I will not remember today as Easter so much as the last day of Jonah’s vacation. Tomorrow he’ll probably be a hellion at school, but he wasn’t so bad this week, as long as it must have seemed for Andy. Jonah adores his daddy, after all, and when he’s home on break his routine is filled with no-pressure stuff like car ride and grandma and peanut butter roll.
Besides, Easter doesn’t feel much like Easter this year. My mom, God bless her, made a big ham dinner last night and separated it all into Tupperware and packages, some for Andy and Jonah and some for M and me. Today when M and I watched Jonah, we saw the train and stopped at grandma’s to visit and pick up our share of her Easter feast.
There’s no sitting down and eating it, you understand, without thrown food and overturned dishes, splashed drinks and a constant Jonah-vigil not worth attempting anymore. Jonah showed little interest in the Easter basket grandma filled with bubbles and chocolate, jelly beans and spinning tops, running instead up the stairs, down the stairs, and up again into the spare room where he jumped on the bed screeching.
Then he wanted grandma to go for a ride with us. When we’d buckled him into his harness, his beloved grandma seated next to him, he decided: bye bye grandma. You want to go bye-bye with grandma, or you want grandma to go bye-bye? We didn’t know. We never know. He changes his mind before we can puzzle it out: Grandma come on car ride, he said. So we headed off for a tour of Latham and Loudonville but only got maybe 1/2 mile down the road before he pronounced: all done grandma. So we turned around, drove back, and dropped my mother off. I ran inside to get Jonah’s basket and our dinner, and we left.
M and Jonah and I ended up at the Rensselaerville Falls, as usual; it is much warmer now and the snow has melted in all but the most shadowy pockets of the forest. As usual Jonah ran way ahead of us and only wanted to stay a short while; even he understands it is still too cold to walk down to the water and wade.
This morning my friend texted me a picture of her little 3-year-old boy, seated on the couch with two baskets, a big smile on his face, the message reading: Happy Easter!
It’s the kind of thing you’d send to a bunch of people in your address book. I stared at the picture of her sweet little boy, his huge smile — the Easter Bunny came! I texted Happy Easter back to her and put the phone down, wondering: What is it like to raise a neurotypical child?
I’m sure it’s actually harder to dress your kid(s) up, get to church and the family gathering, then come home exhausted with the kid(s) all hopped up on candy. Hell, I ate half Jonah’s candy myself without him ever knowing or caring, and the only place we had to go was on a car ride to the woods to watch a waterfall…so we had an Earth-Day Easter…
I took a lot of pictures today, as you can see. I also made some necklaces and put together a care package for someone. I like to imagine the surprise of getting a box of fun things out of nowhere and for no reason at all.
Guster has this video I love and play whenever I start to lose my faith in humanity, when I feel my hope waning. It always makes me feel better. I want to be a part of things that make people happier, even if it’s just one person at a time.
Anyway, after M and I ate our homemade dinner, I polished off a piece of J.S. Watkins cheesecake my mom had procured, then a healthy slice of humble pie as well. Ah, all the complaints I spew. And how small my little life really is.
Easter was delicious.
The Never Normal 