THE GLOW-LIZARD

Miklós was a bit more than three years old when he lectured to me on the glow-lizard. I’m not joking when I call it a lecture. In one of the afternoons there were only the two of us together and Miklós was giving a lecture to me for hours. Walking to and fro like the ancient Greek pedagogues, the peripatetic teachers. 

I have never seen a glow-lizard, not even in a book. I was interested in it, and Miklós explained to me everything about its appearance, size, colours, habits, life-functions, eggs, its offspring, and the male and the female lizards… About how and why it glows. He was talking in English, even when he answered my Hungarian questions. He can understand everything in Hungarian, too, but he reserves his knowledge for his English mother tongue.

I have lived my long life among children, listening to them and getting to know them. I have never met such a teaching-talent as Miklós among them. His talent is also extraordinary from two perspectives: on the one hand, he wants to know everything, he wants to know the origin, the working, the “how” and “why” of everything.

He is always curious, but never superficially. It is important to search, find out, or ask about all the details of things, beings and characteristics. The other speciality of his talent is his need to communicate. Children rarely talk to strangers, and hardly ever explain things to them. Miklós stands in front of the uniformed policeman on duty in the hospital, and there in the corridor he explains to him offhand the nature and origin of tornadoes, and the different storms in Hungary. The tall black man stands still, listens, looks into the bright eyes looking up at him from below his waist, and speaks encouraging, interested, responsive words: “All right!” “You bet!” “Really?”. He doesn’t go on his way, or shake Miklós off.

Miklós was born younger, smaller, and needing more protection than his twin sister. He is more fragile, vulnerable, and more attached to his mother. He was breastfed for months longer, it was difficult to wean him. He is very boyish, he has no girlish appearance, he doesn’t play girlish games. He is in deep fellowship with his sister, Anni, often competing with her where it is usually Miklós who comes second-best. There is fight and screaming for a feather one of them has found, but the other took away (there were about ten similar feathers lying around there). Anni grabs the feather and doesn’t let it go, clenching her teeth in the effort. Miklós yells and bites as a last resort. Biting is expressly forbidden, his father explains why, then sends Miklós away: “Sit down and think about it!”. The two-year-old Miklós sits down on the steps and thinks about it. 

If only I could sit down beside him, silently. But the parents’ methods are good, soft-hearted sympathies would only tangle up the smooth threads out of which the texture of character and personality is woven.

The sober-minded, careful Anni guards and instructively warns the impulsive Miklós who would run across the road, jump down from high, beat about with sticks. He loves beating about with clothes, too, once he accidentally hit his mother’s eyes with one, but his apology was such a sincere, immediate, heartfelt and deep statement of his love; one could glimpse into the well of emotions through it. 

Miklós turns towards his beloved ones with the fullness of his emotions. It is easy to blackmail him, and Anni, in her women’s ways, knows and exploits this. Miklós is going to the hospital, bidding farewell to the ones staying at home. He would like to say goodbye to Anni, too, hugging, is the customary form of farewell in the family. But Anni won’t hug Miklós, not for all the world, she is standing in the doorway, looking, refusing to hug her brother who is crying. He is crying all the way through to the hospital. If Miklós shrugged it off – I don’t care whether she hugs me or not – it wouldn’t be worth teasing him, but it is worth it now, Anni is lashing the tiny whip. Will she regret it later? Maybe. 

In Texas Miklós is an alien name, it has to be practised. Once, around the time of their moving house, we met a stranger cat in the street. The cat stopped. Miklós stooped to it: “My name is Miklós. Say it: Miklós” And the cat looked into the child’s face and said: meow. A shiver went down my spine, I was standing amazed: two creatures were making acquaintance right in front of my eyes.

Miklós takes every living creature seriously, familiar as well as remote animals, birds, reptiles, bugs, in short: everything living. He can stand for hours in front of an aquarium, the ducks in the zoo are as exciting as the storks or penguins, and tortoises are as interesting as porcupines. We visit the zoo frequently, we have a family season-ticket. Still, the zoo is always a novelty, even the familiar creatures have to be rediscovered. And the frog hiding in the grass of the garden, the earth-worm coiling to the surface in the rain, the bug that fell into the swimming-pool, the bumblebee humming on a flower, and even the everyday ant has to be discovered. 

