Done Adult Vol. 1 Ch. 27

When Jamie had tired himself, he allowed the current to wash him back in, surfing the waves that carried him and bracing for the ones that broke over him. When he was close to them, he righted himself and swam lazily back to Amanda and Becky. A small crowd had gathered on the beach.

“Here,” Amanda shouted when he was still deep enough to be under from his waist down, tossing him his swimsuit. Jamie blushed looking at the crowd. He’d just wanted the swim diaper off, not to be naked in public, and he carefully put his suit back on so as to not create any more of a show than he already had. He didn’t like audiences; not everyone looked happy. Well, he thought, then let them not be happy. I’m happy.

Amanda was smiling proudly. But Becky’s face, Jamie couldn’t place that expression. He sensed a mix of emotions written on her face but couldn’t quite parse them. It didn’t matter though; he was happy in the moment, and he had her to thank for it. Ignoring the small crowd, whom it didn’t seem Becky or Amanda were aware of, he high-stepped through the water and wrapped his arms around Becky.

“Thank you,” he muttered, “I haven’t felt this good since I got here.” Becky had the unique power to make things easier or harder, more or less fun, more or less miserable. Jamie understood that power, but he didn’t hug her and thank her for that reason, but because he was thankful, and he wanted to express it to her physically.

Peering down at his head against her hip, she patted his hair, rubbed his shoulder, and said, “That makes me very happy to hear, baby. I bet you’re tired.” She started to break the hug and turned, seeing the dozen and a half people who had gathered and watched. Some looked like they just stopped for the distraction, a few seemed to be judging, and a couple seemed angry. Becky wasn’t prepared for that and turned red and insecure.

“Yay for Jamie! Woo hoo! That was incredible!” A voice started cheering from the back of the crowd, and clapping hands appeared above it, moving their way to the front: Jane. Jamie blushed more, an audience and praise for something that wasn’t really praiseworthy. He wasn’t a competitive swimmer; he was just better at it than most.

A couple in the crowd politely clapped, some of the others drifted off, and Jane waited for the three of them to walk out of the surf. One woman wanted to have her say, though. Amanda saw it coming.

“Just ignore her, Jamie. She needs to learn to mind her own business.”

“Excuse me, ma’am.” Nothing in the voice was a question, and whatever respect or courtesy ‘ma’am’ implied was clearly not meant. “Do you have any idea how unsafe that was? Do you? And you just gave a hundred littles, including mine, an incredibly dangerous idea! What were you thinking!?!”

Amanda started to walk faster. Jane started to step in front of this woman just to cut off her view. Becky, to her own surprise, got her dander up. She wrapped an arm around Jamie’s shoulder and pulled him closer.

“Can your little swim? Mine can.”

The woman seethed and started to stomp off.

“We’ll be here until dinner time if you wanna race him,” she shouted after the woman, who didn’t turn around. Amanda and Jane laughed, Jamie was surprised, and Becky stared a hole into the back of the woman’s head before she started walking again.

“Where did that come from, Mom?” Amanda was as surprised as Jamie, and, for that matter, as surprised as Becky. She didn’t answer.

Instead, she said, “Let’s get you dried off.” He pulled himself onto the foot of her chair, and she sat behind him and wrapped him in a towel, pulling him closer and reclining back against the seat. Amanda handed her mom a bottle of water, and with her eyes Becky asked Jamie, and he nodded. She held it while he drank.

“You’re a very good swimmer.”

“Thank you.”

Becky sighed, and Jamie’s eyelids felt heavy. It was his afternoon nap time, and he had exerted himself for the first time in … he wasn’t sure. He was losing track of days. A while, he knew.

“I think it’s time for my very good swimmer to get some rest.” Jamie was fine with that. “Amanda, could you hand me his bag?” She did, and she once again stood beside Jamie as Becky pulled his wet suit off, patted Jamie dry, and got him into a regular diaper.

“Here,” Amanda said, handing her mom a dry pair of shorts for him. Dressed but for a shirt, Becky reapplied sunscreen, and Jamie felt sleepier still.

“Here, buddy.” Amanda helped him up and guided him to his towel. She moved it to where the sun had pushed the umbrella’s shade, and he eagerly laid down on his stomach. Amanda handed him his hat and another water bottle. Jamie put the hat over the back of his head.

“Thank you, Manda.” He got a kiss. Rosie was already sleeping.

Amanda went back to her book, Jane worked on her tan, and Becky contemplated. When she could tell from the rise and fall of his back that Jamie was asleep, she asked Jane, “Do you mind watching Jamie while Amanda and I take a walk?”

