school takes time for others to adjust.”
“I just wanted to play.”
“I know. It’s going to be okay.”
The last few years have been a journey into valleys that I never imagined. Finding the email from Ben letting me know he wouldn’t be coming home again. Having to move again and deal with Tadd’s increasing obsession with Pi. Trying to reframe it into something positive. Somedays it seems that it is tears which are as endless as Pi.
After several embarrassing social situations I’ve become hyper-alert to the building tension, pressure and escalating energy which Tadd just has to release. The consistent effort to release the urges results in the tics that others witness and question.
Sometimes I question my ability as a mother. There just never seems to be enough of what I need to be.
Tadd, as well, works hard to suppress the tics and often returns from school or church emotionally and mentally exhausted. Home seems to be the safe place he works out his world.
Especially through reciting Pi. So many nights, I lay awake just waiting. The darkness seems endless and the dawn seems so far away.
Before my boy was six, I was already taking Ben on a round of visits to pediatricians, allergists, neurologists, and ophthalmologists. I’d finish one appointment and have to book another and another and another.
Getting back to my nursing career was an abandoned dream after the first years of school didn’t go so well for Tadd. My husband, Ben had grown increasingly agitated as his overtime hours weren’t enough to keep up the mortgage payments on the dream home he had claimed when Tadd was just two.
My miscarriage at seven months hadn’t helped the tension as Ben fell into a deep depression and refused to get out of bed on Sundays to go to church. He hadn’t even gotten out of bed for Tadd’s fourth birthday.
The first Friday that the local precinct had called to report his incarceration had been humiliating. After a dozen times it almost became routine.
We lost the house three months before Tadd’s fifth birthday. Tadd was in three different schools during his first year as we tried to settle. He used to come home and assume the fetal position on his bed and not even his favorite cartoons could pull him out of it.
And then Ben walked away from it all.
Some days thinking of Pi keeps me going as much as it keeps Tadd. I don’t work out the numbers in my head. I’m nowhere close to being able to do that. I just quote Psalm 103:17 over and over. “But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children…”*
And when the roller coaster gets really moving fast I sometimes just hang on and say “God, you love me more than Pi. You love Tadd more than Pi. You love me more than Pi…”
I thank God his love is even more endless than Pi.
*Psalm 103:17
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