Miklós has a covered collecting basket with a little door on it, that’s where we carefully put the animals we caught. However much he wants to inspect them closely, he sets them free without a word if he fears they might be hurt in captivity. Life is sacred. He contemplates the fate of the fish we have for dinner, even though we bought it sliced. “It’s a shame it had to die” – he says. Nothing should die. Everything and everybody everywhere should live. His wonderfully sharp attention is heart-rending now that he has been diagnosed with leukaemia. Miklós is struggling for his own life, together with his physicians.

I heard the news on the phone on a Sunday morning: I was about to go to teach. Children, musicians, parents, guests, my German friends came to the class from many places. Those who have seen me teaching know my piercing attention which each of the many people present receives individually. One can’t slack, it is not allowed. You can only walk through the flames holding each other’s hands, as Mozart teaches with Tamino and Pamina in the Magic Flute. Did I have things to dance away that Sunday!

Only in the evening was I left alone. I had one desire: to lie on the ground prostrate, my face on tilled earth, and remain there, never to get up again. 

When I arrived, Miklós was sleeping, it was the middle of the night. I could not see him, but my knees jerked at his whiny voice. He was moaning in his dream. He woke up crying, his lips were bleeding. It took him long to reach the table. But he wanted to eat, the medicine aroused a wild appetite in him. Only one of the medicines, since there was a drugstore-full of them under the carefully planned schedule. What to take after meals, at night, on Wednesday, which to take with water, which with syrup, which to mix in an apple-mash, which crushed to powder. Miklós knew which one of them is bitter, which one disgusting, and which one has a bad smell. He had a very sensitive, delicate sense of smell.

He was through his first great chemotherapy treatment. He woke up in the hospital, and as he opened his beautiful, hollow, dark eyes, he sang the song “Paul, Kate, Peter, Good Morning” to his father. The whole song from the beginning to the end. He learnt this canon in the summer in our music-kindergarten, it sounded beautifully, it was polyphonic, and Miklós liked it. He sang it until he reached home. His actual home, that is, at the Dallas airport, passengers were collecting their suitcases from the circling conveyor belt humming the tune of “Come to the meadow cock-a-doodle-doo”.

It is difficult to imagine you would endure without crying the sight you are about to behold, but you do endure, smile and talk, like at other times. The multitude of tasks also helps. These are not days or weeks for crying. “All aboard” they used to shout to the seamen of ship struggling in a tempest. They had to pull the ropes together, I think.

The most painful sight, however, is the changed Miklós himself as he heavily drags his stiff potbelly, staring oafishly. He would always eat, he stuffs himself with huge meals, doesn’t even look away, and if he happens to glance at you, his eyes are empty. From table to bed and back. And he cries, cries pointlessly.

Only a couple of months ago I had to put the spoon into his ever-talking mouth, between two words, “There, you have it!”, for Miklós never had time to eat, even at the table he had thousands of things to say, all of them important and urgent. Now he talks slowly, heavily, and only a little.

His crying comes unexpected and is annoying, once he starts crying, there is no consolation, no explanation, you can’t divert his attention, you have to wait until the crying stops by itself. I was the cause of his first sob: I flushed the toilet, suddenly, carelessly. I flushed his poo, even though he himself can only do that, before he flushes, he says goodbye: “Bye-bye pee, bye-bye poo...” All my explanations were in vain, not knowing is not an excuse, and he was crying, crying endlessly. However, his crying is often set off by less grave faults than that. His wishes are mostly impossible, for example, he wanted to eat the apple, which I carefully cut into four on his plate, as a whole. There you go, another apple. That is not good, this one cut into four should be a whole again. Such a clever, bright child and he doesn’t understand that it is impossible? Later, I understood from many similar occasions that it is exactly the impossible he is looking for so that he could cry.

