Similarly, we saw his competitive nature emerge when the four of us played board games together, like Monopoly and Risk. Losing was humiliating for Dylan, and his humiliation sometimes turned to anger. Of course, it’s as important to know how to lose as it is to win, so we continued to play games as a family until Dylan learned to control his temper. He also played Little League baseball, where he learned the importance of sportsmanship. As we hoped, Dylan’s need to win leveled out as he matured. Looking back, however, I wonder if we were inadvertently encouraging Dylan to suppress his feelings, under the guise of learning appropriate play.
Since I’d been a real scaredy-cat as a child, I was impressed by how free of ordinary childhood fears Dylan was. He wasn’t afraid to go to the doctor or the dentist, as I had been at his age. He got his first haircut with a big smile on his face. He wasn’t afraid of the water, or to be left alone in the dark, or of thunder and lightning. Later, when we started going to amusement parks, Dylan could be counted on to pick the scariest rides. Sometimes he had to ride them alone while we waved from below because no one else had the courage to join him.
Tom and I called Dylan “our little trouper” because of his ability to withstand frustration. He wouldn’t quit until he’d conquered a problem, and he rarely abandoned an idea without seeing it through. He didn’t like to ask for help. Then again, he rarely needed it. Because he was so tall and academically gifted, he entered school a year early. For most of his life, he was the youngest kid in his class, and almost always the biggest.
He wasn’t always great at sharing his toys, to the point of hiding his favorites when a particularly grabby playdate was coming over. As a toddler, an exhausted Dylan would occasionally throw himself down in a tantrum at the checkout when my grocery shopping was taking too long, and the way he flaunted how much better he knew his multiplication tables than his older brother was not the most charming thing in the world. But he was nothing if not normal, and we loved him. Tom and I both believed he was destined to do great things.
In the years since, I have thought a great deal about Dylan’s need to convince himself and others that he was completely in control. It was part of his nature from early childhood. While we were proud of this trait when he was young, I wonder now if that pride was misplaced. Because when Dylan really did need help toward the end of his life, he did not know how to ask.
In the wake of Columbine, many people have come forward to share their own stories of hidden pain with me. I find it striking how many of those stories come from so-called perfect kids: the science-fair winner, the track star, the young musician offered a full scholarship to the conservatory of her choice. Sometimes there were glaring signs in the lives of these children that all was not well: declining grades, promiscuity or drug use, trouble with the law. In many cases, though, these kids were able to fly under their parents’ radar precisely because they were the shiny pennies, hiding the terrible pain they were in from their parents as capably as they did everything else.
Whenever I wonder why I am writing this book, exposing myself once again to the judgment and vitriol of the world, those parents are the ones I think about. Dylan may not have been a valedictorian or a star athlete, but we were confident he would handle the inevitable challenges of life gracefully. Would I have parented differently if I had known those stories of kids suffering under the surface while presenting a happy, well-adjusted face to the world? Hindsight is 20/20, but I think if I had known, I would not have been so easily convinced by how effortlessly Dylan seemed to move through his life.
Tom and I always joked that Dylan was on autopilot. At five or six, Dylan asked me to teach him how to give himself a bath. I showed him how to put soap on the washcloth, which parts of his body needed extra attention, and how to rinse himself off thoroughly. Three years older, Byron was still having too much fun in the tub to wash his ears without prompting. I only needed to show Dylan the steps once—and he hung his towel up afterward without me saying a word about it.
In addition to being an easy child, Dylan was a happy one. He was more introverted than his brother but still quick to make friends. When we lived on a street with a lot of kids, Dylan moved comfortably along with a pack of boys his age as they rode around the neighborhood. (We always knew where they were by the herd of bikes lying on the lawn outside whichever house they’d stopped at for a snack.)
As our sons got older, Tom and I were particularly impressed by how seamlessly Dylan fit in with Byron and his friends. One of my favorite pictures, on my desk as I write this, is of Dylan clinging to Byron’s arm like a little monkey, both of them sporting huge grins.
There’s a story from Dylan’s childhood I think about a lot. When he was about ten, he had to have a misplaced, deeply embedded tooth removed. Unfortunately, we had friends coming into town to visit the next day. I probably should have insisted Dylan and I stay home while he recuperated, but there was no way he was going to miss sightseeing with our friends, even with his cheeks swollen up like a chipmunk’s.
I winced whenever I looked at his pale, swollen face, but he didn’t miss a beat—riding go-karts, eating ice cream, and taking the train up Pikes Peak, a mountain with an elevation of more than 14,000 feet and some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. When I anxiously made eye contact with him through the rearview mirror on our way from one place to the next, he smiled softly at me to dispel my worries. Despite my concern, Dylan was having the time of his life.
And when the other mom on the trip and I were too afraid to take the first step out onto the Royal Gorge Bridge, it was Dylan who skipped back to us, alternately teasing and cajoling and encouraging us across the highest bridge in the United States. I can still feel his hand in mine.
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Tom and I had moved several times before we finally found the house we wanted to raise our family in. With its large picture windows and high ceilings, the house had been quite the show home. It had been badly neglected, though, and by the time we bought it, it had fallen into serious disrepair. The pool didn’t hold water, and weeds grew six feet tall through the cracks on the tennis court. The house had a leaky roof and several broken windows, creating easy access routes for the hundreds of ground squirrels, voles, and mice that had taken up residence in and around the house.
The property was too much for us, given our income, but it was surrounded by breathtaking scenery. The extraordinary light in the foothills made the rocks behind our house glow a fiery orange in the mornings and a sweet, deep lavender at dusk. Set among the massive pink sandstone cliffs were twisted, gnarly scrub oaks, bristling prickly pears, and spiky yucca—hardy desert survivors, every one.
The boys and I would sit and watch the wildlife from our picture windows like other families watched television. Scrub jays, flickers, magpies, and chickadees patronized our bird feeders, and deer families and foxes and raccoons shared whatever seeds spilled to the ground. We hosted a family of bobcats in our backyard for a while. One night after dinner, Tom looked up from doing the dishes to see a black bear staring right back at him through the kitchen window, not eighteen inches away. One morning, he saw another bear blissfully lying on his back in the middle of our swimming pool, soaking in a depression in the pool cover that had trapped just enough water for his bath.