This little biography of my son is only from my point of view, not his dad's and not his. As such, it is missing so much. I shall begin before Scott was born.

I had healed and forgiven my parents, but I was left with an empty ache inside. I wanted to be a mother more than anything. I wanted to have a baby with all my heart. I wanted to give that baby girl what I missed. I suppose I wanted to re-parent myself. I believed that Parenting was everything.

In graduate school I gave a great deal of thought to what an ideal childhood should be like. It turned out to be one of the many missing pieces in my graduate education. Good parenting theory was not specifically taught and had to be inferred. After a few years in graduate school, I came to the conclusion that I knew what must be done. I understood that it is rare to raise a child correctly, and that it is, nevertheless, bound to be fun and even easy. I intended my child could go for greatness, if she chose. It wasn’t arrogance which led me to this. I believed that any child raised properly could or would become great, each in their unique way. I intended to enjoy and, thus, prove my theory and share it as well.

Ron and I tried for more than a year to get pregnant. I used a basal thermometer a fellow student gave me from class. I stood on my head after we made love. My doctor said that I was considered elderly in obstetrics at the age of 39 in terms of fertility and a safe pregnancy. Conception wasn’t happening. I concluded that possibly I didn’t deserve to get pregnant until I was willing to quit smoking, so I did.

I always thought I was rewarded for quitting smoking. I became pregnant three weeks later. Ron and I will never forget the brown ring in the test tube from the pregnancy kit that said we were pregnant. When we went for my ultrasound, they gave us a picture. We went to Norms Restaurant afterwards, where we always celebrated our major events, and we studied the picture. I said something about, “When the baby is born…” Ron interjected, holding up the picture, “When this baby, our baby, is born…” I sensed that Ron already loved and awaited his child.

Ron was concerned how I would react if the baby wasn’t a girl. He asked the doctor to call him after the amneo results arrived, rather than me. Weeks later, the doctor told Ron that our baby was a boy, so Ron gently told me the bad news with a card which read, “Congratulations on your baby boy!” I cried intermittently for days, until my mourning was complete.

A Boy by Any Other Name

One day I was in the grocery store, and I saw the cutest little baby boy wearing the cutest little-boy clothes. I realized I was ready for my baby boy. Ron and I then started thinking of names, but I was also thinking of initials which would say something to which our son could live up. I knew a woman once whose initials were AWE, and she turned out to be narcissistic. I wanted to think of something which meant success. I thought of YES, but “yes” to what? I didn’t particularly want to raise a positive thinker, who wasn’t also a critical thinker. There weren’t a lot of three letter words ending in S. There was SOS and ASS. Then it hit me: SCS for success.

But Ron had no designs on raising a child to be great or famous. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in such an objective. You might even say he was opposed to it. “I want my son to be ethical, dependable, and feel good about himself. That’s all I want,” Ron said. So, I didn’t tell him what the initials meant to me, for fear he’d want to change Scott’s name.

We both loved the name Scott. Ron and I loved Scottish music. Ron so loved Scottish culture that he accidentally slipped into a Scottish accent when he got emotional. My heritage was Scottish, with some Irish and English thrown in. My father’s last name was Means, which had been changed from the Scottish Menzie (pronounced Mingus) Clan. We even had a Scottish castle, from whence my ancestors hailed. My father was an only son of an only son for seven generations, so tracing the lineage was easy on the patriarchal side.

Scott Clifton Snyder. I was allowed to pick the middle name, and Clifton was my mother’s maiden name (and later her middle name) and my big brother’s middle name. So, he was named after Kathleen Clifton Means and Philip Clifton Means. We had a name for a child who could go for greatness, if he chose. That Scott was so destined would be between him and me.

I have always had a very low pain threshold, so having my hair done requires courage. Scott was three weeks overdue, and my labor was nearly 36 hours long and extremely painful. Ron read Zen to me from Suzuki and Alan Watts. When he tried to guide me through all the Lamaze techniques, I shrunk away and went inward to endure the pain. I begged for a spinal or epidural, but our HMO, Cigna, was apparently counting their pennies and denied me such relief. Sometimes I cried out in spite of the thought that my baby was listening. I was angry to have been treated so badly.

Scott came out looking serious. He came into this world on his daddy’s favorite holiday, Halloween.