“Not at all.”

Amanda was pulled out of her book by the sound of her name. She was expecting her mom to want a word with her; she put her bookmark in the pages and stood up. Becky put a wrap around her shoulders and walked past Amanda, who fell in step. The two of them waited until they were out of ear shot.

“I’m sorry, Mom. He got away from me. I won’t let it happen again.”

“Yes, you will.” It was a matter-of-fact statement, no reproach intended. Amanda knew she was right and that she had just lied, again. Jamie had sprung away from her at the first chance, but she had no intention of trying to stop him or trying to catch up with him unless he couldn’t really swim after all.

Becky sighed. “Why do you understand him better than I do?” She sounded hurt, even a little sullen. It didn’t feel fair. I’m the mom, Becky said silently to herself. “He’s always happy around you. He always wants you.” A few tears escaped, and Becky held back a sob. I’m his mom, she thought again, Me! “I don’t even think he …” A sob stopped her from finishing the sentence.

“O, Mom,” Amanda said. She wrapped her arms around her mother, who held her own to herself. Amanda wasn’t sure how to answer the question. She didn’t know why she understood him better, why they connected better. They ended the hug and kept walking. Beaches are good for that; there’s always more sand than words.

“Littles play favorites sometimes,” Amanda tried even as she knew that was merely explaining it away, but that it wasn’t something to explain away.

“Littles have favorites sometimes. Why is it so much work between the two of us? I mean, what am I doing wrong?”

“Mom, I wouldn’t say …”

“O, stop. It’s obvious.”

“I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, Mom. It’s just … Jamie is hard, that’s all. He’s different. He was different before he got here.”

“I know he’s different. I read the file; I talked to his caseworker.” They walked on in silence.

“I guess …” Amanda stopped and sighed. This was the hardest conversation she’d ever had with her mother. “Where do you see this going?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what’s the goal you’re working toward?” She absorbed a lot from reading the books on raising and caring for littles.

Becky was stumped. That was a much easier question to answer about a child than a little. There were obvious milestones for a child, the main one being the child becoming an adult. A parent’s work doesn’t stop there; there are milestones remaining. But if a parent can get to that main milestone, and the child is a happy, healthy, functioning adult, that’s success.

Amanda rephrased the question again. “What do you want for him?”

“I just want him to be happy. He was sad when he got here. Now he seems sad and angry most of the time. When he’s not with you, he’s with a book or his blocks or that puzzle you hung on his wall. He’s … that first morning when he woke up and the day after, he talked to us. He told us about his feelings. He’s withdrawn since. From me, mostly. I … Did I do something?”

“When he said he wanted to go swimming, what was your first thought?”

“That it was too dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because littles don’t swim well. I’ve never seen one swim well.”

“He told you he could. Why did you doubt him?”

“I … I didn’t doubt him. I just wanted him to be safe.”

“He told you he was though.”

“Littles say things like that. They don’t always know, and sometimes when they do know, they’re not honest.”

“I think Jamie is the most honest person I’ve ever met when he feels he can be.”

“What does that mean?”

“Sometimes he fibs to end conversations. He’ll say yes or no just so the conversation ends.”

They walked in silence some more.

“I never met an unregressed little before Jamie, Mom. I think I maybe saw a couple, maybe. Have you?”

“No.”

They walked farther.

“I’m trying to do what he said he wanted,” Becky said, the frustration in her tone rising. “In writing, in the file. Toddler stage. Doesn’t want to grow up. Hesaid that.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

“I didn’t care. I …” Beck lapsed into silence

“What?” Amanda saw her mom’s lip quiver. “C’mon, Mom; you can say it.”

“I picked him because you wanted him.” She was speaking through tears again. “You … you didn’t want to do this and then you saw him and said ‘I think we can help him.’ I … I …”

They stopped, and Amanda rubbed small circles on her mom’s shoulder but kept enough distance for her to finish.

“If you … if you wanted him, then … then I knew he must be right for us … and … we were right for him.” She took a shallow breath. “And … if …” She stammered. “If you could … if you could love him … right then, from a file … then I … I loved … him too just … because he ... because he could make you feel that way. You told me, you said to me you weren’t sure you could … And then you did, and I loved him just because he made you love him … and his file made him seem so … deserving of a new chance. And … that first night when you were … you were holding him and what you said. It felt so right; it felt like we were both right.”

Becky wiped at her eyes. Amanda drew the line through the statement: she loved him right away because I loved him right away because she loves me.

“And watching the two of you get so close makes me love him even more.” Becky stopped crying. “And it makes me feel like shit that I can’t connect with him or give him what he wants or what he needs.” She sounded so angry with herself.

