The Never Normal

For a few years I’ve been meaning to plant tulip bulbs in our yard, and last fall i finally did – all along the front of the house and in a circle around the lamp post in the front.  But I do not have a green thumb nor do I know much about planting tulips – how deep to plant them, which end up, all that.  So of the two dozen or so I planted, only four came up…three multi-melon-colored ones in the circle around the lamp post,

and just one in front of the house, as if summoned by the Buddha my cousin D gave me.

Along the whole length of the front of our house, only one soft-red tulip stood loyally beside the Buddha.

And it bloomed before the others, enhancing the visual impression even more.  However, Buddha’s tulip died first as well.

Is there a moral to that story?   I”m going to call it a lesson in impermanence.  Just about everything is with Siddhartha.

In following the theme of our parable, Andy and I toured The Anderson Center for Autism today, accompanied (and driven there and back – thank you!)  by two of the folk from Wildwood.  Andy and I loved the place.  I took about fifty pictures, even of the bathrooms (with bathtubs!  Jonah’s favorite!) and toilet stalls to show my immaculate mother who’s terrified these “homes” are urine-stinking, dim institutions like the one where Salieri moans and raves in Amadeus.

I tell you it all looked brand new.   The school, the houses, the whole place.  I think the oldest building was built in the year 2000.

The kids we saw looked happy and the staff looked energized.  They have a pool and every kid almost always gets his/her own room; there’s art & music & outings, a special building with rooms you can reserve to visit with your child, an auditorium, gymnasium, 3 playgrounds, and on and on.  When they were building the school itself they even asked adults with autism to give them guidance in designing hallways and choosing colors.

Of course I cried at one point but I am getting better at getting through it and I do hope they can take him.  I believe he can get better at a place like this.  Now we have to wait to see if they will evaluate him, and if they will we have to wait to see what they say, and all the rest of the waiting game we’re already playing with Springbrook and Tradewinds.

I could go on about it all but I’m tired.  I’m always tired and drained (or maybe strained) emotionally every time we ride back from one of the tours; I do everything I can to avoid thinking about what it is that we are doing.

I chat and laugh with the folks from Wildwood, talk about how beautiful that area is – near Rhinebrook, Red Hook, not far from Kingston or Woodstock.  “It reminds me of Saratoga,” I am saying.  This is all so surreal, I am thinking.

To stop the surreal from sifting its way too deep into my head, I watch out the windows instead at the calm blue sky, the gentle sunshine – the new green leaves and almost-past-full-bloomed tulips – – like Buddha’s tulip.

Impermanence.