ODDC- Expecting Adam

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TITLE:Expecting Adam 1999

Author: Martha Beck (Katherine Cargill-Willis 4/23/04)

Kathy’s Note:I believe in God and have done so most of my life. I realize that this is an unusual way to start this summary, but so many unexplainable things happened in this story that I found myself frequently flipping back to the front of the book where it said it was a true story. The story also supports my theory the some people with cognitive disabilities just have a different value system from the majority of the population. It is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Martha and John: Martha and her husband, John were both working on their Doctorates at Harvard, hers in Sociology and his in Business. They were from Salt Lake City and were both children of professors. Martha was brought up as a Mormon, but by the time, she got to Harvard, she was an atheist. John traveled a lot of the time to Asia to work and finish his degree leaving Martha and their eighteen-month old daughter in Cambridge. All three of them had spent a year in Tokyo and experienced much of its culture. While in Japan, Martha had seen a style of puppet theater called Bunraku, where the puppeteers stand onstage, moving the dolls around without the slightest pretense of invisibility, but they are so skillful that the audience forgets they are on stage. Martha uses the analogy of the Bunraku puppets in their lives throughout the story.

Harvard: Martha portrays Harvard as the most unforgiving institution I have ever heard of, knowledge and research at all costs. She and John were both teaching and finishing up classes. Martha was back at her classes forty-eight hours after her oldest daughter Katie was born. Martha was sick for much of her pregnancy with Adam. On a trip home John brought back a flu from Asia. To recover from this and her severe morning sickness throughout her pregnancy, she required fluids intravenously. Her medical provider was the University Health Services.

With a few exceptions, the Harvard community thought her pregnancy was an inconvenience, and the feminists thought she was a sell-out (this was before the amniocentesis). Martha took a preliminary test called Alpha-fetoprotein, a blood test detecting spina bifida. She took the test twice. The first test came back low. There was a slight correlation between low levels of AFP and Down Syndrome. But the second test came back in the low-normal range, meaning there was no reason to suspect Down Syndrome. A physician at the university was studying prenatal diagnosis of birth defects with ultrasound, and insurance paid for the test. The amniocentesis ultrasound showed that the baby did have Down Syndrome. The health services center tried to convince Martha to have an abortion. John’s advisor suggested the baby would ruin his career and John, in his mind’s eye compared his advisor to a hamster running in a cage. Before the amniocentesis, John had even suggested that she have an abortion. But by the time she had the ultrasound and they saw the baby, both Martha and John felt a very strong relationship with it, and Martha thought she was meeting an old friend.

The Seeing Thing and Other Miracles:
Car Mishap: Even before Martha knew that she was pregnant, unexplainable things began to happen. On their way up to New England, John lost control of the car and it spun out of control and into oncoming traffic. They were fine and Martha did not have any doubt that they were going to be fine. John was shaken after the accident saying he "lost control." John had lost control to the Bunraku puppeteers. Two men, one with some disabilities, came running to help. One said " He’s a good baby, ma’am. You take care of that baby." Martha assumed he mistook Katie for a boy. All of sudden, Martha realized that the pain in her bladder was the same pain she felt when she was expecting Katie.

Katie’s Daycare: After John left for Asia, Martha needed to find daycare for Katie while Martha was in class. When she called the university she found that there was a four-year waiting list, although they didn’t take four-year-old children. She was told that most people put the children on the list even before they were expecting them. The woman called back two minutes after she hung up and asked if Martha had "a Harvard affiliated eighteen-month-old Caucasian girl." When Martha answered yes, she said there was a cancellation from a family who had "a Harvard affiliated eighteen-month-old Caucasian girl," and she could have the slot.

The "Seeing Thing": There were several instances when Martha ‘saw’ several things as they were happening in different parts of the world. She saw John at a taxi stand in Tokyo in great detail, and experienced the same sights and smells (this is one of the times I flipped to the front of the book and read again that this was a true story). As Martha fell asleep again, she dreamed about what foods she might want at the university grocery store. She woke up to her neighbors, who she did not know, knocking with the exactly the food she was dreaming about.

Sybil and Deirdre: Martha had met Sybil at a party when she was pregnant with Katie. The day after Sybil brought Martha the food that she had seen in her dream, she returned with Deirdre, another neighbor who was also pregnant. The three of them became good friends, coming to Martha’s aid several times. After learning that Adam had Down Syndrome, Martha went to the library at Harvard where she found very discouraging facts and figures about the disability. At breakfast when she told Sybil and Deirdre that her baby had Down Syndrome, Sybil informed her that she wrote a book on genetic defects worse than Down Syndrome and was "an absolute encyclopedia of information about having and raising a child with a disability."