“I don’t know what he wants either.” Amanda tried to smile as if to tell her it was okay. “I don’t think he does. His file … It’s one big contradiction.”

“How?”

“He doesn’t want to grow up, but he didn’t want to be regressed even a little. He wants to get over all this pain, but he didn’t want any memories erased. I’m not sure what he was trying to say.”

Amanda started walking again to give both of them time to think. Silence isn’t awkward when you’re walking, not in conversations like these. She thought very hard about what to say next. She decided not to tell the whole truth. “I don’t know why he wanted to come here.”

Becky thought back on what she knew. “He said it was so he could get away from all the things he was struggling with there.”

“He had other choices. This was a little extreme, right?”

“He said he couldn’t stay there and live with himself.”

“And I think he believes that. I don’t. Here, there; people live with some horrendous stuff around them, in them. People can live with anything if they want to badly enough. And he could have gotten help there, too. I don’t know if he even tried.”

“His caseworker seemed to think he belongs here; seemed she felt pretty adamant about it.”

“Is a little, a little back there,” Amanda asked.

“What do you mean? A little is a little everywhere.”

“He was leading a whole other life and just ended it. Walked away. I mean, he did it because he thought life here would be different, or that he’d be different, or that something would be different, right? Why else do it?”

They stopped and felt the wind off the ocean picking up. The tide would be rolling back in soon. They turned back. “His caseworker thought he’d heal here, emotionally,” Becky said after a few meters.

“I think he thinks that too. I think he hoped it, and then she convinced him. And he’s probably wondering when and how that happens.”

“Time.”

“Time and what? There’s time where he’s from.”

“Us, I guess,” Becky answered. “Right?”

“Yeah. The whole experience of being a little, I suppose.”

“He’s fighting the experience though.”

“I don’t know if that’s exactly it. He’s fighting change.”

“He wanted the change, or he thought he did.”

“He wanted a change; I don’t think he understood what all that means here.”

“It isa lot.” Becky at least understood that in the abstract, that it was a lot of change.

“And sudden.”

They walked on in silence some more.

Becky started again. “I’m just trying to take care of him. Protect him. That’s the change he wanted, vaguely, right? Give up adult responsibilities; simplify his world down to … down to being loved and loving others. He fights being taken care of, letting others love him and … and letting them show it by what they do for him.”

“So what makes you think I’m different? I love him; he seems fine with that. He could hardly be more affectionate,” Amanda chuckled.

“Maybe it’s the way we care for him in different ways. You’re the cool big sister; I’m the mom.”

“Moms can be cool and fun too.”

“I try to be.”

Amanda sighed. “Have you considered that you’re giving him a very narrow space to have fun in?”

“What’s that mean?” She sounded defensive.

“Water wings. Toddler toys.”

“Appropriate for littles. And safe! And he said toddler; I thought it was what he wanted.”

“’Toddler’ was the oldest stage on the form. And I don’t know what ‘never grow up’ means. He has grown up, for a little. If he picked ‘toddler’ because he wants to undo that, in some way, it won’t happen overnight or just because he wants it to. He still has his regular mind and his regular body and the same sense of autonomy he had when he got here. He didn’t give up the first two. I think he’s only okay giving up the last one if it makes all the other things in his life better. Otherwise, why do it? I mean, what kind of life would that be?”

“So what do we do? What do I do differently?”

“He’s not a toddler; I don’t think he wants to be. I think he just wants the sadness to go away and thought the best way to do that was to reach the point where he isn’t even aware of sad things in the world anymore; like, his world was so small, he doesn’t see them.

“I think we have to help him figure out who he wants to be, and he has to help us do that, and he’s gonna be something completely unique. Not a stage of life. It’ll just be the way Jamie is. Maybe some things or sometimes like a toddler, but other times not. Maybe younger than a toddler sometimes. Who knows?”

They were almost back within sight of their spot.

“I still don’t … What does that mean, for us I mean? Me,” Becky asked. She wasn’t used to asking her daughter questions like these, to turning to her in this way, but Amanda really did seem to understand Jamie better and not only because she’d been reading about littles nonstop since he arrived.

“He’s got a brain and body that need to be kept active, first of all. Over time, maybe he’ll learn to let go of the … I don’t know. Whatever it is that stops him from being like other littles in some ways. He had fun being tossed around in the water. He was able to let go, stop being so serious. Play.”

“He played with Rosie.”

“He was faking it.”

“Yeah … he was.”

