Fisseha & Daniel got in a fist-fight.
A real fight, a violent fight. Like something from a movie I wouldn’t be watching since I don’t like to see fights. Swinging, punching, scratching, strangling, the two came like a tornado out of their bedroom and banged against the door and wall. Helen screamed for me and I tried to intervene, then backed away, yelling at the boys to stop. Swing! Punch! Slam! Choke! Lily, Jesse, and I somehow separated them; Daniel stormed back into the bedroom and slammed the door hard. Fisseha’s neck had red scratches from Daniel’s fingernails. We led Fisseha up two flights of stairs and seated him on Jesse’s lower bunk bed. He was panting HARD, his eyes wide, panting, panting, not from fatigue but from fury. “I’m going to kill him,” he panted. Helen and I put first-aid cream and bandages on his neck.
My sympathy flew entirely to Fisseha since this was the third fist-fight we’ve ever had in our family, all three since June, all three involving Daniel. The first two were aimed at Jesse.
Jesse hovered here, amazed; amazed, I think, that something Big and Not Good had just happened in the family and It Wasn’t His Fault.
I was too mad at Daniel to go downstairs for an hour; then went down and told him, briefly, Good night; then I trudged upstairs wearied in advance by the psychological repair work that must lie ahead.
I had no idea how much work.
Fisseha slept in Jesse’s room that night; Daniel slept downstairs, in the bedroom he shares with Fisseha.
The next day the air was frigid between the two seventh-graders, as I expected. Instead of waiting for each other and crossing the street together to the school bus stop, they went separately. On the steep sidewalk perpendicular to our street, they stood as far apart as possible; they boarded the bus and took seats far apart. I recalled Brother and Sister Bear doing the same in “Berenstein Bears Get In A Fight.”
The boys came off the bus that afternoon and found separate paths to our front door. Both came in and greeted me and got a snack and acted as if the other were invisible. But this was only Day 1, so it was expected.
At bedtime, Daniel didn’t know where to sleep for Fisseha clearly had reclaimed the bedroom that had been his first. Daniel took a blanket and lay down on a sofa in the livingroom. “Take Seth’s room for now,” I told him, as Seth is in graduate school in New York City, and he did.
I had to wake up Daniel the next morning for the first time, for Fisseha, who bounds out of bed at dawn every day, always wakes Daniel to get ready for school. Again, the frigid air, the tense mood. Again, they walked separately to the bus stop.
But this was only Day 2.
“Guys, enough,” I said on Day 3. “Stop this. Let’s get back to normal.”
They didn’t.
“What were you even fighting about?” I asked Fisseha.
“I don’t know!” he said. “He went crazy.”
“I sleep,” Daniel told me later. “Yosef come in, wake me. Fisseha come in, put CD on loud. ‘I sleep!’ I tell them. Loud CD, no stop.”
“OK, you tried to kill each other because Yosef and Fisseha woke you up and put on loud music?”
He shrugged.
On Seth’s bed one night (Day 4 of The Silence), I sat beside Daniel to talk about anger management. “It’s a strong force inside you,” I said. “You’re a very strong young man. But if the anger controls YOU, that’s no good, that doesn’t make you strong. YOU have to be the boss of your anger.” That kind of thing. In pidgin English. “The anger is like a wild horse. You have to ride it, to reign it in.”
When I finished, he stood up, came close to me, hugged and kissed me, and said, “Thank you, Mom.”
But the silence continued. Daniel withdrew from social life. When seventh-grade boys came over to hang out, Daniel stayed in the house, asked to watch TV, asked to play on the computer. When I said no (“It’s a beautiful day!” I always reply), he simply sulked. He turned down outings. He became even more of a loner than before.
I asked my friend Andrea Sarvady to come over and intervene again, as she’d done so successfully in September. “I’m not optimistic about this one,” she said.
She led the two boys back to the bedroom they once shared, but they wouldn’t utter more than monosyllables and they wouldn’t look at each other. I lingered upstairs. When Daniel suddenly re-appeared in the kitchen, I was angry, thinking he’d walked out of the session. But Andy told me later: “I let Daniel go. Daniel suddenly said ‘Sorry’ to Fisseha, though I wasn’t asking them to apologize, but Fisseha could barely respond or look at him. After Daniel left, I told Fisseha, “I’m not keeping you longer because you’re in more trouble. I’m keeping you because you’re angrier.’”
Day 8. Day 9. Day 10.
I tried to over-psychologize Fisseha. “There’s deep anger inside you,” I told him, as he lounged on the sofa one afternoon. “It’s like this big thing you can’t get around. You should be able to move beyond this fight and you can’t.” He listened unemotionally. “I’m going to get help for you,” I said. “I’m going to find a professional for you to talk to.” He groaned.
I hate silence. I hate what we used to call “the silent treatment.” My father, when angry, used to use the silent treatment on me and my brother.