He endured his hospital treatment, even the painful ones, with amazing patience. What isn’t painful there? His doctors wonder at him, and talk about him. He endures, bears up, and behaves himself. I suppose somewhere he has to loosen the tension. Crying is good, he repeats something that started it. “Anni did not hug me goodbye” or “I want that salad” (That was just thrown off his plate because he did not eat it” or “The broken star should be a whole” (of fifty other unbroken star-stickers this one was damaged), or “I push the garage-button” (which he was late to push when Mami came home). We would gladly open it for him to close it, but that is not good because he wanted it right then when Mami came home even when that was some time ago. It is impossible, but it can be cried for. 

On a morning which started happily we are throwing sticks into the river from high above, in a forest full of dry branches. Miklós would continue it for ever, but at some point we have to go, it’s lunchtime. He could be persuaded at these times before, with some concession, perhaps: all right we’ll have the last three sticks… Now he is stuck there on the bridge and with tears flowing down his face cries back the sticks he threw in. They are whirling deep down, some of them getting caught on rocks, others swept away by water, disappearing. The banks are steep, you can’t climb down. Miklós’s annoyed, complaining cry for the impossible throws a dark veil over all of us, we watch him helplessly, and don’t even want lunch anymore. We just want to go home, to shelter somewhere. The family are tired, nobody tries to console or appease Miklós, we endure and wait.

Anni is sometimes teasing him, opposing him very quietly. We can hardly hear it, but we surely can hear Miklós’s yelling answer. “The fish pattern on the plate’s rim is brown”. A quiet contradiction: “No, it is blue”. Howling answer: “Brown!” Pianissimo: “Blue.” The crying “brown” already burst out of heart-rending pain. 

Should we expect a four-year-old to spare her ill brother? No. Their emotions are shown in a different way. And we have to take care, take care of Anni, so that she gets sincere attention abundantly. If she does not receive it in her own right, she will conquer it by mischief-making. Siblings often fall out – as we know – but twins fight more fiercely, because they experience every happening at the same time, they would like to have every parental smile, gesture, look, touch before the other one. Not later, yells Miklós, NOW! When Mami tells them a tale in the evening, there is war to the knife as to whose chosen book she should start with. Isn’t it all the same? – we would reasonably ask. But there is no reason here, there are emotions clashing, there will be a fight, crying, one of them should yield, but they behave as the two little goats in the tale who met in the middle of a narrow bridge. 

Fortunately, I don’t tell my tales from books. But it is not worth fighting to the knife for me, the real value is priority with Mami, to be the winner for her, to reach the goal before the other. They share their father more peacefully, even though he equally participated in bathing them, changing their diapers, telling tales, singing, feeding them, playing, doing somersaults, and dancing with them, going to the zoo, the swimming pool, or travelling with them as they were looking out from the backpack or on fast trips on skis. In the hospital now, too. 

The little patient is alone in his room, one of the parents stays with him. 

I had hoped to take over from them in shifts, but we could not even try. Miklós did not accept me at home either, he protested crying angrily and demanding his father when in the middle of the night he woke up and found me. Oh but how good it would have been if I had been able to take over from his father who has no time to rest during the day, nowhere, never. Miklós who used to cuddle up to me with heartfelt pleasure and would play or come with me at any time, now looked at me suspiciously even during daytime. When he woke up from his dream, he was clearly hostile. He sat on his bed pressing his little woollen blanket to his chest (the “bingi” is with him everywhere, in the hospital as well as in the car), crying, because every time he woke up it resulted in crying, and the mere supposition of my approaching him resulted in kicking, with both legs.

Five weeks passed when I heard the quiet “Granny” in the middle of the night, he was calling me from the neighbouring room. I was overwhelmed with joy, rushed to him on wings. Our night talks are my sweetest memories. The changing of the blankets, the checking of pee, the changing of pyjamas gave opportunity to talk, and we were quietly conversing in the still of the night. As he was recovering, his old tendency to talk was coming back. With the disappearance of the medication blowing up his appetite, his potbelly disappeared. His drive to eat, too, I had to spoon-feed the lunch and the dinner to him. He started to run around again, tripping and falling, but without complaints. His nerves are sensitive to one of the elements of the medication injected into his spine once a week, his gait is unsteady, his speech falters. But he struggles for his motions as he used to struggle with his arm and leg plastered up. He was running on his broken leg, limping, he was holding on to things with his broken arm and never asked for help, movement is his natural element.

He never cries because of his movement-problems, if he falls or gets tired. Yet he does cry, cry a lot because of other things; he can no longer find a consoling partner for the invincible “wind-up” cryings that exhaust adults.

Mami is going to work, she has said goodbye, a hug in the room, another in front of the house. She steps out of the car once again: a hug for Miklós, a hug for Anni. Back to the steering wheel, rushing, she is already late. Miklós is sobbing on and on: “I miss my Mami” It is one of his inconvincible cries, I sigh with resignation, Jamie is also standing apart, we are waiting silently, doing our duty. Miklós crouches in front of his five-month-old brother, and cries his sorrow to him: “István, I miss my Mami”. István’s unsteady knees don’t move, his face is at the same height as his brother’s, he is not crying, he cries very rarely, but he is unbelievably attentive, he is looking at his brother, they are looking into each other’s eyes. I hide away to cry.

Miklós is suffering because of his emotions, not the medicines, or the painful treatment. Of course, the needle, the frequent drawing of blood from his fingers hurt (they have missed the vein on his arms several times), and sometimes they painfully missed the target in jabbing his spine. Some of the medicines are awfully bitter, no matter how sweet a mix they make out of them. These cries, however, are short, they are never as desperate as the ones deriving from sadness. “I am sad” he cries. And on one occasion, at the end of his “crying for the impossible”, he said holding on to his father’s knees: “Nobody likes me any more!” The “any more” is heartbreaking.

Miklós, the little baby was wondered at by strangers in the street, and not only because of his beauty. Anni is beautiful, too, but she is reserved: her countenance kept strangers at a distance, she could not bear being touched, and never made friends. Miklós looked straight into the eye of the adult who greeted them, his smile-dimples became enhanced as he received the kind approach. He would take the hand of cheery visitors and go on walks with them. As soon as he could speak, he accosted people, the postman, the man in yellow hat coming to mow the lawn, the shopkeeper, the conductor, whoever had time for a bit of talking. He was the one to venture with me on adventurous strolls to survey explore in trees, to throw sticks in the river, and to build a fabled bunny-house on the skirt of the forest. 

He waved goodbye to Mami cheerfully, and never initiated coming home. It is true, he never loved to stop anything. Whether it be climbing a swing or a jungle gym in the park, splashing about in waters, watching roe-deer near the forest, floating sticks down at the rapids of the river, looking for earth-worms in the mud, or watering or hoeing the plants… he would leave only after lengthy, inevitable urging. He did not really believe in coming back the next day. The next day? It is far away. Perhaps it will never come.

Miklós is persistent in every activity he likes. If they start one of their special painting-sessions with their clever mother, when for example, they paint Easter-eggs using many colours, or a surprise-shirt for Father’s Day, decorated with the imprints of their hands and feet (We love Daddy), there are three of them to start the work. Then soon it is the two of them that continue, because Anni gets bored.

Miklós would continue with fevered excitement forever. In making cakes he is the one to roll out the dough most beautifully, and to cut figures out of it cleverly. He is as persistent in serving as a cook’s boy beside his father – he stirs the spinach standing on a chair – as in fitting up machines – he jogs with the tools, looks, takes them, gives them back, screws, hammers and asks nine hundred and nine questions.

