You cringe as you step on the brake, knowing the lack of motion will only intensify her cries. Come on green, you think, as you gently pump the gas pedal, hoping to somehow rock the car as you wait, anything to calm her a little, to quiet the persistent wails. You look in the rear view mirror but she's still too small to see.
"Sorry she's so loud," you tell your son, who sits across from her in the backseat. He looks down, puts his hands over his ears, and says nothing.
"She's crying because she's hungry," you say.
"She's crying because she's hungry," he repeats.
"Yep." You push the accelerator a little too quickly, eager for movement when the light turns green.
As you pass Roger's Park, the volume of her cry leaps to a high pitched scream, and you look back to see Elias reaching over, his hand in her car-seat, but blocked from your view.
"Elias what are you doing?" you ask as your heart speeds up with the car, "Get your hand out of her car seat! Elias get your hand out NOW!!!"
He doesn't respond so you reach back and grab his hand with yours, and continue to drive like this, your left hand on the wheel, your right arm strained backwards at the shoulder, your six-year-old's fingers locked in yours.
And you don't let go until you turn onto 20th, three blocks from home.
"Elias what were you doing to your sister?" you ask, as you squat in your driveway beside his car door.
No response.
"Were you trying to help your sister or hurt your sister?" You wait for him to reply.
And he looks towards you, his eyes roaming in your direction, an attempt at eye contact from a little boy whose brain can't control the movement of his eyes. "I was trying to help her stop crying."
Oh sweetie.
"How, by squeezing her?" you ask, as you've already seen the red marks on her face, the fingernail slice underneath her eye.
But he was trying to help her...
"Yeah," he says and looks away. He takes the string from his hat and puts it in his mouth.
"Elias, it is never OK to squeeze your sister's face." You put your hand on his chin, try to get him to look in your direction again, "You hurt her, do you understand, you hurt her."
He looks straight ahead, biting on the orange and blue string, showing no emotional response to your words.
And this is where you lose it.
For you understand his urge to squeeze Olive's face to shut her up, to "help her" stop crying, there's nothing more grating than incessant screams while strapped in a small vessel that is not under your control, he's chronologically six, but developmentally delayed, so he doesn't have the cognizance to know that this too shall pass-- I mean hell, you struggle at times to remember that the air won't always be charged with the sound of her cries--but you want him to react to her pain.
You want him to care that he hurt her; you've seen a two-year-old feel sorry for the tears he inflicted and you want your son to do more than stare straight ahead and chew on his hat string.
You want to know he will be able to respond to the emotions of others.
You want him to be OK.
And by OK you don't mean fully-sighted or capable of walking with grace, you don't mean with the lungs of an athlete or the dexterity of a musician, you mean with the emotional intelligence to relate to others. To build relationships. To make friends. To fall in love.
And yes, he is only six. And not even six.
And the road ahead is long, it twists and it turns and no one knows where it goes but today you wish you could see where it leads, just a glimpse, just to know.