One night after dinner, my Jefferson School third grader took out a newly sharpened pencil and proceeded to demonstrate the different ways he's learned to multiply double-digit numbers. I watched as he entered the tens and ones places into a grid, slanting and separating the numbers into what resembled a skewed tic-tac-toe lattice, multiplying what were now four digits and adding diagonally down, the answer landing with a springy bounce, as if off a playground slide.
For his next trick, those same numbers posed as a column of digits—this time with his leaning solely on addition for the multiplication answer. And so it went, on to the next and the next—each manipulation of the same two numbers producing a different answer.
It didn't take long before Ben noticed his disparate results, sending him on a spree of furious erasing, his calculations retreating into a now incoherent, smudged-off grid. Eventually the missing tails of numbers left the column unrecognizable and he slumped deep in his seat, staring down at his sheet of gray.
I tried to pry the pencil from his hand. "No," he grumbled, holding on more firmly.
"Let me show you," I said, twisting the pencil from his now two-handed grip. I then launched into my circa 1963, snap-to-it, no-frills multiplication process. I held up the correct answer, upon which Ben glared at me, grabbed his pencil and ran into the den.
I suppose each family has its genetic calling card, maybe a musical gift passed through the generations or a flair for dancing—a sure-footed cha-cha reconstituted in a toe-tapping grandson. With Ben it was an abstract design ability, a spatial faculty seemingly hand-delivered from my architect husband (and his own mason father). By age 4, Ben was intently snapping Legos into flat and pitched roofs, more recently transforming them into battling spin tops with removable innards and satellite attachments.
In my own family, as unromantic as it sounds, the talent seemed to lie in math. My father worked his numbers as a statistician for the Defense Department at Fort Monmouth, N.J.; his brother, the true whiz kid, made it into Who's Who by setting up the early computer math programs in schools throughout New Jersey. My brother got the gift exponentially with his near-perfect SAT math score, and though I gravitated to literature in school, I remember my shock at realizing the only reason I passed my pharmacy boards was because of that math score.
So I'm concerned—well, maybe perplexed is more accurate—and inspect Ben's math notebook. And there, amid his grids and towering numerals, is a smattering of the old-fashioned times tables I recognize from my grammar school days. I think back to the math curriculum dismay I had heard from the older kids' moms at bus stops or on walks around the block. Comments like "Why can't they leave well enough alone?" or "I can lend you a Singapore Math book, to supplement," resonated with a partial truth; though the sky might not be falling, it seemed that a slight tweaking of the curriculum and a bit of my vigilance were in order—admittedly more palatable than the possibility that a line of math genes had up and gone recessive.
A few days later I begin with the basics. I follow my mother's lead from the 1960s and send Ben upstairs with a stack of handwritten 3 by 5 index cards listing all possible times tables of one through 10 with instructions to commit them to memory. But I lacked her authoritative punch of cherry red lipstick and crisp ironed shirt, and Ben is downstairs in 15 minutes complaining of boredom. I improvise a game, flipping each card until he misses an answer, then sending him on a walk around the house reciting the correct product aloud. Over time, as the index cards land in various coordinates of our house, we settle in with a more spur-of-the-moment quizzing—an unexpected aside from the front seat of the car, a sly slip of "Ben, what's 8 times 7?" during a food shopping run. On a good day, he'll be caught off guard and fall into a recitation of answers, before catching himself with a "Not now, I want to relax."
Our math dance continues however sporadically for the remainder of the school year, culminating in the all-telling standardized NJ ASK Test. I'm hoping much of the rote has stuck, and he claims the test was easy; now it's just a wait and see.
The "end of the year" party is in full swing and I'm in line with the other dutiful moms to thank Ben's teacher for a successful year, columns and grids notwithstanding. I promise my son I'll ask if she's had a chance to open his homemade origami card with steps and doorways and cutouts. It's the usual "He's been a pleasure" and "I really enjoyed having him," until she brings up the subject of math.
He's a fine writer, she tells me, but he seems to have a clear talent for math. "You'll see when he gets his NJ ASK scores," she says confidently.
The scores arrive in a thin slip of an envelope, which I open gingerly as if it's a college acceptance letter. My husband too shares in the excitement as we nervously peek inside. Let's just say if Ben should decide to become an engineer, those math skills will come in mighty handy.
A few days later, my husband and I are having a genetics tug-of-war in the front seat of the car as Ben listens from the backseat. "You know, my math skills aren't too shabby either," Rob says, reminding me of his father's ability to estimate material quantities "in his head" at construction job sites—yards of sand, numbers of brick and block, quantities of cement—adding, "I got 100 on my algebra and geometry NY State Regents."
Just when my hereditary analysis seems moot, I find redemption through my 86-year-old father during a visit to a memory clinic in Eatontown, N.J. He's there to qualify for a Pfizer drug study on Alzheimer's and so far it's not looking good. He thinks the year is 1980, can't seem to recall the words apple, table, penny or the name Eatontown. But when he's asked to count backward from 100 by sevens, the doctor and I lock eyes in amazement as he rattles off the numbers with ease.
