E D I T O R ' S_N O T E

Look for excerpts from Anne Lamott's new book, "Traveling Mercies," on Fridays; Word by Word, Lamott's biweekly Thursday column, will return March 4.

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T A B L E_T A L K

Is Tinky Winky a subversive pawn of the militantgay agenda? Discuss the true nature of the Teletubbies in theMothers are of TableTalk

YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, DR. SMURF
Two Harvard degrees taught me to fixate on appearances. My son, born with Down's syndrome, showed me the sweet core of ordinary things.

 
[ E X C E R P T ]
EXPECTING ADAM: A TRUE STORY OF BIRTH, REBIRTH AND EVERYDAY MAGIC | BY MARTHA BECK | TIMES BOOKS | 328 PAGES

BY MARTHA BECK | I don't think I realized quite how obsessive people can be aboutappearances until I began to talk to some of Adam's physical therapists,who started working with him when he was two weeks old. First of all, you must know that the people who spend their lives working with disabled children are the most accepting, loving, optimistic-but-realistic humanbeings you could ever meet. To them, no child, no matter how disfigured or inept, deserves anything less than unconditional acceptance. Adam's therapists probably don't know that I, with my three Harvard degrees and my relatively sound body, got more from their sessions with Adam than did Adam himself. As I sat watching them, feeling the kindness in the air around them, all the parts of me that I had sent to the Deep freeze years before thawed and stretched and began to consider the idea that the world might not be altogether hostile.

This is not to say that Adam's therapists didn't make any judgments.They were, in fact, secretly appalled by some of the people they had met in their line of work. Two of them told me this one day when Adam was working out, trying to bulk up from nine pounds. (The workout consisted of things like grabbing for shiny objects, cranking his head back and forth to hear interesting sounds, and rolling around in a tub of dry beans.) The conversation turned to other children the therapists had worked with --specifically, those who were recovering from major surgeries demanded by parents who were dissatisfied with their children's appearance. The therapists had worked with children whose thigh bones had been shattered and reconstructed to correct slight bowleggedness; others who had undergone plastic surgery to correct "defective" features that had not yet even formed; still others who were given up for adoption because of anomalies as minor as a harelip. The therapists were outraged by these parents'inability to see beyond the issues of appearance to the core, to the child as a human being.

You must bear in mind that these therapists had chosen to work with"different" children, while the parents in question had had the experience thrust upon them. I'm certainly not one to judge them. I've had a hard enough time learning to handle difference without discomfort, to look beneath the surface. I do feel sad, though, for parents who might have had an opportunity to learn a new way of seeing, to look into the magical part of life, and let it pass them by. Then again, it may be that not all disabled children can do this. Maybe it's just Adam himself. In his strange, not-quite-human way, he is constantly reminding me that real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life, but within it.

One day when Adam was five, I took all three of my children out to pickup a few household items. I parked the car, extracted my children (two fromcar seats), and began the process of herding them all into the store without getting killed by traffic. I had Lizzie by the hand, and the older children were following -- at least until we reached the doorway. We were at someplace like Kmart, where they sell gardening goods. That morning the store was holding a sale on ornamental plants. Flowers and shrubs werelined up on benches and tables just outside the door. The display drew Adam like a moth to the flame. His eyes got round -- well, as round as they ever get, considering -- and he began to coo with delight.

"Come on, Adam," I said, steering Elizabeth over to an empty shoppingcart. "Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving."

By the time I had lifted Lizzie into the cart, Adam had disappeared. I gave that weary sigh -- the one you remember your own mother sighing, the sigh that is sighed at least once a day by every parent of small children-- and went back a few steps to look for him. He was over by the gardening display, walking away from me.

"Adam!" I hollered, trying not to sound too much like a child abuser. "Come here! Get back here!"

He looked up and blinked.

"Come on!"

Adam shrugged and, with a lingering look at the gardening display,trudged over to my grocery cart. I had the two older kids grab the bars of the cart, as usual, and we headed into the store. Just then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned. A very tall, very craggy, very elderly man was standing behind me. He was wearing a baseball cap with the name of a cattle-feed company emblazoned on it. He had the huge, rough hands of a lifelong farmer.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said, doffing the baseball cap. "I was wondering if you noticed what your boy was doing just now."

I felt a surge of apprehension. Adam had done some profoundly embarrassing things in his short lifetime. He had hidden his shoes in mymother-in-law's microwave, crammed crayons into the baby-sitter's heating vents to watch them melt, gone over to visit the neighbors, alone, wearing only galoshes and a bra. My bra. I couldn't imagine what he might have done in the brief time I'd lost track of him outside, but his creativity in these matters always went well beyond my imagination.

I answered the old man with a cautious no, trying to look harried and innocent.

The old man leaned down to speak softly in my ear. "Your boy," he said,"stopped to smell every single plant in that display outside."

"Oh," I said uncertainly.

"He didn't just smell the flowers," said the farmer. "He smelled the shrubs, too. He smelled every bush they have out there. I think he even smelled the dirt."

I blinked at him, not altogether sure I was getting the point.

"Come with me." The farmer turned and gestured. He seemed very pleased, almost boyish. I turned my shopping cart around, children still attached, and followed him.

We went outside to the gardening display, the old man leading. I caught up to him next to a row of ornamental juniper brushes. He was leaning over, his eyes closed, inhaling deeply through his nose.

"Smell this," he said, pointing to the juniper. Katie and Adam had already begun sniffing. I put my face close to the shrub and smelled it. It had a tangy, sharp scent, somewhere between citrus rind and sagebrush. The smell brought back a sudden flurry of memories from my childhood.

"Huh!" I said.

"It's something, isn't it?" The farmer gave me a crusty grin. "Now try this one."

We went on smelling bushes for five or ten minutes, until we'd sniffed our way through the whole display. I was so relieved that Adam hadn't done anything illegal that I hardly even wondered why this gruff, practical-looking man was so invested in the whole thing. Adam and the girls thought it was wonderful; they snuffled through the rows of plantslike happy truffle hogs. As far as I was concerned, the bushes beat Proust's madeleine hands down; if you want to stir your imagination andyour memory, I recommend that you immediately locate and smell some shrubs-- whatever kind grew in your neighborhood when you were younger and closerto the ground.

When we were finished, the old man straightened up to his full heightand tipped his hat to me again.

"Things aren't always what they seem, are they?" he said.

"No," I agreed.

"It pays to look close," he said. Then he leaned over again, put his lips near my ear, and whispered, "My boy's twenty-three." Then he turned on the heel of one enormous boot and walked away.

Ah, I thought. No wonder. He's one of us.

That's the kind of life you lead when you have an Adam around. Oh, ofcourse it's not all lovely epiphanies. For every old man who invites you outside to smell the bushes, there are at least three obsequious salespeople who will congratulate you on having "such cute little girls," while they look awkwardly past the boy with Down syndrome, trying to pretend he isn't there. The prejudice, sometimes even hostility, can burn like acid. But along with this pain, Adam brought with him a sweetness that surpasses anything I ever felt before he was conceived. It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is so loving and intimate it is almost worship.

N E X T_ P A G E: The remarkable Dr. Smurf