He is the one who paints with me for a long time, to music, or in the garden full of birdsong, he always finishes and explains the content of his pictures so that I could write on them which one is the hawk, which the hen-mother, where is the little chick in danger, where the storm clouds, which one is lighting and which one is wind. He never daubs aimlessly, but follows a concept in his painting, thinks about the picture beforehand. On my questioning, he expressly repeats the theme of any spot, he did not put the yellow chick or the black cloud there in vain.

Anni also handles her tools excellently, her aesthetic sense is good, and she learns easily. She painted a nice little picture on first trying the drenching-fusing technique, but her attention is not the tenth of Miklós’s, she goes away, starts another thing, what’s more, she does not really concentrate during her work, she just throws it together without much fuss. Miklós’s attention is irradiating, he concentrates like a laser-beam, not on me, but on his own work.

It was easy to get to love Miklós. Oh Lord, we surely love him more in our terrible anguish. Yet the parents’ anxiety is also about the future: we believe in his recovery, and that our hope would help the growing child build up his own good characteristics. What would friends, siblings, parents and pedagogues do with a wound-up child who makes arrogant claims and whose every whim would be fulfilled during his sickness? What would he himself become? When can he be pronounced recovered? When will the day come when his education, and the order of indulging and accepting him could take a sudden turn?

The cure is estimated to last two and a half years. If I imagine Miklós’s future schools, I would like to blow up a balloon, a fabled one in which I would sit Zoltán Dienes so that he could just flutter where Miklós is in the blink of an eye and stroke the kindergarten mistresses and the teachers with his magic wand. For thirty years I have passionately and attentively followed the course of the prospective pedagogy rooted in children’s talent, and the fate of each and every talented, problematic or exceptional child, not suspecting that once I will have a grandchild from this category. Of the “easy to teach”, the “the mediocre who will do”, the ones easily tamed and the ones causing headaches to pedagogues because they are untameable, the fate of the latter awaits Miklós. Unless, that is, some cosmic wonder will accelerate teacher-training from its snail-pace to supersonic speed.

What pedagogical talent could answer Miklós’s “Why”-s and “How”-s constantly popping up, and what organizing talent would find time for listening to the immense knowledge he would share?

In inventing our evening tales I always take care of having a character who is worthy of questions appear at the very beginning. It can be a fairy, a dwarf, a shepherd boy or a princess, but the appearance of a hedgehog, a tortoise, a toad, a cricket, a stork, a wild-goose, a fox, a zebra, an elephant, or perhaps a bat or an owl easily leads us to a flood of questions or qualifying comments, for Miklós won’t accept carelessness. He makes me stop at the most exciting turn of events just to make corrections; the tale can go on after clearing up the situation. My grandmother’s heart is proudly beating at these times and I am glad when they correct me, but Anni pushes her pillow away crossly on my right: “the tale, please” – she says in Hungarian, yet Miklós can’t be stopped until everything is clear. And, unfortunately, I know too many teachers in the world to hope for one who would be glad to be interrupted and corrected.

Both of them love my true stories, our life in peace as well as in war was so different from the world they live in. My war stories are mostly humorous, because there is much fun in hiding from Russian soldiers in the hayloft. We pulled up the ladder on which we climbed up, closed the plank-door on the hole, under us Ripi, the cow was ruminating. Up there in the rustling hay bugs were strolling about, mice were stirring, every now and then a tufted pigeon looked in the window, at night the wind was blowing, or April showers were beating the roof. We, little girls were whispering, giggling or hiding silently if steps were heard from the court.

They never asked why people hid little girls from foreign soldiers. Although they never watch TV (watching a tale on VCR together on Friday in the evening, crunching popcorn, is the only time they get access to the screen), they learnt at an early age about the danger of violence, the strict house-rules and the prohibition of opening the door to strangers.

Despite all my efforts I did sin against Miklós once, out of forgetfulness, neglect, and then superficial incomprehension. They spent the morning in the nature-kindergarten. It is their favourite place, they go there happily, it is a shame that they can only go once a week. They are walking in forests, close to water, to discover frogs, lizards, bugs and birds. Finally, they paint. They come home full of experiences, stories bubble out of them for days to come, and the painting is a precious treasure. 

