I’m having that “you haven’t posted in eons and you expect people to take you seriously as a writer?” feeling.
In some ways, the fact that I haven’t been driven to post should tell you one of two things:
1. Things are going so smoothly that I just haven’t had the urge to vent before my brain explodes, or;
2. Things are so bad that my brain DID explode, and I’m now coming to you live from the laughing academy.
I’m happy to inform you that “1” is more in line with the truth than “2,” but it IS only early June. Check back with me mid-July.
Thanks to the fact that Stephen’s teacher Heather is helping us by keeping Stephen a few mornings a week, Stephen has been fairly happy and even-keeled since school ended in late May. He loves Heather and wears a permanent grin when he realizes he’s headed to her house in the mornings. Afternoons have been manageable….props to the good folks at Apple and their iPad, and to the magical, wonderful, wacky world of YouTube, where people upload Thomas videos, looped versions of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, and various other kid videos backwards. Forgive me, but it’s an autistic kid’s paradise.
We’ve had some moments, though.
Like the afternoon Stephen got hold of the index card box where I store all of our laminated pictures for his schedule…see, I stick my head in the sand way too often, and it hadn’t sunk in that my baby was plenty tall enough to reach the top shelf in the cabinet. So, before I got home from work, he got the box, scanned through it, and found the picture I’d made for “birthday.” He got David by the hand, and trotted to his weekly schedule, whereupon he decided that Saturday was the perfect day for “open.” So, when I got home, I decided to sneakily (I thought) take that picture off – because it’s not like you can just wrap presents and open them on a whim – and hope that we could plan something else that would be fun.
Right.
He was so unhappy. It is a classic autism conundrum and one we have yet to solve. See, we counted it a triumph when we began to be able to plan for a week in advance, putting a picture of McDonald’s on Friday, and Stephen being okay with that, even on Monday. He counts through the days, each day getting one step closer to the desired place or event. Sometimes we’ve put “mall,” or “bookstore,” or “doughnuts,” or whatever, and he can see that something fun is on the way. So in his mind, anything in that box was fair game, and damn it, he wanted to “OPEN” on Saturday. To have that velcro-ed picture ripped away must have been excruciating for him and his logic. Well, long story short, we got through it, after a long time of crying and asking and asking and crying. (And yes, I did get some sense and have now stored the off-limits photos, like birthdays and Christmas and so forth in a separate location.)
Then there was this past Saturday.
David had figured out through a complicated series of events that Stephen wanted to “open” (buy) a DVD of “The Wizard of Oz.” That, we could do. We printed out a small picture of the DVD cover, and we put THAT on Saturday. So we had our day planned, and things were okay. To make it even more special, Kerry decided to go along with me and Stephen to run our errands. (The fact that I promised Kerry a CD he has long been asking for had nothing to do with his choice to accompany us, I’m quite sure.) Things went along fairly well till we got to the grocery store. Saturday was a bit windy and rainy in our area, and as we were making our way up to the checkout, the lights in Publix went out.
My heart just sped up, remembering.
So, as the emergency lights came on, dimly lighting the store, we continued, but Stephen was in meltdown mode. This was DIFFERENT and therefore not good. As we got to the register he continued to cry. I looked at Kerry’s face and he was stoic but glancing around to see who was watching. He finally convinced me to let him take Stephen out to the car. I said, “But I don’t want you to have to sit out there with him crying.” His reply? “That’s better than him crying in here, mom.” So, they went. I waited till the lady in front of me redeemed her 47 coupons, each of which had to be entered by hand because the scan-thingy wasn’t working. I finally made it to the car, loaded up, and we headed for our last stop, Burger King.
Stephen had calmed down when he realized we were on the way. I was still a bit shaky, and Kerry patted my shoulder. “You okay?” He is a teenager, through and through, but inside him beats a very compassionate heart. I was just getting to the point of relief as we pulled up to the ordering speaker.
“I’m sorry. We’re closed.”
No….
“Why?”
“The power’s been out. We’ll be serving again in 30 minutes.”
Well, it might as well be three MILLION. (extra points if you can place that quote)
So, we drove away from Burger King. I flew like the proverbial bat to the interstate, flew down the road, all the while tossing words over my shoulder: “We’re still going to Burger King! We’re going to another Burger King! That one was…broken!” Kerry kept trying to calm him too. We finally made it to another store, somehow got the food (I had to repeat the order three times because Stephen was screaming so loud) and started home. And somehow, suddenly, he was fine. It was over.
Throughout the evening, Kerry came to me a few more times, just to see if I was okay. I kept looking at him – this tall (taller than me) handsome young man with the deep blue eyes and the ready smile, this boy becoming a man before my eyes, who exasperates me when he seems to forget everything but his own name, who plays too much Xbox for my liking…I looked at him and knew, as I’ve known since he was just a little guy, that he is something special. His heart is sensitive and open, and I believe he will do great things.
I wish we could be like other families. I wish we had yearly vacations, instead of NEVER having vacations. I wish Kerry could talk about his favorite rides at Disney or Universal, or his favorite thing to do at the beach…I wish we could be spontaneous and spur of the moment, and that his little brother was like other little brothers. I wish all of these things…but I can’t make them come true. I have to believe, in spite of all that, that our family is going to make it. Kerry is learning, among other things I hope, that when you love someone, you take care of them in the way they need caring…that when life gets hard, you push through…that listening to everyone talk about Disney or skiing or whatever, while painful, doesn’t mean that you’ll never get to have fun and go on trips…and have a happy life.
Because in the midst of my step-taking (and yes, I’m on steps 6/7 and we’ll go into that another time) and my fretting about all the things I’m so good at fretting about and my daily search for satisfaction in a job that offers very little…like all mothers all over the planet, I want my children to have happy lives. I don’t accomplish everything I want to during the course of a day and I make countless mistakes. Some days I get way too caught up in what we don’t have, or what we can’t do, or how hard things can be. But, when I go into a coma fall asleep at night, there’s peace in my heart because if nothing else, I know I’m trying instead of giving up, to help the boys get there, each of them in his own way.
