Following Ezra (23 page)

“Abba!” he says immediately. “Guess what?”

“What, Ez?”

“I broke the Ten Commandments and hurt people and I made people think bad things about me!”

For the moment, I forget about the stealing and the punishment, and savor the realization that my son is developing something new: a conscience.

 

 

That same year, he raises the topic of my birthday while we’re sharing one of our typed conversations:

It’s the beginning of an endless series of conversations about dying. I don’t know why Ezra is preoccupied with death—only that he is. Not with the details or the mechanics of dying; not with diseases or murders or funerals. Not suicide. His focus is the statistics: when, how, and who is left behind. To Ezra, it seems, death is another fact for his collection.

I’m writing in my home office early one morning when he’s twelve and I hear his distraught voice echoing from the den, where he’s on the computer. Seconds later, Ezra appears at my door.

“Bad news, Abba,” he says. “Comedian George Carlin dies at seventy-one.”

His tone is at once deliberate and flat, like the mechanical corporate phone voice that tells you which number to push for customer service.

I know why Ezra cares about George Carlin. Not because of his famous “Seven Dirty Words” routine or his TV stand-up. Ezra doesn’t know about any of that. To him, George Carlin was only one thing: the voice of a Pixar character—Fillmore, the psychedelic VW Microbus in
Cars
, one of Ezra’s favorite movies.

“Awww, I’m sorry to hear that, Ez,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Ezra. “You’re very sorry to hear that comedian George Carlin died at seventy-one. That’s very sad news.”

I follow him as he makes his way back to the computer to keep reading the Pixar blog he scans each morning the way others read box scores or check stock prices. He pauses for a moment, letting the news sink in.

“He died of old age?” he says, more asking than telling.

I answer honestly. “I don’t think so,” I say. “He was only seventy-one. What does it say?”

Ezra presses his face close to the monitor to read. “‘George Carlin died from heart failure,’” he says. Then he looks at me and gets to what this is really about. “Is that going to happen to me?”

Suddenly, all of his Pixar trivia doesn’t seem so trivial. Early on a Monday morning, my twelve-year-old son is facing his own mortality.

“Will it, Abba?” he asks again. “Am I going to die from heart failure?”

I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Ez, you’ll be okay,” I tell him. “Just stay healthy.”

“But will I die of heart failure?” he asks.

“God willing, you’ll live a long time,” I say.

“You’re not
sure
?” he asks.

“Ezzy, you will be fine.”

This goes on for some time. He starts listing every death he’s heard of recently: the family friend who died of leukemia half a year earlier; a friend’s elderly father who had succumbed to liver cancer. I imagine Ezra in this new phase, compulsively compiling exhaustive lists like a statistician for the county coroner: who was killed by cancer, who by heart attacks, who by pneumonia. His childlike preoccupations are intersecting with something deep and scary, something all people share: a fear of death.

Just over three months later, we’re visiting friends for a weekend lunch when Ezra disappears from the table, then reappears with an announcement.

“More bad news,” he says. “Paul Newman is dead at eighty-three.”

Around the table, the adults reminisce about Newman’s virtuoso performances in films like
Exodus
and
The Verdict
. Ezra is thinking that another
Cars
voice actor has died: the voice of Doc Hudson. For the next several weeks, this is much of what he talks about: If Pixar does a
Cars
sequel, who will do the voices of Fillmore and Doc Hudson? The question occupies his thoughts day and night. He revisits the Pixar blogs daily—several times a day—mostly to find the answer to that question.

“It’s unknown,” he reports to me. “Who will do the voices of those characters is still unknown.”

“Unknown” is a disquieting concept for him. In fact, I suspect that’s one of the reasons Ezra has become so focused on death: It’s fixed, unchanging, concrete. It’s forever. But then there’s that other part: the unknown.

In his middle-school social studies classes, he seems incapable of—or uninterested in—grasping much of the curriculum, drowning in a sea of information about historical movements and larger cultural themes. He does, however, remember when the famous people died: Montezuma, 1520. George Washington, 1799. Paul Revere, 1818. World history in Ezra’s mind becomes one long parade of dead guys.

Of course, it’s not entirely academic. He worries, like anyone else, about the mystery of death. Getting the news that a family friend is in the hospital, he asks immediately: “Did she die?” Even hearing that someone has a common cold induces momentary panic and he asks the same question with which he pesters dog owners. “Is he going to
die
soon?”

Shawn and I can’t help but chuckle sometimes at his extreme reactions. We try teaching him to temper his responses: “Of course not, Ezra. It’s just a cold.” But it’s yet another case of Ezra expressing aloud what everyone else is thinking. If we couldn’t help it, most of us would spend all day, every day, wondering when our time will be up. We just don’t like to think about the unknown.