Donny thought I was over-reacting. “At least they’re not hitting each other,” he said.
I tried to be content with this. “At least they’re not hitting each other,” I told myself on Days 11, 12, 13. But I still felt terrible.
“It’s because we did that wrong thing,” I told myself, “that thing in the adoption world I’ve advised others to avoid. ‘Virtual twinning.’ We’ve got two strong tough 13-year-old seventh-grade boys. They’re having a power struggle.”
“Fisseha is the Alpha with the younger kids,” I thought. “But Daniel refuses to defer to his authority. So Fisseha’s really mad at having his power challenged. But it’s not a bad thing, to have his authority challenged,” I told myself. “Donny and I should hold the power in the family, not a seventh-grader.”
Day 13.
Hanukah was coming.
I sat them down. “Guys, listen, we can’t go on like this. It’s not good for the family. Hanukah’s coming. I’m not going to have this during Hanukah. So stop it.”
I shopped differently than in the past. I went to a sports store and got advice on punching bags and boxing gloves. “Will this help them get the aggression out?” I wondered. “Or will it make their muscles stronger so they’ll do more damage next time?” My indecision led to my purchasing only the ceiling hook for the punching bag, but no bag or gloves.
Hanukah arrived! There was shopping, gift-wrapping, cleaning menorahs, secrets, getting out the paper decorations, playing some favorite cassette tapes. There was the inevitable Hebrew school performance, this year featuring Jesse beat-boxing on the stage as his class sang Mi Yimalel. At home, the kids got longed-for presents. Some gave gifts to each other. Some gave gifts they had made. Yosef and Daniel learned to chant the blessings over the candle-lighting.
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| Fisseha, Lily, Jesse, Daniel & Helen making Hanukah gifts, Fisseha & Daniel incommunicative |
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| Hanukah menorahs |
It was all pretty fun. It wasn’t magically fun. We missed Molly, Seth, and Lee very much. We “saved” a night of Hanukah to celebrate with them once they flew in from San Francisco, New York, and Oberlin later in December. But it was pretty fun. “It’s boring this year,” Lily and Helen told me. The girls retreated upstairs to Lily’s room every evening after the candles burned down. It was nice, but it wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime-type laughter-filled religious family event.
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| Daniel & Jesse |
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| Jesse |
On the next-to-last day of Hanukah, I happened to see Fisseha and Daniel step off the middle school bus and they walked their very separate paths to our front door.
“What?” I cried to Lily. “Are they still not talking??”
“Duh,” said Lily.
“This whole time? All through Hanukah? They never made up??”
“No, Mom.”
“Helen, did you know??” I cried.
“No, Mommy, I didn’t know either.”
“How did I miss this?” I yelled. “I’m an idiot. They tricked me. I’m such a sucker. I can’t believe they weren’t talking all through Hanukah.”
I ran upstairs to my bedroom, slammed the door, and got into bed. I turned on the electric blanket. “THIS is why it hasn’t been a wonderful Hanukah!” I thought, enraged to the point of tears. I got up again to lower the window shades, then got back into bed. It was one of the shortest days of the year; the night came on fast. I couldn’t believe I’d missed the continued silence. I was blinded by the Hanukah lights, the potato pancakes, the gift wrap. I was blinded by my own efforts to give everyone a wonderful holiday. I got up again and grabbed the phone, got back into bed, and called Andy, my across-the-street pal. “I’m so mad,” I whispered, “I don’t think I can do the last night of Hanukah. I don’t think I can leave my bedroom. I’m going to stay in bed.” I got out of bed again, holding the phone, and locked my door.
She urged me not to punish all the children in this way.
“The boys may want to start talking again, but they just can’t do it,” she said.
I called another friend, Barbara McClure, who knows both Fisseha (“Sol”) and Daniel very well. She tutored them both in math all summer, for free, out of kindness. “Remember how incredibly generous Sol was when Daniel came?” she said. “He stayed home from camp for him. He translated for him. He took him everywhere, introduced him to everyone. He even translated for him so I could teach him math. He may be feeling, ‘I did all that for him and what do I get? He punches me.’”
I got out of bed. I gave it my all one last time. I created a treasure hunt, like I used to do when the kids were little. I hid clues all over the house, and one in the mailbox, and one in the backyard, and one inside the pool table, and one by the cat food. I explained the game to Fisseha and Daniel, said the treasure hunt was for them only, said a present for them was the prize but they had to do it together.
They enjoyed their treasure hunt. They ran upstairs and downstairs smiling. Helen and Yosef and Jesse and Lily cheered them on. But there was no talking between the two participants. They did the treasure hunt, they got the prize, then they went their separate ways.
“Did you give me a Hanukah present?” I asked Fisseha before dinner.
“Yes, Mom!” he said, startled. “The picture frame—you know? I painted it for you?”
“Oh, right, I love it,” I said. “Will you give me another Hanukah present?”
He looked concerned.
