The Never Normal

So I allowed myself a break from telling the story of Jonah and our ups and downs…the roller coaster twisting racing in turns of joy and aggression, stopping at the station for deep breaths of still, of peace, but the safety bar won’t raise – it never lets us out – and then after a day a week a month the announcement to keep hands and feet inside the vehicle, and we’re off again and climbing that hill from which comes the fall the fright the feelings, stop the ride I want to get off please.

It’s the same shit I always spout and am tired of spouting.  How about this year I turn my metaphor around, into a river…not round and round but journeying somewhere, rocks and rapids notwithstanding?  Not so much dizziness but the radical acceptance of a fluid situation.  Change not as an event but as a constancy.  Journeying not with a destination but as the destination.

Yeah, like I’m gonna turn all Zen.  Well I can give it a shot, anyway.

First the third wake:  my friend K’s father passed away from the lung cancer that killed him on Friday the 13th of December.  Her bravery and strength, the way she carries this burden like a strong woman of faith with a will of iron and a heart of truth and beauty…she is the only child, like me.  Now she slams the door shut on 2013 and perhaps is still in shock that her father will not be there in this new year.  How strange is grief, and the different ways it works its necessary, surgical-like job inside each one of us when we mourn.  I have tried to be a good friend but still feel helpless.  Through it all she managed to make batches of Christmas cookies and gift them to me along with a Willie Wonka shirt for Jonah with Oompa Loompas on it.  I am proud to call her one of my closest friends.

My real-life-friends have whittled down to a few, but they are gems who have stuck with me no matter what – without judgement or competitive bullshit or cattiness.  That feels right.   In 2013 I have given and forgiven; I have risen to the occasion and I have fallen apart.  I’ve slipped and stayed lying on the ground for a while.  I’ve crawled and danced and risked everything and lost my shit it felt so good to smash that glass all for a better way to get through this life, for better things to do, for more important goals, more impactful work.   I’ve soared higher than ever on the warmest winds of change and beauty.  I’ve cried my eyes out both in sorrow and laughter.  I’ve lived. 

During the month of December I also allowed myself to feel the angry, awful pull in my heart every time I saw kids waiting for Santa, counting days, getting excited, dressed for photos, new babies joining bigger siblings by the fireside as mom bakes cookies, the whole Christmas scene and winter family fun I envy.

Then I take the time to realize half of what we see is illusion anyway, and the other half probably would envy my ability to give my boy bubbles, tangle toys, and a Willie Wonka & The Chocolate Factory DVD for Christmas while they are faced with kids who want iPads and gaming systems – the right sneakers and the cool outfits, hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars of presents.  Of course this is all conjecture and generalization, but you get the idea.

There are no right outfits for Jonah, unless you count the fact that comfort is king.  In fact, Andy drove Jonah up to my mother and me on Christmas in jammie bottoms and an unmatched shirt, because that’s what Boo wanted to wear.

Jonah Boo, playing for a few minutes on my mom’s floor with a flashing turnabout radio-controlled car

My mother had cooked a ham & pre-prepared it all into containers for us and, just like Thanksgiving, we spent Christmas on car ride seeking a train that once again refused to come because it was a holiday.

I caught the little bugger for a Christmas pic with his mama

And one of MY mama and me

When Jonah loves a scene on TV or in a movie he will run to the screen with a happy screech.  Here’s another example, taken a few days later:

Still Willie Wonka on the screen

And the coolest pic of all, methinks, because Jonah is watching on one side and a kid IN the movie is watching on another:

Here comes the falling somersault

So I may not have a lot of details to share, some because I chose to forget and some because I am too lazy to type out a month’s worth of details….but there are many moments of Jonah being his repititious-yet-never-boring self.

I have to give a shout-out to Jonah’s dad, Andy, who as usual has come through in his amazing father way.  Since he lives so close to Jonah he sees him more than I do — but that doesn’t mean he has to pick him up for visits as much as he does, or withstand the aggressions, the emotional strain, and the exhaustion which nearly almost follows a visit — he has picked Jonah up for a visit whenever he can, whenever he is not working.  Always he is patient and takes Jonah on all the car rides our boy so loves, playing Prince CDs for Jonah (which is kind of like me playing Guster CDs for him, because Andy loves Prince like I love Guster).

Always he is a wonderful father.  The best parent with the strongest constitution and all the love in the world for his precious son, his only child.

Here is Jonah crying because we forgot to bring his favorite Prince CD on the car ride.  Luckily we were not far away and were able to return to the apartment to retrieve the longed-for CD.

“Diamonds and Pearls?!”

This is not a boy with autism having an aggression.  This is a kid who wants his Prince and ain’t afraid to cry about it.

Oh the humanity

Poor Boo.  The aggressions I thought might be gone for good have returned.  I have no idea how many times the pendulum has to swing before I get it through my head:  pendulums swing – it’s what they do.  Perhaps I can incorporate this into my head as well this year. Or, better yet, find a way to blow up the pendulum.  Smash it all to hell.

I’m gonna learn play my new acoustic guitar (thank you Richie, who came to visit from Japan, for teaching me the 1-4-5 progression, which means I can play about 10,000 songs very poorly so far)…and maybe try a song or two for Jonah…

Yes I asked for this specific one because I am a DUMMY with an acoustic guitar

So here is a 2013 pictorial to usher in what I pray will be a better year – for everyone!

The Year of The Eye:
January 2013

March: more eye doctor

April: thumb-sucking contemplative Boo

May: waking up from the eye operation to try & save the sight in his left eye

June: The endless wearing of the eye shield

July: a smile through the eye shield

More daddy-love in August

September:  Happy Boo, rocking back and forth to a tune in the car. The operation didn’t save his left eye’s sight, though. Thank God for Boo’s healthy right eye!

October: visit to the juvenile arthritis doc – everything looks great!

November: Boo asks if the nonexistent “Thanksgiving train” is coming & points to where he thinks it’ll come from.  He looks hopeful.  Sorry Boo!

December: Rockin’ his Almanzo Wilder Homestead shirt & eating some chips and dip…

Boo’s ready for 2014.  We’re three days in already and “Snowstorm Hercules” (I guess they’re naming all the snowstorms now) has dropped maybe 7 or 8 inches here in Albany.  Hercules my ass.  They should have named it Deep Freeze — it’s about negative 4 outside and even opening a curtain feels like I’m subjecting myself to snow-blindness from all the white-bright.

P.S.  My biological family does not want anything to do with me.  Surprise surprise.  It was a bee sting, really – for a short while it hurt, burned, stank of rejection and things not right or fair.  I cried.  Then I got up off my ass and put some calamine lotion on the whole mess and flicked the bee off my arm.  That bee died stinging me, just as this biological-relative bullshit is dead to me now.  I am blood-related to Boo, and that’s all I need.  That, and the family I already have and love – including those outside my adoptive family whom I have chosen to adopt as sisters or brothers or cousins, DNA be damned.