When I was visiting them, Miklós’s painting could not dry, the kindergarten mistress folded it in two so that it would not stain the car. After we had arrived home, I put the painting on one of the shelves in the garage, and left it there. Folded! The painted sides stuck together. Miklós is crying for his creation: it was a frog, a toad, painted with a lot of thick green paint. I am ashamed, I apologize, I forgot it… The story is from the period before his illness, crying is justified, yet I tried to set it right in the wrong way: I prepared paint and a nice sheet of paper for him to paint another frog, look here, there is green paint, brush, everything needed.

Another frog? Instead of this one? He did not condescend to speak to me. Stamping on one leg, he was looking at his mother who tried to melt the stuck pages holding their back above steam. I was looking at her, too, with little hope. Miklós turned to me, took my hand and started to lead me away without a word, he led me out of the kitchen, through the living room into the other room, the empty dining room. He did not say so much as a word to me, released my hand and left me there. He could not have expressed his contempt more aptly: I was not worthy to look at another’s efforts. To forget the stuck sheet of paper is a problem, but to paint another one instead of it is a shame. 

I am remembering now from faraway, my thoughts are stamping towards them from a distance. They are only stamping with little steps full of fear. I enumerate the weekdays, today it is Monday, clinic day. Counting of blood-cells: what is the number of leucocytes, will they jab his spine with the violent needle full of poison, and will the needle find its place? What about his balance and his reflexes? Can the nurse bring the travelling coffer, which will pour the healing poison, drop by drop, into Miklós’s body through the tube implanted into his breast? The tubes tie him to the coffer night and day, all the time, he sleeps with it. It is quite heavy, sometimes we carry it running after Miklós. Yet, if there are no helpers around, he puts the coffer on his shoulder like a little locksmith apprentice or a tinsmith with his tools. He never forgets it, never goes anywhere without it. Would I forget it?

Peeing is a careful activity, the pee goes into a tube, and a piece of litmus paper indicates whether it is the right colour. We put the date on a chart, every time and there are many-many occasions, but Miklós is not tired of it, he doesn’t forget about it, and doesn’t complain. The poisons are strictly sealed in containers, the nurse is packing in rubber gloves. Miklós asks her questions, talks to her, since the nurse is a partner, too, even if a new nurse comes. He does not only ask about the marked devices, he has some private questions, too, and the nurse readily talks to him about her child’s school or the little dogs of their dog, or the fireworks on Sunday. 

Miklós, in the meanwhile, holds whatever he has to hold, lifts whatever he has to lift, sighs, takes and swallows whatever he has to…Treatment is a bit more than two hours, not just ten minutes. Miklós does not say one impatient word. 

The mass of cancerous cells discovered at first has disappeared. Yet an insidious cell, ready to multiply can always hide somewhere, the fight is against these, to exterminate them in time. For two and a half years, if everything goes well. During this time, it is especially important to avoid infection, even a flu or fungus infection may become fatal.

To be especially careful: what does that mean? We should take special care of him. How? He shouldn’t go among children. He doesn’t, but the other members of the family do, his mother, for example, a paediatrician, among infected ones.

We pray. Is it proper to beg only in prayer? It is not. But it is proper to beg for a praying soul. Let us have a soul that is capable of praying, and is trained to pray, one that has been polished in prayer and rejoices in prayer, out of mercy. “your heavenly father knows…” He may be strengthening our backs under the cross. When Miklós is among the recovered, jumping on the gymnastic apparatus carried out to the hospital-courtyard – they do have such a celebration –, will we become better through our bitter years? Will we appease crying better, others’ crying? Will Miklós be able to do that?

The lizard glows with its own light. The glow-worm, too. We, humans, don’t glow with our skin. Why not? Maybe because the bugs drawn to us with light are our food. Perhaps because we have hands to make fire, and reason to invent electricity and solar-panels. Not me, I can only operate those buttons which have been explained to me. Others provide light for me, but with the light children provide I can glow, too. Some light for myself, a little for others.