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____ A  S l a n t  of  S u n
______________ . . . One Child's Courage

249 PAGES

BY KATHERINE WOLFF | The parental imperative weighs heavily in the post-Dr. Spock world; anxieties about child-rearing have spawned countless how-to books that offer detailed -- and often conflicting -- data. But who speaks for a more intuitive approach to family life? Enter Beth Kephart's quiet yet passionate memoir of motherhood. In page after page of intimate, searching prose, Kephart tells the story of her only child, Jeremy, who at age 2 was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), a condition sometimes linked to autism. As she learns to work around -- and through -- her son's disability, the author reveals a modest philosophy of child-rearing that is both universal and particular.

Understandably, Kephart struggles to come to terms with the PDD diagnosis. She (a writer) and her husband (an artist) are relatively asocial. So when Jeremy exhibits isolationist behavior, symptoms of echolalia, narrow interests and abnormal motor skills, Kephart blames herself. After reading about the condition, she patiently searches out sensitive caregivers, play settings and specialists. Painful cycles of professional testing and school interviews follow as we trace Jeremy's progress from preschool to second grade.

What lifts this memoir above mere domestic drama are the author's beautifully haunting vignettes. Kephart shares her own insecurity and neediness -- but also her determination to understand her son: "'Sleep bores me,' Jeremy repeats, air between each word. He turns his head and stares appreciatively through the window. He loses his grip on the spoon, and it falls: a metal kerplunk amid the abandoned cereal on the floor ... 'I sleep with my eyes open,' he reveals. 'That way I know when it's morning.'"

Kephart reveals her feelings of entrapment as she realizes that Jeremy will demand more from her than she has to give. Admissions like these heighten the ordinary experience of mothering to a poetic pitch. While Kephart knows Jeremy's childhood is unusual -- his speech is highly patterned with sophisticated wordplay, and he favors "The History of Chivalry and Armor" over "Pat the Bunny" -- she also knows where his humanity intersects with everyone else's. Like all children, he explodes the term "normal" with his idiosyncratic brilliance. Neither his parents nor his doctors can predict how Jeremy's behavioral disorder will affect his future. From the outside, he's an able, dark-haired boy prone to obsessive pacing and hard stares. He might well succeed in a field that requires little awareness of social nuance (computer science, for example), but his remote, elaborately coded interior life will always confound friends and family.

Subtitled "One Child's Courage," the book displays Kephart's courage just as prominently. Her writing grows stronger, even tentatively triumphant, as the book swells to its conclusion. A spiritual subtext emerges toward the end, when his mother uncovers Jeremy's buried empathy. Offering much more than a clichéd lesson about the redemptive power of love, "A Slant of Sun" reminds us of the significance of making friends, telling the truth, exercising the imagination -- in sum, of being human. This brave book serves as a parenting guide stripped to its essentials, a testament to the open heart of one mother and solid proof that, contrary to the theory du jour, parents do matter.
SALON | Nov. 16, 1998

Katherine Wolff is a freelance writer and editor living in Boston.

Read an excerpt from "A Slant of Sun."