The Never Normal

What’s amazing is how long it sometimes takes me to tell a tale of Jonah, or research something about a drug he’s taking, or read his progress report after I’ve opened and discarded the envelope.

There is one such progress report, in fact, sitting on the coffee table in front of me, right now – just an arm’s length & reach away from being read – but I don’t read it.  I don’t want to read it.  I don’t want to read about his goals to “independently identify six sight words,” with staff notes speaking of his wonderful progress to “read 5 sight words with 20% accuracy.”  I don’t want to call his residence at night to ask how he was and what he did that day, and I don’t want to know there’s a class-action lawsuit commercial on TV now against one of his med companies.

I approached a renowned autism doc (his cousin is my mom’s neighbor) about different meds but he wouldn’t touch my question with a 10-foot-pole, answering in his e-mail back to me that he could not comment.  I e-mailed my neighbor Chung Wen’s son, who is a doctor, and more specifically his field of study is pharmacokinetics, (how drugs get in and out or metabolized), and he has offered to help me, so I finally sent him the list of meds.  I wanted to wait until Jonah’s meds stabilized post-eye-op, so it wasn’t until this morning that I sent the e-mail.

If he replies, I guess I won’t want to read his e-mail either.  I want to know there is away out of this for my boy and I have a sinking feeling there isn’t.  I am afraid to mess with his meds.  I guess I’ll have to see if any of the questions I’ve thrown around get answers.

The wonderful thing about everything, however, is how Jonah has been happy lately, a silly boy laughing with his mischievous sense of humor (splashing water out of the tub, running & jumping around and trying to avoid a capture to dry off)…on Saturday I heard my favorite words, “more kiss,” many times.

Of course more kiss! 

When Boo is in a lovey mood it melts my heart.  I love when he’ll pause in all his joyful silliness to lay on the big blue bed with me and have quiet time, lying facing each other and giggling.  This lasts a minute long at best but carries me through many a night.

I took a bunch of pictures on my new LG Spectrum 2 phone (whatever that means) and have yet to figure out how to download things onto my computer.  I hate reading manuals and so my knowledge consists of much trial and error, and a lot of “I’ll figure that out later.”

I don’t understand how I can download an app that turns my phone into a flashlight, for instance, but I haven’t the ambition to wonder why.  Perhaps as you enter middle age (is that where I am at 44?) your mind can’t wrap itself around some of what is coming up behind and all around you, particularly in the realm of technology.  I hear tell they’ve invented an actual invisibility cloak and light saber. The mind reels.

One thing I dislike is waiting to be divorced.  It’s just a slow process.  The mediator wanted to know my new health insurance company, and then they have to mail edited shit to Andy, and then I have to bring it all into the office (I guess by coinflip I am the plaintiff here) and then I hope it’s over soon.  It is much harder emotionally than I thought it would be, even after the years of separation.

I have to not think too much about how it was when Andy and I first dated, and married, and how it used to be until Jonah-Boo, the “baby-est angel,” was 7 months old and my best friend Gina suicided, shotgun to the head.

Maybe that was the beginning of the end in a lot of ways.  I don’t know.

I guess I don’t want to know.