One Vermont family’s measured account of a folkloric incident that, by most available metrics, has worked out rather well for everyone involved

I will say at the outset that I approached this piece with some reluctance. Changeling incidents are, in my experience, upsetting affairs — not because of what they are, which is documentable and, within certain parameters, understandable, but because of how they are reported. The coverage tends toward the catastrophic. There is shrieking. There are photographs of disturbed soil. Someone always interviews a folklorist who has never been within forty miles of an actual incident and who uses the word ‘liminal’ in a way that suggests they are very pleased with themselves. What the coverage rarely includes is the testimony of a calm, organised parent with a functioning spreadsheet and a willingness to assess the situation on its own terms. Diane Pelletier, of Middlesex County, is exactly that parent.

Diane is forty-three, works in municipal planning, and has four children ranging in age from six to fourteen. The incident occurred eleven months ago, concerning her youngest, a boy she refers to in our correspondence — and now in this piece, at her request — simply as ‘the current Theo.’ She noticed the change within seventy-two hours. ‘I’ve had four children,’ she told me, over a phone call she had scheduled with characteristic precision for seven forty-five on a Tuesday. ‘I know what my children are like. The current Theo is not the same as the previous Theo. That’s simply a fact, and I decided early on that treating it as a catastrophe wasn’t going to help anybody.’ She has three witnesses to the change itself — her mother, her eldest daughter, and a neighbour described only as ‘Roz, who doesn’t miss much.’ All three corroborate the timeline. None of them have gone to the press. I am aware that this is not typical.

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The Comparative Data

Diane kept notes. I cannot stress this enough. She kept notes from the first week, in a ring-bound notebook she showed me photographs of during our second call. The current Theo sleeps eight to nine hours a night without interruption, compared with the previous Theo’s documented average of four point five, broken. He has shown no interest in any screen-based device — tablets, phones, the television — which Diane describes as ‘an adjustment, but not an unwelcome one.’ He eats what he is given. He does not have opinions about socks. He plays independently for extended periods, often in the garden, often in a specific corner of the garden near the old stone wall, which Diane has chosen not to examine too closely. ‘I’m not saying it’s perfect,’ she said, and I appreciated that she said it, because it indicated she was being honest rather than promotional about the whole thing. ‘He doesn’t laugh the same way. And there are moments where he looks at me and I can tell he’s doing something that isn’t quite seeing me. But the previous Theo bit his sister twice a month and once put a crayon into the router. So.’

The discourse around these incidents is almost entirely focused on what has been lost. Nobody ever asks what was gained. I gained a child who sleeps. I gained a child who is, frankly, quite peaceful to be around. I’m not saying I don’t miss the previous Theo. I’m saying both things can be true.

— Diane Pelletier, parent, Middlesex County

Diane’s position is not that the incident was without cost. She is at pains to make this clear, and I believe her. She has consulted with what she describes as ‘someone recommended by a woman at my book club who handles this sort of thing,’ which, in my professional experience, is how most of the actually useful consultations begin. She has made certain arrangements regarding the garden wall. She has read, as she puts it, ‘enough to know what to take seriously and enough to know what is just people being dramatic on the internet.’ She asked me not to print the specific name of her recommended consultant, which I am respecting, because that is her right and also because I have a reasonable guess as to who it is and that person would prefer the quiet.

I asked Diane what she would say to parents in similar situations who are currently in the acute phase — the phase before the notes, before the second call with me, before the quiet arrangements. She was quiet for a moment in a way that felt considered rather than reluctant. ‘I would say,’ she said, ‘that the framework everyone gives you is grief, and grief is appropriate, and you should feel it. But grief doesn’t have to mean you can’t also be functional. You can hold two things. And the thing that is there now is also a thing that is there, and it is also, in some ways I didn’t expect, quite good at being there.’ I wrote that down exactly as she said it. I do not typically quote at such length, but I found I didn’t want to condense it. It seemed like the kind of thing that should arrive as it was said.

I’ve handled three incidents in twenty years where the family came out saying the outcome was net neutral or better. This is the first one willing to say it on record. I respect that enormously. I also told her to check the wall again in spring.

— Source known to WTC, name withheld at subject’s request

The current Theo turns seven next month. Diane is making a cake. She has not yet determined whether he has preferences about the flavour, but she is, she says, conducting preliminary research. She sounds, over the phone, like someone who has found her footing on unusual ground and is walking carefully but walking nonetheless. I have covered enough of these incidents to know that this is not a given. I have also covered enough of them to know that the coverage itself shapes how families feel about their options — which is to say, poorly, and with unnecessary urgency, and with a great deal of liminal. Diane Pelletier’s account will not be everyone’s account. But it is hers, and it is documented, and it is, in its way, instructive. The current Theo is doing well. The wall is being monitored. The cat appeared from somewhere and has stayed. As outcomes go, I have seen considerably worse, and I have the filing cabinet to prove it.