Bonding, Identity and Trust

When Scott was born, he had a furrowed brow, and he looked deeply into Ron’s eyes and mine within his first five minutes of life. Ron said he had a penetrating, eerie look as if he had something to tell us, but we would have to wait. I thought he seemed to look all the way into my soul, as though he was rightly wondering, “So, are you going to be any good?”

My first attempts at breastfeeding were extremely painful. I might have given up if my sister-in-law didn’t come for a few days to encourage me. I’m so glad I hung in there. It was wonderful for both of us.

Even though I breast fed, Ron wanted to bottle feed too. I failed at pumping, so we let him have a little formula. Scott looked deeply into our eyes. I suspect that he looked so deeply into us, because we looked so deeply into him.

Ron and I both respected him and his point of view from the very beginning, both of us perceiving him as born wise with an ability to see everything. We honored him. We adored him. We took him with us everywhere. We took pictures of everything he did. We sat his little tiny body up in the big recliner and took pictures of him. He looked like an old soul. Every time someone proposed we get a baby sitter and go out without him, we imagined they were crazy. They just had no idea how much fun he was and how nothing out there could compare to being with him.

From his first day we talked to him, explaining things to him. We listened to his feelings. We considered his point of view at every turn. We read his cries and his mind to the best of our abilities. We smiled at him and talked about him to anyone who would listen. Strangers often commented on how wise his eyes appeared for a baby. We went to restaurants where people would remark about how mature and alert he looked for an infant.

His Uncle Steve and grandmother, Fran Snyder, believed it was genetic, Snyder genes, I’m sure. Ron and I both knew it was because we regarded him so highly that he appeared so aware.

We noticed the way other parents treated their infants like cute, little empty-headed toys or things they loved according to their idea of a baby who would someday be a person. We knew that Scott looked wise, because we treated him that way, knowing that he already comprehended that to which he had been introduced. We knew that every baby born would have been as amazing if only their parents saw the miracle as clearly as we did. I thought we had a Joseph and Mary complex, but when I said that out loud to my Jewish husband, he said, “Nonsense.”

Our Israeli next door neighbors, the Elkouby’s, also adored Scott and thought he was amazing. They took him into their family too. Almost daily we lifted him over the fence to visit this family who loved him so much. Already I conceded that he had a life independent from us in another world. They gave him more experiences than we could and also confirmed that he was absolutely wonderful. We decided they were his godparents. His visits were for him, not us. We missed him deeply, for hours at a time.

Scott became more and more amazing every day. He was jubilant to be alive. He was independent, yet warm and affectionate. He was secure. That we would leave him never crossed his mind, that is, until one day. Scott was about nine months old when Ron was invited to go on a little backpacking trip with his brother, Uncle Steve. I was taking a class about Mother-Infant Relationships. I mentioned in the class that Scott and his daddy were as closely bonded as Scott and I. I mentioned the upcoming short trip and inquired whether Scott might suffer any attachment break or any type of anaclytic depression, from which infants suffer when they are prematurely separated from their mothers for too long.

“No,” my instructor said, “abandonment depression only happens for infants when the mother leaves. It’s biological.” I still wasn’t sure, especially since I was questioning all genetic theory or assumptions. I asked my husband to call me from the airport in Washington before he and his brother back-packed into the mountains.

Scott was accustomed to spending a few hours, a couple days weekly with his adoring grandma while I attended classes. I would drop him off on my way to school in the mid afternoon, and Daddy regularly picked him up right after work. One day in Scott with his grandma his life at about nine months, daddy didn’t show at the normal time. A little later mommy picked him up instead and brought him home. He seemed somewhat perplexed, but fine. He looked around for his daddy, saying, “Da Da, Da Da, Da Da” repeatedly. We went to bed that night, without much fuss. Daddy had only been gone for a few hours, so far as Scott could tell.

On the following day, after I finished school, I arrived again to pick Scott up from Grandma’s house. When I walked through the door his face collapsed into anguish. He began to cry an inconsolable cry, wailing all the way home. I sat with him upon our double bed, and he squirmed out of my lap, crawling behind me, climbing upon his daddy’s pillow. He began to bang his head on the headboard. I twisted around grabbing for him, pulling him to me. He wriggled and cried as I tried to talk him down. The phone rang, and he got away. It was Ron. Scott returned to his father’s pillow and began to rock back and forth, banging his head without mercy again and again on the headboard. Diving for the pillow with the phone, I frantically told Ron what Scott was doing and hung up, clutching my baby to save him from himself again. Scott wiggled and wiggled, crying himself to sleep in my arms. When he awoke his daddy was home.