“So we play it by ear, see how he reacts to the way we care for him, and then we adjust. And over time, maybe he learns to let go of whatever keeps him from accepting and enjoying that he’s a little, like letting himself be taken care of and actually liking it. If he can figure that out, that he doesn’t have to do it all alone, maybe then he’ll share the sadness with us and let it go.”

“But … he is a little. What if he gets hurt while we’re all figuring it out? And I don’t just mean physically.”

“I knowhe’s a little. I haven’t forgotten. He doesn’t know he’s a little, and if he did, he’d probably hate himself even more than he already does. I want him to know he’s a little and be okay with that,” Amanda responded.

“You think he hates himself?”

“Sometimes …” Amanda knew it was a serious thing to say, but she’d already said so much else. “Sometimes I think he came here to punish himself for all the things he couldn’t fix back there, and he’s torturing himself by not understanding the difference between forgiving himself and forgetting about the people he thinks he’s failed. He may even be doing it on purpose.”

Becky was horrified. It made sense now in a way that hadn’t been clear before. She sat down in the sand. Amanda sat down next to her.

“His caseworker did say he’d benefit from counseling,” Becky said, her voice carrying a sense that she putting puzzle pieces together.

“I think she’s right.”

“And what do we do in the meantime?”

“Like I said. He is a little, and he needs to know and accept that. But he’s his own kind of little. He doesn’t know and we don’t know what that kind is. He’s not going to fit into a stage-of-life box. We have to help him figure out the things about being a little that make him happier and the ones that don’t. And he might not always agree, and we need to know we might not always be right. And we’ll reach some … equilibrium.”

“And when we disagree?”

“We pick the right battles. Sometimes we may have to let things go.”

“That’s not always going to be possible. The rest of the world sees a little, not Jamie.”

“Jamie’s smart. If we tell him he needs to be a certain way in front of some people and different with others, he’ll understand. I think he knows how to wear different masks better than either of us.”

“Ok. So where do I start?”

“By focusing more on what he can do than on what he can’t.”

“But he just got here. We don’t know what he can do; he doesn’t even know all of what he can and can’t do. What if he gets hurt?” That was the crux of it for Becky. She wanted two things for Jamie: to make him happy and keep him safe. She had done what she thought would do those, and she feared in abandoning what she thought was the former, she too greatly risked the latter.

“So what if he does? We’ll pick him up and make it better, and he’ll see how much we care for him and love him, and he’ll trust us more, and he’ll let himself be littler and littler until he finds the right kind of little he is. And then, hopefully, he’ll let us take the unhappiness away; he’ll trust us to take it from him. That’s the idea, right? That’s how we help littles: we let them be who they are so all the rest can be stripped away, and then they’re happy.”

“And how do we introduce the little things to see if they help him or not?”

“Slowly. When the time is right. I think some things we’re going to have to introduce to him, but it can’t come out of nowhere, and it can’t be an order, or he’ll just reject it. But like the way you did with the pacifier. And his bear; he carries that around the house. I doubt he was doing that where he came from.”

“So what do we stop doing, right now?”

“Nothing, I don’t think. I think he’s fine with most things we’re doing. It’s more a matter of … when he thinks he’s not being recognized for who he is. It’s the assumptions that hurt him. Like that he can’t swim, or that he doesn’t understand what’s being said about him when he’s right there. Or just … ignoring his feelings, dismissing him when he says he’s not sure or wants to do it a different way. When that happens, then we ask, is this something that will help him accept himself or not. That’s what the books say about raising a little, to listen when they say something and be open to changing your mind.”

“You’re so much better at this than I am.” Becky sighed. She was proud of Amanda, but also frustrated with herself. “Why is this so hard?”

“Because we picked him, Mom.” Amanda shrugged. “We picked him because we wanted to help him.” They sat for a while longer. “I’m glad it’s hard. We do what’s hard for the people we love,” Amanda added.

Becky let that sink in. Amanda was right again. “Should we go back?”

When they got back, they were surprised to find both littles still sleeping. But sun and water will do that, and they’d both played hard in their own way.

“Sorry we were gone so long,” Becky whispered to Jane.

“Don’t mention it. He’s been asleep the whole time.”

“We should probably wake them up or they won’t go to bed tonight.”

Becky, Jane, and Amanda began packing up. When they took down the umbrella, both littles stirred.

“Hey, buddy,” Amanda whispered, brushing some hair from his forehead. “How ya feelin’?

The sun was lower but still bright. “Still sleepy. Are we going home soon?”

“Yeah, we’re almost packed up. I bet you’re hungry, too.” She ran her fingers down his back, and Jamie shivered with pleasure. He didn’t know why he liked that so much, no matter who did it.