Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

by Andrew Solomon

We were sure the strengths would outweigh the weaknesses, though the experts told us repeatedly that the deficits overpower the strengths for most people.”

Sam had realized that he was gay, but was still intensely closeted in high school.

Sam described it as “attempted rape” and said bitterly, “This bitch guidance counselor said, ‘He’s a senior and you are only a junior so we’re not going to do anything about it.’ That pretty much ruined my life.”

Winston explained that someone exposed himself an...

Sam was traumatized and began to ...

“They were voices from my enemies at high school, and I actually went from being very ...

“Ativan helped.

Risperdal, a disaster; it screwed up his coordination. Prolixin, a fiasco; he had the dry heaves all the time.

Then Mellaril. The truth sunk in that this was going t...

“He was talking to himself and the police picked him up, and he either said, ‘I want to kill somebody’ or ‘I want to kill myself,’” Winston said.

“Fat Pig Sam Period.” He explained, “I was very

racist and I hated everybody. From twenty-one to twenty-four I ate nothing but junk food, about eight times a day. I was obsessed with ice hockey. I don’t know what made me turn into such a horrible, disgusting, obnoxious pig, but that is what I turned into.”

After his childhood focus on botany, and his pig-period fixation on hockey, Sam became obsessed with the heyday of rock and roll, a passion he shares with Winston.

But he has been banned from the Princeton Record Exchange since the day he punched one of its clerks.

We’re reaching a state where I don’t know how much longer it can go on.

Sam called too often, as he always does. Usually the wife or girlfriend says, ‘You have to stop letting this kid call, it’s driving me crazy.’ So that turned from being a sort of ideal moment where you explore the record that scared you, find the guy, and make friends, to being a nightmare that made him feel terrible about himself.”

“My lyrics deal with love, hate, revenge,” Sam said. “They are all homosexually oriented.”

Sam’s other obsession is soldiers. “They are the one group that understand me,” he said. “They look me straight in the eyes and try to make me feel unfragile, like they believe in me. Unlike my parents, who make no effort whatsoever.”

English men are beautiful. Very nice rosy skin. The first time ever I was in love was with a British soldier. It was a very painful experience because it was love at first sight. We talked for an hour and I wanted to spend my life with him. We never saw each other again. His name was Sergeant Gibbs. I was twenty-seven and he was thirty-three. I wanted to kiss him, but he was holding a machine gun.

My heart was broken after that. Our first cat died soon after that happened. It was a really difficult period.”

“It is a sexual fixation and a very familiar one. But also, he thinks of himself as living in a war zone and feels these people understand what it’s like to survive in war conditions.

What poisons it is that he calls again and again and again. I say, ‘Write down every call and keep a schedule of when it’s okay to call back.’

‘No, I’m not, I’m not, they don’t mind.’”

“You just can’t keep making these phone calls,” and Sam hit her. Winston called the police. But they remain afraid that setting firmer limits will only aggravate things.

They sent down a guy who turned out to be gay. He and Sam kept in touch, and when we went back the next year, Sam was determined to lose his virginity. I gave him some prophylactics, and the guy was going to take him to a bathhouse.

“Hey, thanks,” I said. “I know it can be hard to have a total stranger come into your house and ask you all these questions.” To my surprise, Sam gave me a warm hug, then looked me in the eye and said, “You didn’t seem like a stranger to me.”

self beneath the illnesses he had been parading seemed to touch me.

Families rise to the occasion of various difficulties, struggle to love across those divides, and find in almost any challenge a message of hope and an occasion for growth or wisdom.

To me, their suffering seemed unending, and singularly fruitless.

Being gifted and being disabled are surprisingly similar: isolating, mystifying, petrifying.

A prodigy is able to function at an

advanced adult level in some domain before the age of twelve.

Few people wish to be identified as prodigies, especially given the correlation between prodigiousness and burnout, prodigiousness and freakishness.

Prodigies are, in the eyes of many prodigies, pathetic, uncanny weirdos with little chance of lifetime social or professional success, their

performances more party trick...

The designation prodigy usually reflects timing, while genius reflects the ability to add something of value to human consciousness. Many people have genius without pr...

Like a disability, prodigiousness compels parents to redesign their lives around the special needs of their child.

A child’s prodigiousness requires his parents to seek out a new community of people with similar experience; they soon face the mainstreaming dilemma and must decide whether to place their children with intellectual peers too old to befriend them, or with age peers who will be bewildered and alienated by their achievements.

There is no clear delineation between supporting and pressuring a child, between believing in your child and forcing your child to conform to what you imagine for him.

You can damage prodigies by nurturing their talent at the expense of personal growth, or by cultivating general development at the expense of the special skill that might have given them the deepest fulfillment.

If society’s expectations for most children with profound differences are too low, expectations for prodigies are often perilously high.

That music is a first language does not guarantee brilliant use of that language, however, any more than American children’s fluency in English makes them all poets.

Evgeny Kissin,

Frustrated at her reluctance to enroll him in a special academy

a friend arranged an appointment with Anna Pavlovna Kantor, of the famed Gnessin School, in 1976, when Zhenya was five.

He began to sing everything he heard. “It was rather embarrassing to take him out in the streets,” Emilia recalled. “As it went on, relentless, nonstop—I became frightened by it.”

At three, he began improvising. He especially liked to make musical portraits of people. “I would make the rest of the family guess whom I was playing,” he recalled.

He played as though it were a necessary emancipation. “When I would return from school, I would, without taking my coat off, go to the piano and play,” he said. “I made my mother understand that this was just what I needed.”

A child conceived in rape gets as rough a start as a child with dwarfism or Down syndrome.

With most disabilities, those who do not share a given condition struggle to find the humanity within it, while those who do share the condition gravitate toward one another for support, validation, and collective identity.