Can I believe my son is 20? Nope. I like him with the beard and ‘stache, though I reckon he’s just as handsome clean-shaven. Two pics are Jonah with his Easter Basket from Krause’s Handmade Candy, and a very focused Boo dyeing eggs. The 3rd photo is Boo on March 7th, his 20th birthday, about to blow out his (chocolate) cake (with chocolate frosting). HIs house threw him a big party, complete with pizza and wings – and all the blue cheese he wanted.
After another postponement, he finally had the operation to remove a cyst on the back of his neck. But he picked at the bandage and it came off, and the wound is not healing well. They tried to glue it together with skin-glue stuff, but every time he turns his head it stretches and finally breaks. I know they’re on top of it and he’s going back to the doctor soon, though I can’t help worry. I hate when he has health problems of any kind. I always think, “isn’t it enough that he has severe autism and is blind in one eye?” As if there could be a limit to what one must endure in this life.
I’ve been better and then not better, struggling and trying new medication, meditating and listening to a lot of Pema Chödrön, forcing myself on the treadmill every day to walk at least a mile uphill, forcing myself out when it is sunny, like now. I am not out now, but I was earlier. I swept and raked and cleaned a little. Some days doing just a little is a lot.
I shop for my mom once a week but I do it at 8am on Saturday or Sunday, so as to be there with but a handful of other early birds. If I try to go at noon with all those crowds of people I swear I’d have to abandon the cart. When it gets bad inside my brain, I remember the song “A Private Future” by the Stone Roses, and how they sang, “Live a life you love, choose a God you trust, and don’t take it all too seriously.”
It sounded like good advice then and it sounds like good advice now.
More to come in May. And randomly sharing a photo I took at the Denver Aquarium. Never underestimate good timing!
The Never Normal 