I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it?

I didn’t think it would feel so— Hmmm. I don’t know. Strange?

I thought I might want to shout it out, celebrate in some way, do a little dance. But the truth is, I’m feeling a little skittish. I almost can’t bring myself to type the words. I’ve written and rewritten this post about five times so far.

Clearly, shouting it out is not going to happen. Maybe I could simply whisper it into the wind.

I finished my novel.

There. I did it. Now you know.

Wednesday, May 7, sometime before noon.

And yet I hesitate to leave it at that. I feel the need to couch it, to stress the rewrites and revisions yet to come; months, maybe even another year of work. It’s just a first draft.

But the truth is, I wrote a novel. (Yes, I’m still whispering.)

And someday you may even get to read it.

 

All he knows about the birds

This morning I opened my bedroom window to a cacophony of birds chirping. It wasn’t sweet and intermittent, it was raucous and intense and unrelenting.

I said, “Wow. Listen to those birds sing.”

And my son said,“They aren’t singing. They are having a meeting.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you know, it’s springtime, right? And birds have a lot to do in the spring.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Well, they have to show the babies how to fly and how to perch after they fly, and they have to get worms to feed the babies, and then they have to teach the babies the most important thing of all.”

“Really?” I said, quite amazed by this outpouring of bird knowledge. “What is the most important thing of all?”

“Not to get stepped on by humans.”

Yep. That sounds pretty important to me.

 

Where do we go from here?

I wish I could open up the super-highways in his brain, create a smooth and even flow of traffic. He stumbles over a word, literally tapping his head to shake it loose. “I know that word,” he says. “I just don’t know it now.”

Driving home from religion last week, he asked me,“Mom, you know that story about that person who visited the three sheppard children? I don’t remember who that person was.”

“You mean the Blessed Virgin? Mary?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

I wonder what he retains. What bits stay with him. Usually the things he shares with me are obscure, like the story of the Miracle of Fatima or the fact that subway trains are the lifeblood of the city—and he’ll use that word, lifeblood, as though it were a common word for six-year-olds.

The truth is, I don’t know how his brain works. I know that there are times when I think he is one of the wisest people I know, and there are times when he can’t tell me that 2 + 2 = 4. I lose a lot of sleep wondering what all this means. He’s already behind the curve, he isn’t reading. At least not consistently. Lately, that seems like our biggest challenge. Consistency—across the board.

When I think about Friday’s IEP meeting, the thing that unnerves me more than any other is that I wavered. I wavered in my belief and my faith in my son. I let myself question the big important stuff you are never supposed to question about your children—like is he smart? and, can he learn? It’s going to take me a long time to forgive myself for that.

The thing about these meetings, they are disheartening under the best of circumstances. And even when you get the outcome you were hoping for, it is never the outcome you want.

 

In case you were wondering, too

Delilah is wondering a thing or two about me. And though I hardly ever participate in these funny internet games anymore, yesterday’s quirky facts put me in a bit of a navel-gazing mood. This one’s made the rounds, so again, I’m not going to tap you on the shoulder and holler, “You’re it!” If you want to play along, please do. Meanwhile, I give you five things:

Five things found in my bag:

1. a handy dandy iPhone (which is so much more than 5 things in 1)
2. a wallet
3. keys
4. sunglasses
5. Burt’s Bees tinted lip balm

Five favorite things in my room:

1. my bed
2. a framed tissue paper rainbow made by my son in kindergarten
3. three windows that look out over the trees
4. a small Lalique vase with two lovebirds in flight
5. a cedar chest my father-in-law made for me by hand

Five things I have always wanted to do:

1. write a book
2. stop worrying
3. own a sailboat
4. be very skinny
5. go to India

Five things I am currently into:

1. writing a book
2. worrying
3. Roseanne Cash
4. painted fingernails (sorry Jordan…I changed my mind)
5. photography

And since the fifth category is to tag five people and I’m not going to do that, I’ll leave you with five lovely photos:

 