When your mother is a rabbi, it is difficult to escape the big theological questions that seem to reverberate through the household: Is there a God? Where is God? What does God want from us? What is God? But if Ezra is thinking about any of this, he rarely lets on.

He’s just shy of ten. I’m trying to engage him in a typed conversation, but he’s mostly begging me to buy a Lego set he knows Noam desperately wants. I try to distract Ezra by asking him about his experience earlier that day in synagogue, where he participated in a service for children with special needs. When he mentions a significant Hebrew prayer, the Shema, I follow up, typing:

Beyond that, I don’t know whether Ezra thinks much about God. Then, three years later, our family is on a hike in Santa Ynez Canyon, a wooded area not far from the Pacific. When the boys were younger, we returned routinely to this spot, following a gravel-strewn path beside a creek to where it ends at a trickle of a waterfall. Now the boys are older and less compliant. Ezra bounds ahead and I follow. For some reason, he’s stuck in a verbal loop talking about Pringles potato chips and cookies.

He’s moaning and practically shouting. “I just
love
junk food!” he says. “I’m
obsessing
about junk food.”

“So stop,” I say. It’s not that simple. Ezra seems powerless to extricate himself from his own banter. So as we walk, I spontaneously ask him a question.

“If God could give you anything in the world, what would you want?”

“Junk food,” he says.

“I’m serious, Ezzy. If you could have one thing, anything in the world?” And then, I’m not sure why, perhaps inspired by the trees and the creek and the blue sky, I begin talking in the voice of God—or at least the voice of God as heard in
The Ten Commandments
.

“Ezzzzzrrraaaa,” I bellow. “I will give you one thing. What do you want?”

I expect him to resist. He is put off by any kind of role-playing games. Usually, his immediate response is to demand, “Stop pretending!” Or simply to moan and cover his ears to demonstrate his frustration and impatience. But this time he does neither; Ezra just keeps walking.

“Would God sound like a male or female?” I ask, back in my own voice.

“Male,” he says.

I repeat my question in the divine intonation: “Ezra, if I could give you anything in the world, what would you ask for?”

“A pet,” he says quickly.

“Ezra, if you could have
anything
in the world?”

“I would want a frog. A green frog.”

“What species?”

“A tree frog.”

I’m not sure he understands the game. I try to deepen my voice even lower. “Really? If I could give you
anything
in the world? If you could have a car? Or a trip to Disneyland? Or a house or a big building?”

He changes his mind.

“I would want a car.”

“A car? Where would you drive?”

“I would drive around—to synagogue, but not on Shabbat.”

“Why not?” I ask, still trying to channel God.

“That’s a day when we are happy with what we have and we pray to you,” he says, talking to God. Shawn had once explained it to him in exactly those terms as a way to get Ezra to stop focusing on stuff he doesn’t have one day a week: God rested on the seventh day, stopped creating the world and just enjoyed what was already there—and he should do the same.

“I like that,” I tell him. “That makes me happy. You know why?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Because I rest on Shabbat too!” I say.

We keep walking. Since he is still buying into the God voice, I decide to keep going: “Do you have any questions for me?”

He does: “Do you like being with angels?”

I turn the question back to him: “What are angels?”

“They have wings and they live in heaven.”

“Well, I think people can be angels,” I tell him, still in the low God voice. “I think people who help you in your life can be angels.” I name a few who have helped him.

“Those are people!”

“But I think those people can act like angels.” I stay in the God voice.

“Do you have any questions about me? Or about you?”

“Why do I ask so many things?” he says. “Ami doesn’t do that. Why do I talk about movies so much?”

“Why do you think?” I ask him.

“Because of my brain?” Ezra says.

We’re standing by the creek now.

“I can help you to control that,” I say. I tell him to put his hands on his head, grasping the sides of his head tightly.

“Repeat after me,” I tell him. “‘I control my brain—it doesn’t control me.’” I have him repeat the phrase a few times. Then I give him a hug.

“Let’s keep walking now,” he says.

“Any more questions?” I ask.

“Why are you invisible and why can’t anyone hide from you?”

I don’t have good answers for those. I tell Ezra he’s asking good questions and the two of us walk on in silence for a few minutes. I ponder how I got to listen to my son speak to God. And then I notice a small miracle: Ezra has stopped talking about Pringles.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I’m at Starbucks with a friend talking about work and friends and children when suddenly she wants to know how Ezra’s mind works. She begins rattling off questions about school and memory and behavior and consciousness.