“This one is free,” I prompted.
“Oh,” he said.
“Just try, little by little, OK?”
“OK,” he said, and I kissed him.
But Hanukah ended and they weren’t speaking.
I’d failed to detect the silence for a week; now I knew to watch for it. We all sat around the dinner table one night and Fisseha had made his Ethiopian specialty: grilled, nearly burnt, corn on the cob in the husk from the outside grill. He offered everyone at the table an ear of corn, except Daniel.
Sometimes it was incredibly subtle. All the kids crowded together, kicking a soccer ball in the yard or serving their dinner plates in the kitchen; you had to watch closely to see—in the tangle of relationships and voices—that one circuit had gone silent.
“Did I get my Hanukah gift?” I asked Fisseha after school one day.
He raised his hand, both palms facing in, several inches apart, and moved them back and forth to relay ‘little-by-little,’ like ‘I’m working on it.’
“OK,” I sighed.
But it didn’t seem he was working on it. It seemed like everyone in the family had adjusted to this new, lower, less joyful level of family life.
Then Fisseha accidentally laundered his cell phone, to its demise. It was covered by insurance, so I ordered a replacement phone for him, which, they told me, was a newer and much cooler model.
For several days he bounded in from school, asking if his new phone had arrived.
The day it arrived, I hid the box on a bookshelf in my office.
“Is my phone here?” he asked that day.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Did I get my Hanukah present yet?”
He moved his hands back and forth to relay, “Working on it.”
“Same!” I said, moving my hands back and forth like that. “Working on it.”
We had the same communication the next day, except that I added, “Fisseha, whenever you’re ready, your phone is ready.”
The next day he didn’t ask for his phone, nor the next.
“You’d rather not have your phone than have to speak to Daniel,” I said to him, and he shrugged.
“Daniel, please,” I said one night.
“Mom!” he exploded, the first time he’s ever shown anger at me. “Not me! You want to see? Look! You want me talk? Look!” He stormed downstairs from Seth's bedroom to his former bedroom, where Fisseha was getting into bed. “Good night, Fisseha,” he said.
Fisseha said nothing.
Daniel turned and went back upstairs.
“Fisseha!” I cried. “Daniel just told you goodnight.”
“I didn’t hear him,” said Fisseha.
Time For Dad To Get Involved. “This can’t go on,” I told my amiable husband.
“They’re still not talking?”
Now it was my turn to give Lily’s reply: “Duh.”
“It’s Fisseha, not Daniel, I’m sure,” I said. “I need you to tell Fisseha that it has to stop. I need you to be clear about it, not tousling his hair, rolling your eyes.”
Later that night he said, “Fisseha, this is idiotic. You need to start talking again.”
"What about Daniel?" he said in protest.
"I'll tell Daniel, too," said Donny.
Lee came home from Oberlin for winter break and I told him. He was sad, but unsure what to do other than shower his affection on both boys.
On that Sunday, Molly & Seth were flying in together from New York, where Molly had visited friends, played in her band, stayed with Seth. “I hate to have to tell Seth and Molly,” I told Fisseha.
Then Jesse helped. Mr. Jesse “Some-People-Are-In-Trouble-In-The-Family-But-Not-Me” Samuel.
“I asked Fisseha why he wasn’t talking to Daniel,” Jesse said, “and he said, ‘After I get in a fight with somebody, it’s hard to start talking again.’”
I melted. I rushed to tell Daniel, “The moment Fisseha tries, even a little bit, to talk to you, be open to him, OK?’
“Yes, Mom,” he said, annoyed. His take on the situation was, I fear, something along the lines of: “Family good, Fisseha no good.”
Sometime between Saturday afternoon and the Sunday of Molly’s and Seth’s arrival, the boys started talking. I noticed they were not only jumping with the others on the trampoline, but playing with each other.
The communications increased, quite civilly.
Little by little, over several days, it came along. I didn’t hover, but I noticed. The once-dead circuit was dimly lit by a current of syllables.
By the end of winter break, they were completely conversant; and, on their first school morning of 2008, they walked together to the bus stop.
Now, two weeks later, I notice that the full-hearted and kind friendship is back. Fisseha, especially, is generous again. If he’s at a friend’s house, he’ll phone home to invite Daniel to join them. Today, in an incredibly rare snowstorm, he and other guys were heading out to sled and have snowball fights, and Daniel stood in the front hall, in pants, t-shirt, and socks, baffled by what to wear. Fisseha jogged back into the house and gathered winter outerwear for Daniel. He calls him Dani (pronounced like Donny) again.
What did the trick?
Donny’s intervention?
Lee’s?
Molly’s and Seth’s imminent arrival?
The treasure hunt?
My kind and helpful and semi-psychological approaches?
Was anything resolved? A power struggle? Who’s stronger? Who’s the Alpha? At what volume bedtime hip-hop or Ethiopian CDs should be played?
I Have No Idea.