Because I do not have the heart…

…to blog about this morning’s IEP meeting, except to say that it was not warm and fuzzy, but we did, in the end, get the services we were hoping for. Because I do not have the heart to process this ungodly process or to fathom how I ended the school day in a weepy sisterly embrace with my son’s classroom teacher in front of about 75 other parents and their kids, I will leave you, instead, to ponder this:

I have been asked to reveal six unspectacular quirks about myself by the lovely Sustenance Scout. You can read about her quirky self here, and the rules of the game here. I will likely break those rules by breaking the tag—if you want to play along, by all means join in. I’m just not going to tap you on the shoulder and say, “You’re it!”

1. I love light, fun, chick-flick movies (Princess Brides and Runaway Brides and Pretty Women) but I do not love chick-lit. I like my books to weigh me down and break my heart.
2. I have to push the shopping cart. I cannot shop, cannot think, cannot process what I need unless I am pushing the cart.
3. I am a huge fan of opera music, but I have never been to an opera.
4. I do not like it when the shoes match the bag.
5. I am afraid of train and subway platforms. And though I used to make a big show of standing too close to the edge, I have since come to realize that standing on the edge of anything is a bad idea.
6. I am never quirky—not even in a good or bad way—according to my husband.

 

It’s all relative

In honor of tomorrow’s IEP meeting, the percentiles are marching in. And they aren’t pretty.

• 11th percentile for speech articulation
• 5th percentile for body strength and agility
• 8th percentile for body coordination
• 5th percentile for visual perception
• 5th percentile for motor coordination
• 7th percentile for fine manual control

Age equivalence of a 3.5 year old, global physical delays, difficulty in coordinating visual and motor systems…

But this is why we are a good team, we three. When I shared these grim statistics with my husband, he turned to me and said, “Yeah, but when it comes to love, he’s in the 1000th percentile.”

Now that’s a number worth holding on to.

 

You can swim

My son has been troubled by one particular bad dream for the last two nights. In his dream, he is holding on to the outside of a sinking ship and he is very scared. He’s quite clear on how this dream starts out good and then turns bad. I don’t know where this dream comes from, but maybe it comes from listening to the song Titanic by Dan Zanes. GP knows the story of the sinking ship from the song and from The Magic Treehouse book #17, Tonight on the Titanic, by Mary Pope Osborne.

It’s been about a year since we read the book together, but this past weekend, we popped the Zanes CD into the car and listened all the way from here to the east end. A trigger? Maybe. But he can’t let it go. The bad dream has colored his conversations for two days.

Coming back from spring break has been a bit bumpy. There’s been a lot of drama and some tears and a fair amount of anxiety. We’ve stopped doing the eye exercises at home, and we are this close to quitting altogether. The developmental optometrist called last night to encourage us to stick with it for three more weeks of in-office therapy sessions and then a re-evaluation. I understand why he wants us to continue. He wants to learn something—have the means to compare and contrast—and he doesn’t want to lose the time and effort we’ve put into it so far. But it’s a struggle. And I already told my son we could stop.

Friday is our IEP meeting. I think it will be a good meeting, but I won’t really know until all is said and done. I have some early feedback that the district is on board with our requests and I’m hopeful that the meeting will involve little more than working out the actual logistics. I want my son in a mainstream classroom for 2nd grade with a one-on-one aide. He needs the support academically, but also socially and I’m hoping that this plan will be approved. It’s a little tricky though, because even though this year didn’t start out well, he’s settled in and currently negotiating the classroom with very little support. A one-on-one is more restrictive, but I think it’s fair to say we can make a strong case for our point of view. His teachers and the district autism consultant support the idea—but I’m still keeping my fingers and toes crossed, just in case.

Most of the time, I know we are going to be okay. My son is an amazing kid. He has a great life. His diagnosis is not going to weigh him down. PDD-NOS. What exactly does that mean? My guess is that as he grows and matures and learns to cope with and compensate for his delays, it won’t mean much. At least not to us.