If Scott were not bonded so well, if he had not trusted so deeply, he would not have been so devastated. Now, Ron had to earn back Scott’s trust. Our enchanted baby was lost to us. He became quite serious for awhile. He worried when Daddy or I left the room until he tried trusting us again.

Loving

I understood that Scott’s ability to love well in adult life was being formed by the way we related to him as an infant and small child, because it is in the first year of life that babies learn how to love and be intimate for the rest of their lives. How well they are loved determines how empty or secure they will feel as adults.

I wanted Scott to be a man who treated women with respect, always. I believed that if I respected and adored him he would respect and regard women well. His first relationships threw him for a loop, because the young ladies were insecure. One, about whom he wrote his first song at fifteen, “Deep,” two-timed him. When he found out, he thought she had betrayed him. However, to Scott’s shock and dismay, he discovered that he, Scott, was “the other man!”

Another young lady treated Scott with disloyalty and criticism. Her brother invited Scott into his band. Scott invited a friend of his into the band, but they didn’t like the guy (a little dorky), so told Scott “It’s us or him.” Scott did not want to uninvited his friend, so he chose the friend. Scott’s young lady chose her brother. I chose Scott’s ethics.

Finally, Scott found Nikki, his rose, about whom he wrote “Love Song” and many songs which followed. Finally, Scott got to practice and employ the art of loving.” Along the way, they tried a separation from one another, because Nikki was still so young. During the separation, Scott dated two other actors, and Nikki dated another guy. Scott wrote Deal Me Out about one of them. He would have pursued the other woman, who was wonderful, but he was “homesick” for Nikki. They got back together again. Four years passed, and Nikki, who intends to be an actress, herself, got restless in Scott’s shadow. Scott set her free to grow.

Recently Scott got very excited about one date he had with a law student, because of her intellectual depth, academic goal-setting, and personal security. Time will tell, because this lady has lots of plans already.

The Word Is Not the Thing

We always talked to Scott, not at him. His first word was in Hebrew at eight months. “Mama” was next. Shortly, people often commented that it was remarkable to hear such clear speech come from such a young child. It was no accident. We practiced clear speech and good grammar. Before he could speak, I fed him a word at a time. “Mama,” I’d say, touching my heart. “Baby,” I’d say, touching his heart. Then, I’d say, “Baby Scott.” I’d add after that, “Mama’s baby, Scott.” Or, I would hear him cry and attempt to nurse. I’d say, “Scott hungry?” “Is mama’s baby hungry?” After that, I’d ask, “All done?” The words he would learn would always be relevant to him. He learned them quickly, because I didn’t let them fly by, not to be heard again for another few hours or a day. I would repeat them to give him clarity, letting him watch my lips.

I planned that he would learn no words which didn’t accompany personal experience. All his vocabulary would mean something to him, more than pictures in a magazine of something he’d never known. I didn’t want him learning about something or someone famous about which he had no knowledge, unless it was for good reason.

However, when Scott was 21 months old, I showed him cartoon drawings in his Sesame Street Magazine of the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. We practiced naming them clearly. I would face him and enunciate the words very slowly, carefully and distinctly, again and again, while pointing to the pictures. He studied my mouth as I spoke. He could say each of these words well.

Scott and I said good-bye to Daddy with the same understanding that we would return immediately if Scott went into analytic depression again. I suspected it would be different this time, since Scott was a little older and since we left Daddy, not visa versa.

I told Scott we were going on the airplane to see the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the Empire State Building and the Lincoln Memorial. We promised Daddy we would return in two hands (ten fingers, one per day). I explained to Daddy in front of Scott that every bedtime we would make one finger go down. I used Scott’s hands to show Daddy.

Scott sat by the window on the airplane. I strapped him in. He heard the engines wind up, and we began to taxi. He was thrilled. Then, as the ground pulled away, he whipped his little face around toward me to see if my face looked worried. He saw me smile, and then he lit up and turned again to watch out the window. Just as all babies do, he got his identity and his understanding of the world from the expressions on mommy’s and daddy’s faces.

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