The Fire: The grocery store on the first floor of Martha and John’s building caught fire. Martha picked up her daughter and ran as the smoke become thicker and thicker making the air impossible to breathe. She had almost reached the bottom of the ten flights when she fell and nearly blacked out. "A man" picked her up, steadied her and pushed her out of the building saving hers, Adam’s and Katie’s lives. When Martha saw herself on the T.V. and in print media, the man was nowhere in sight.

Martha’s ‘A’: As these unexplainable things continued to occur, Martha found it harder and harder to follow Harvard’s party’s line. She decided she needed more time to write a paper for her gender seminar. She went to the instructor and pleaded her case for an incomplete. At first the instructor said "sure." Then Martha felt an electric feeling, and the instructor said, "I’m going to give you an A."

John’s Retention of His Job: After discovering that Adam had Down Syndrome, John decided to quit his job because he figured that they would be moving back to Utah. His boss asked him how long it would take to finish his dissertation if he did not work. John said six months. He offered to pay him for six months while he solely worked on his dissertation.

The Hands: When Martha was five months pregnant, she started to bleed. John was not home. The doctor wanted to see her immediately, but she just didn’t have the energy. She saw ‘beings’ in the room. She spoke directly to them, pleading with them to "help this baby." The response was immediate and warm hands touched her back and chest. When she questioned the gender of the hands, the hands changed from male to female. The male hands joined the female hands; then other hands joined them. Martha ‘rose’ into sleep. She woke to the doctor calling back, wanting her to come in. But the bleeding had stopped, and she didn’t want to go and share her experiences.

F. John’s Epiphany: Expecting Adam was hard on Martha and John’s marriage; so much so, that John was planning to leave Martha. During John’s trip, when Martha experienced the "Seeing Thing" she experienced unendurable sadness. In a bar in Tokyo, John toyed with idea of going to Singapore instead of Los Angles the next morning. He wandered the streets of Tokyo. He saw a gate and a wall surrounding a temple. He went through the gate and sat on a bench facing the temple. He said that he had a dream, "sort of." John’s whole body relaxed. He was watching two jumbo planes crashing and broken bodies falling to the ground, but with a presence that felt like a dear, old friend. John said "Look at this, it’s horrible. It’s too horrible." The Presence said, "No, it isn’t so horrible. It depends on what you see. Look!" John saw the people who had been on killed in the collision, walking through the new buildings, boarding new planes. The Presence said, "You see, they are going places they could never reached before. It’s not so bad really. It’s just that you don’t understand." John asked, "Who are you?" The Presence said, "I’m Adam." Martha and John had not previously discussed the name ‘Adam.’

Adam: Although the story focuses on the time when Martha was expecting Adam, she did tell several funny stories. Here are some characteristics of Adam.

Adam’s biggest disability was his speech, but sometime it came out very clear.
Adam likes and wears suits and brings suits to school for a friend to wear. Suits are very foreign to Martha and John’s academic lifestyle.
Adam is tougher than his mother when he is sick.
Once when Adam was being tested, he was ‘faking’ the wrong answers so he could stop working, receive a Coke and play on the swings. Of course, the tester thought Martha was crazy and in denial about Adam’s disabilities, when she protested.
At Christmastime Adam opened his batteries before he opened a toy gun. He was so excited collecting all the things throughout the house that he could run with batteries.
Adam stopped to smell every shrub when walking through a store.
Adam paid attention and almost worshiped ordinary things.
When Adam was two, Martha started dreaming about Adam playing with dolphins. When Adam was four, a neighbor told Martha about a place in Florida where children with disabilities are put in the water and they swim with the dolphins. Although she found it a little hard to believe, Martha and John were accustomed to unusual things.
The Dolphin Research Center in Florida wasn’t identical to the one in Martha’s dream, but it was very similar.
The psychologist who ran the center believed that the water minimizes problems caused by lack of muscle tone, and that the dolphins are just interesting enough to distract the children and motivate them to learn.
When Martha and John took Adam to Florida to see the dolphins, Martha was somewhat frightened by the sea and the unfamiliar environment. But Adam was not afraid of anything. He squealed with delight and tried to show his mother how wonderful the world was.

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