May 2, 2005

BY TOM McNAMEE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Sometimes somebody says something exactly right. Not with big words and a lot of flair. Just simple and short and perfect.

And when it happens, it stops you like a punch.

This is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I was reading a deliberately outrageous magazine called Vice. Instead of the usual crude stuff about body functions and anonymous sex and the like, the editors of Vice had turned the issue over to a mental health agency in Northfield called WilPower. The whole issue was WilPower's clients telling their stories.

Most of the stories were fascinating, but the one that stopped me -- the one I read three times and thought about for days -- was by a mentally disabled woman named Amy Kogen, who lists the ways she tries to care for her severely autistic son. Tim is 5 and can't talk and still wears diapers.

"When I found out I had bipolar, I was upset," she writes. "I knew I had something beforehand, but I didn't know what. It makes raising a child really hard, so I need to remember how to be a perfect and good mom. That's why I made this list."

Those were the first words that stopped me: "Perfect and good mom." I know many good moms, but no perfect ones. But that is what every mother secretly wishes -- to be perfect -- and this woman, Amy Kogen, is so utterly without guile that she just says it.

Here's her list:

Ten ways how

I'm a good mom to Tim

1. I try my best so Tim has good mealtimes every day.

2. I dress Tim in clean correct clothes to go to school or hang out inside the house.

3. I try to keep an eye on his health so he's fine and not sick. We make sure he has a dry diaper before school and his shoes are clean, too. I don't want him to look like a slob.

4. I always try to play with him with his toys a lot. I like to read to him at story time. We always read two or three good books before he goes to bed. His favorite is Winnie the Pooh.

5. I always try to keep my cool when he drives me crazy. Sometimes it's hard to do that.

6. I try to get him gifts like new stuff, tapes, or books. He rips and tears and chews on the books because he likes to put stuff in his mouth. He does it for attention or because he can't get the words out. The only two words he can get out really good are "mommy" and "daddy."

7. I show him how to brush his teeth before he goes to school or goes to bed. He only opens his mouth a crack. I have to say, "Open, sweetheart, open, sweetheart."

8. I keep his skin nice and soft. I put cream on it for the winter.

9. I try to teach him to eat with a spoon and a fork.

10. I try to keep him busy swimming or with his family on the weekends.

See what I mean? Sometimes somebody says something exactly right.

Saying hello to Tim

When I meet Amy later at her home in Deerfield, she is wearing a heavy sweater over a turtleneck blouse and I wonder if all the drugs she takes to control her bi-polar disorder make her cold. She's sitting next to Tim at the kitchen table, watching her husband, Joel, feed him Fruit Loops, one at a time.

It's a big house. Joel, a general contractor, built it. Amy and Joel also have a live-in nanny.

If being a perfect mom were just about having a big house and money and help, Amy could be said to be doing just fine.

But when I say hello to Tim, he shows no sign of hearing me. He does not look my way. He does not look at his parents. He stares across the room, seemingly oblivious to us all, in that disconnected way of kids with autism.

Amy can't be doing just fine.

"I don't feel sorry for myself," she says. "I think I've got a hard job, that's all. I have a special, special little boy who's playful and challenging."

Amy speaks in a slow and flat way that reminds me she has her own problems. She has always had learning disabilities, she says, taking special education classes since the first grade. And she had always felt, growing up, that there was something else wrong. She cried constantly and got into raging fights with her father.

But it was only after Tim was born, when she was likely battling postpartum depression and behaving increasingly erratically, that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Joel says he won't forget the day he knew something had to be done: Amy, in a manic state, ran out into a busy street to rescue a stray dog. She was almost killed by the cars and trucks that screeched to a halt.

I ask Amy if Tim is making any progress.

"Last year, he was not making eye contact, but this year he's making better eye contact, so he's getting better at eye contact," she says, talking in that flat, contained way, her hands folded at the table. "The only thing, he's not hugging that much. But he's affectionate in coming up to us and trying to tell us what he wants. Sometimes we can't find out. Sometimes he gets frustrated. He gets upset. He starts crying. He just walks away."

Tim loves to play at the playground in nearby Northbrook Mall, Amy says, and it's then that he is the most like other kids, running around and going down a slide.

And last week, Joel says, Tim did something that, for him, was remarkable: "He touched a little girl's hand."

Why Amy loves Tim

Amy says she loves Tim, so I ask her what she loves about him. What I secretly wonder is how a mother can love a child who does not give a smile for a smile, a hug for a hug, a laugh for a laugh. I know it's a stupid thought -- we don't love our children for what they do for us -- but it's everybody's stupid thought.

Amy laughs. She has a great laugh.

"He's very playful and he likes to play with toys," she says. "And he's growing so tall. And he's very affectionate, in his way. And he's so cute and he's lovable."

Sounds to me like another good list.

On Mother's Day, Amy says, she's flying back to Massachusetts, where her folks live, because her own mother hasn't seen her in a long time and misses her.

I suppose this is too bad. Amy won't be with Tim on Mother's Day. But she will be with her own mother, which she feels she needs about now.

It's good to be a loving mother, and good to have a loving mother.

Even one who is not perfect.

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" column runs Mondays in the Chicago Sun-Times.