Taking the dental supplies to the clinic through the streets of Antiqua
When Juan Jose was ten, he was dumped in the Brule River not once, but twice when I was at the helm of our canoe. Without help from strangers, we would not have made it to the landing.
He’s almost 14, and he recently completed a comprehensive water-based safety course that involved practicing self-rescue and rescuing other kayakers with his Boy Scout troop in Lake Superior. These are necessary skills for the wilderness cold water kayaking that he’ll be doing in Alaska with the Scouts this August.
Juan didn’t join Scouts to learn how to navigate water. He joined Scouts to learn what his two moms and sister couldn’t teach him.
I became a Cub Scout leader by default. He wouldn’t let me drop him off while I ran errands for an hour.
Dentist Hugo, Juan Jose, Hygienist
When it was time for him to cross over to Boy Scouts, he decided to stay in scouting. This surprised me. I was preparing myself for a free evening. Instead, I trained to be an assistant Boy Scout leader. He still wasn’t ready for a parent to drop and run.
Juan was pulling away from me though. I no longer went to all of his campouts. When I did go, he was caught up in the flow of scouts running from one event to another.
Today, he completed his Eagle Scout project in Guatemala. He raised funds for children to receive dental care, and he collected over 130 lbs. of toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss and dental supplies .
Juan gave the children sunglasses so they wouldn’t be blinded by the light. That’s how it is done at his dentist in Richfield.
The money he raised enabled 14 dental cleanings, 34 extractions, 31 fillings, and 28 sealants. Care that these children would not have received otherwise.
He gave one suitcase of dental supplies to the dentist and a suitcase of toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss to De Familia a Familia. This organization is a link between birth and adoptive families. They have over 260 families that they are currently working with.
Juan couldn’t have done this project without help from relatives, friends, neighbors, and strangers.
And, his two moms and sister.
Six teeth extracted and a dental cleaning.
Because of all of us, he’s learned to navigate waters and to pull himself back into his kayak.
Though I supported Juan changing his name, I was worried, too. I thought he’d feel adopted. All of his life, all 13 years, Jody and I had known him as Antonio. If he was now Juan, did that wipe out all the years he was Antonio, our son? I was worried that he wouldn’t feel a part of our family or our son anymore. I was worried about the distance that would organically occur from having been Antonio to now being Juan.
I changed my name in 2002. I used to be Ann Smith. I wanted to shed my past. Antonio, on the other hand, wanted to claim his past.
Maybe it was because I had changed my name and knew how important it was to claim one’s identity that I was able to temper my fears. I didn’t speak of them. Instead, I took Antonio out of school and drove him to the Hennepin County Courthouse to put his name application in. On the way, I spoke to him about how people would still call him Antonio just like they still called me Ann after I changed my name. Call me what you want, I thought then. I’m changing my name for me. I told him that he could decide to not care whether people called him Antonio or Juan and it might be less stressful. I explained that in time what name people called him would change and at some point when someone called him Antonio, he would know that they knew him from that part of his life. All the new people he met from here on out would know him only as Juan.
To ease my name change from Ann to Elizabeth I decided to tell people that they could call me Beth Ann. Beth Ann felt like a stepping stone to Beth. Even before then I had to ask myself what I wanted to be called. Did I want to be Elizabeth, Liz, Lizzy, or Beth?
When Antonio and I stood at the window the clerk taking our information was confused. He became even more confused after he asked me what Antonio’s name was changing to and I looked to Antonio for clarity.
After I turned back to the clerk, I read the furrow that had developed between his eyes: How could this mother not know the answer to what her kid’s name is going to be? How could she be allowing him to make the decision? Wouldn’t this have been figured out before this moment?
The clerk pushed pen and paper towards us. “Write it down. First. Middle. Last.”
I slid the paper over to Antonio. He wrote, Juan Jose – first name. Antonio Sol – middle. di Grazia – last.
Until then I wasn’t sure that Antonio was going to keep any of his name. Maybe he would just want to be Juan Jose and drop the Antonio Sol.
In the coming days I stayed attentive to see if there was any distance between Juan and me. Any sign of rebellion now that he wasn’t Antonio but this new guy Juan Jose. I worked to call him Juan Jose, correcting myself when I said Antonio, remembering how respected I felt when someone called me Beth after I changed my name.
The distance didn’t come. I’m sure it was helped by still needing to be this 13-year old’s mom and asserting my momship. Juan Jose was tardy to his sixth hour class. This was his 13th tardy of the year.
“You don’t understand, Mom,” he’d say to me. He’d go on to explain the difficulty, the impossibility of getting from one class to another on time.
“I want to understand,” I’d say. “That’s why I’ll walk you from one class to another to experience it first-hand.” I added, “ And since I’m there, I’ll just sit next to you in class.”
This wasn’t new to Juan. When he was Antonio, I had already done this twice before during the school year and a number of times during sixth grade.
But, it appeared that I needed to up the ante because I wasn’t understanding his difficulty. After spending his sixth period together, I followed him to his 7th hour class. All the while he kept telling me to go home—none too quietly.
“Oh, no. I took the afternoon to be with you, Juan,” I replied.
He ducked into a bathroom. I waited in the hallway for him. Leaned against the wall, said hi to kids and teachers. Shook the principal’s hand.
It took Juan about 15 minutes to speak to me in his 7th hour period. He realized that I wasn’t going to go away.
No, I’m his mom. He’s my son. His name change didn’t change that a bit.
I woke in the night with a deep sadness and an image that was slowly fading.
Leaning down, I had kissed my grandma. She was sitting on the chair that she always sat on in her kitchen, the one on the left when you came into the room. This seat gave her the best vantage point to greet people, and the large window overlooked her patio and into the neighbor’s back yard. Purple, white, and pink African violets lined her windowsill.
My grandmother and I were close. I stayed with her while I was going to college, roaring my 650 Honda motorcycle up onto her brownstone patio. After parking, I bounded in her house and up the three steps to her kitchen. I slept with her when she was confused to give her comfort and to make sure she didn’t wander away. One afternoon she told me that I should call my mother, see my family. I told her she wouldn’t say that if she knew the truth. She didn’t bring it up again.
I was at her side when she died. Holding her hand, telling her it was okay for her to go. Being with her while she was dying was a gift she gave me. It was me who called my mother and told her that grandma was gone. My mother had left hours earlier after telling me to call her when her mother had passed. Same as I told my siblings when our mother was dying.
I recognized that the deep sadness I woke with comes from not having close ties to familial people. There were a number of aunts and uncles I had felt close to growing up. That is gone. Some, through death. Some by my choice to not remain close.
Since House of Firehas been published, I’ve been unfriended on Facebook by all of my siblings. I have watched them drop away one by one.
I have no regrets. As a writer, if you really want to write about what’s important, meaningful, and to be a change in the world, you have to write what is yours to write. Mine has been to write the unspoken.
I had to be true to myself and to the parts of me that has lived the unspeakable.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t sadness and a sense of great loss. That is just as real as the telling.
