That's Philippe Petit, the funambulist who walked between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974, and whom I've been thinking a lot about lately. Luke and Megan love "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers," the children's book version of Petit's feat. "Man on Wire," the documentary of Petit's obsession with the towers and the evolution of his plot to walk between them, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2008. The book of the same name is Petit's own idiosyncratic narrative of the walk. And I'm currently reading "Let the Great World Spin," which won the National Book Award in 2009 and uses Petit's WTC walk to link a diverse group of characters in 1974 New York City.
In each of these works, Petit comes across as an absolutely inspiring, manic, obsessive, selfish, self-serving, endlessly imaginative, brilliant, and impulsive madman and dreamer. Life presents three oranges; where others might paint, or peel, or throw, or sell them, Petit juggles. It's both his choice, and an impulse and a way of meeting the world that lies beyond his choice too. Though we often believe that we define ourselves through our choices, Petit's story suggests that the choices themselves may be made by something that is both intrinsically us and yet beyond us too.
Hence the blog title: the three oranges of life's circumstances. Especially our kids, of course—another three. And finally, number three himself: James. In writing about these and other oranges, maybe I'm hoping to figure out what I do when I see them, or to see where the tightrope lies, or what rigging needs to be done, or just to talk about the view from a quarter mile up. Or to vent.
However broad the focus of this blog ends up being, or however long I keep it up, the starting point for it is James, our special one. I thought that, if nothing else, keeping a blog would be a way for us to keep family and friends posted on life with James: what he's working on, how we're trying to play with him or encourage him, what we're hoping for him. These are things that Julie and I have not been very good about communicating with everyone.
We tend to absorb all the therapist and school information, feel both overwhelmed and reassured by it, try to work with it in our own little ways, and then not really pass along what we've learned when we find ourselves amidst family and friends. Of course, James is more than the sum of his therapies, and he likes to play just like any other kid. But we know sometimes it probably seems difficult to know how to engage him, or that people feel like James is ignoring them or not interested, because he seems not to be paying attention, or he actively resists even. We know everyone loves him like crazy, and you all have been amazing support for us and for James. We ourselves just have so much information and we've never quite known how to share it—so here's my attempt.
When we see three oranges, what do we do?
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