But as we stand here, in the muddy waters of being six and having “issues” and needing therapy and support and lots and lots of handling with care, I can sometimes lose sight of how okay everything really is. I let it pull me down—I feel like I am the one hanging on to the side of that sinking ship. And I make it harder on myself than it needs to be.

But I know how to swim.

And that is what I’m going to tell my son about his dream. It’s okay. Let go. You can swim.

 

Eight weeks

I heard my son tell his cousin last night on the phone, “Just a few more school days for me and then I’ll be in California.” The concept of time remains elusive. A few more days, a few more weeks, two more months—who’s counting? I guess he is. Sort of.

They are working on some sort of scheme that involves multiple Speed Racer tracks. They talk every few days on the phone, comparing, competing, “I have 75 Speed Racer cars,” my nephew says. And in a way that betrays his innocence, my son replies, “I have 3,” as though 3 somehow trumps 75. Then to my surprise, my nephew admits, “I have 4, but that’s still more than you, so that means I’m older, right?” (he’s not) and then they are on to the logistics of transporting a five foot track with side by side loop de loops across the country in one piece.

“Tell your mom to get a box,” my world weary and street smart nephew advises when my son declares the impossibility.

I love to eavesdrop on these conversations. Little boys trading ideas, working things out. Endless plans, few of which will ever come to pass.

Last summer it was The Sleepover, which lasted all of ten minutes before they insisted on separate rooms and closed doors.

I wonder what it will be this summer?

 

Mind the gap

Boundaries can be tough. Sometimes they are clearly marked, painted yellow, like the line across the train platform that reminds commuters to “mind the gap.”

Other times they are not so well-defined. For kids like my son, knowing when to draw the line, under what circumstances certain words or behaviors are okay, and under what circumstances they are not, can be extremely tricky.

In recent weeks, we’ve been using a word around the house and with each other as a term of endearment or to convey happiness or coolness or silliness. The word is baby. As in, don’t worry, baby. Or, okay baby. Or even, yeah, baaabbbbyyy. And in all this time, it never once occurred to me that baby could be bad.

Today, my son got in a bit of trouble for calling one of the girls in his class a baby. Thing is, I don’t think he called her a baby. I think he called her baby. As in, okay, baby, let’s take out those math books.

Regardless, it came across as name-calling. Either he couldn’t articulate the context or no one asked. He had to apologize. It wasn’t that big of a deal and he wasn’t even that upset about it, but it made me stop and think.

Some things are easy to teach. Others, not so much.

 

Beyond the break

This is why I love this place. Not a soul in sight. Of course, this wouldn’t hold true in July or August, but today? Today there was not another soul on the beach.

Though the air had turned cold and damp, we walked back down to the beach tonight after dinner. GP wanted to see if the holes he dug this morning had been washed away by the surf. I was surprised to see the sand was littered with a long trail of seaweed. This morning, the water was crystal clear and the beach was clean. Nothing but a few rocks and broken shells washed up by the waves.

I can’t stand on a beach without thinking of my dad. I remember how he taught me to dive under the waves. I was probably around my son’s age at the time. A little nervous, a little brave—wanting my dad to be proud.

I can’t remember the last time I dove in. The Atlantic was stone cold today. Like newly melted ice. I swam in this ocean exactly one time in 20 years. I jumped off a pier in Jamestown one August day a long time ago—just because I could.

I wonder if my son will ever swim in the ocean. Or learn to count the waves and read the tide. I wonder if he will ever sit on top of a surfboard, paddle out beyond the break or do something—anything—just because he can.

My son never knew my father. But I wonder what he would have thought. I wonder what they would have done together—given the chance—for one long endless summer on the shore.

 

The way back home

There isn’t much that a day like today can’t cure. We were on the road early, a familiar drive under clear skies, trees topped with pink and green, the sun warm through the open sunroof, Dan Zanes blasting on the car stereo.

And then this—

—a perfect afternoon.

My sister is finally home. My brother, too, though not the home I would prefer. And I am home, in my heart, with my boys.