30 | December | 2012 | The Never Normal

Archive for December 30th, 2012

a patient disentangling

Posted in autism, grandma, Uncategorized, tagged focus, Four Winds, Guster, Knockout Ned, wisdom on December 30, 2012| 2 Comments »

“You are always saying something
You swear you’d never say again…”

~ Fa Fa by Guster

Awareness is everything. I too often play the ostrich, burying my head in the sand. Not a good plan if you intend to see, or move, or live. I have turned a corner, maybe, pushed gently but firmly into the light by my amazing friend R. In part, he wrote to me:

You know damned well it’s the Key to the Garden

To say, “yes”

To be silent to it,

And by ‘it’ I mean everything.

To witness preconceived…

To be the recipient of true mercy,

To repent to the beautiful,

To witness your own suffering from God’s embrace,

Rather than punishing that very suffering,

Locking it in the closet like some kind of monster.

And:

So too do we tend the garden of ourselves,

We become the fountain

from which beauty becomes.

Open your mouth and pour forth.

The graying thorns push forth new roses.

So seemingly impossible it seems

To disentangle from their clutch,

Without losing of the flesh,

When it is merely a step backward,

A patient disentangling,

But Jesus H Christ it hurts.

And:

I could write inspiring and encouraging words, a pep talk Chicken Soup For The Soul,

but I already fell into that trap.

I don’t have a fucking clue what it feels like to be you.

Not a clue.

What the fuck do you know, R?

You don’t know shit.

That is so, that IS so.

I DO know that walking towards life is at once the brave path,

And yet the only one that brings relief.

I do know that fucking much.

That much I do know.

And so I answered “yes,” and something inside me woke up, and I am walking toward life, toward embracing life – all of it, even the suffering and pain – the helplessness and disorder. At Four Winds they call it “radical acceptance.”

Because one of the things I never say here is how close I have been at any given moment to turning away from life completely. How my bones feel like bars of a cage… how often I want to crawl out of my skin… how I feel utterly uncomfortable inside my body. How close I come to running away in a literal sense – to driving until the gas is on empty and then curling up in a ball in a forest somewhere.

Yes, I know how ridiculous I sound.

I can change all of these things. What you focus on expands.

It shall be an amazing, healthy, happy 2013.

And as if to drive this all home, Jonah was wonderful yesterday. My mom and I risked the snow we knew was coming and drove down to Rhinebeck, luckily before any weather had started at all.

Jonah wanted grandma in the backseat and he proceeded to steal her gloves and wear them quite happily (which is funny because he won’t wear his own. Maybe we’ll get him a similar pair as these, which he loved and laughed about having “stolen” from grandma):

The satisfaction of a heist well executied: pulling them on...

The satisfaction of a heist well executed: pulling them on..

Then glancing over to see grandma’s reaction…

I love how he looks like a little guru here, or as if in prayer…

Jonah sang and laughed and ate tune-fish-sandwich and chips and cranbewwy soda. He took his bath and we went for car ride to transfer station (where you recycle).

My mother and I breathed a collective sigh of relief when we started home in the snow…we thanked God, almost in tears, for another good day, for a happy boy.

And later, having arrived safely home, I took a few pictures of the beautiful snow falling on my house and lawn. I put Knockout Ned out there for the ScareMeNot Facebook page, so you’ll see him hanging from our lamp post: