Spelling

My Autism bookmark folder contains about fifteen blogs I follow intermittently. I go through spells of reading and not reading. Spell as a verb—to signal or forbade. Spell as a noun meaning incantation, but also attraction or influence. And maybe especially spell that conveys a season or course—and more negatively, a fit or attack.

Autism advocates, and especially self-advocates, say autistic people shouldn’t be labeled as severe, moderate, and high-functioning because disability manifests itself in very different ways. Just because you can recognize a disability (inability to speak or write, mental retardation) doesn’t make it anymore real than a disability you don’t (social and communication impairment, anxiety, sensory over-stimulation). The latter can, in some ways, cause more stress to the particular individual struggling to carry on in the world. The presumption of “normalcy”—or relative normalcy in comparison to other autistic individuals—is meant as a compliment but can undermine a “high-functioning” autistic’s experience of the world. By undermine I mean delegitimize their difference.

Temple Grandin, a well known autistic, often quotes the mantra her mother repeated to teachers, friends and psychologists on Temple’s behalf: “Different, not less.” That’s what I want for Jonah. That’s what I want for myself, in terms of Jonah—to recognize his difference and not unconsciously treat him as if I could simply discipline the autism out of him. Because I can’t, and doing so will only wreck the both of us.

But I find myself doing it anyway. Which is why my Autism bookmark folder contains about fifteen blogs I follow intermittently. About half of them are written by parents of autistic children. I need to hear from them. About half are written by autistics themselves. The older J gets, the more I need to hear from them. One day he will need to find them for himself; until then, I will listen to them for the both of us.

We all struggle with the idea of normalcy. It’s one of those resistances you can’t help but bang your head against from time to time. That urge to purge ourselves of our difference so that we can fit in or simply have an easier time of it in the world. Which is an illusion of course. There is no easy time of it in the world. I discovered an album this week called Dryland, by Chris Pureka. The chorus from one song plays back to me now:

Life is cruel and it’s clumsy
(but we never explain)
I wish I could say that it’s better than that
(why we treasure our secrets)
but this is our time
(how we’re in love with our sadness sometimes)
this is all that we have ’til we turn out the lights…

“Cruel and Clumsy“

I can, with some certainty, say that it is better than that. It’s not cruel and clumsy all of the time, though I’ve gone through seasons when it felt that way, when I was in love with my sadness sometimes. I am incredibly fortunate, of course, to have been given and to have felt deep love from family and friends, consistently, with force. That’s certainly not a given, and I know people suffer deeply for lack of it.

Sometimes Jonah will bang his head on a table, into a doorframe—or repeatedly smack his forehead hard with his hand. It’s just that life gets too hard. Maybe it feels a little cruel to him, how he can’t process it all, can’t make sense. It must feel like an assault. Is he trying to sub-consciously bang the difference out of himself?

To a much lesser degree, I recall the impulse to keep my difference hidden in middle school and high school. I would only show myself selectively, to the people I felt the safest with (thank God for band and youth group and family). I gradually became more whole, less hidden. Becoming takes a whole life. The novelist and poet Jim Harrison writes another version of Pureka’s “Cruel and Clumsy”:

…On a cool night there is
a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that’s why we
sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the land of enchant-
ment…To the gods the moon is the entire moon
but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish
in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can’t stray
from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,
but I don’t know, in our private night when our souls explode
into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in
the forest, far from the cage of flesh…Of late I see
waking as another chance at spring.

from “Spring”, in Songs of Unreason; © Copper Canyon Press

I wake every morning with another chance at becoming a better mother to Jonah. Someone who accepts and does not judge but does not relinquish her own work of becoming. And that is the best I can ever do for my children and myself. We spell out ourselves, we cast our spell on others. In fits and starts. Waking and sleeping when the struggle of it wears us out. Waking again.

A G or not a G

Jonah and John are unconvinced. Of course G and I have little doubt.

Angel socking

Would if I could have visited Flannery O’Connor at Andalusia. I’d like to meet her peacocks or sit on the porch and receive visitors in the afternoon. Of course, I’d probably never do it, shy as I am in that way, fearing social presumption as I do.

But I am thinking about Flannery today, as it is not only the Feast of the Annunciation but also her birthday—one of the happiest coincidences of the universe I know. Annunciation comes from the Latin annuntiare, from ad- “to” + nuntiare “declare, announce” (from nuntius “messenger”). O’Connor’s stories, novels, and especially letters are a terrific incorporation of slowness, courtesy, drollness, intensity, fierceness, honesty and devotion. Sally Fitzgerald writes in the Introduction to The Habit of Being: “There she [O’Connor] stands, a phoenix risen from her own words…honest in a way that restores honor to the word.”

It’s her humor I admire most. Here are just two short excerpts from her letters. Blessed Feast of the Annunciation. Happy Birthday Mary Flannery. And blessed name day Gabriel Keats (tomorrow is his name day).

I don’t want to be any angel but my relations with them have improved over a period of time. They weren’t alway even speakable. I went to the Sisters to school for the first 6 years or so…at their hands I developed something the Freudians have not named—anti-angel aggression, call it. From 8 to 10 years it was my habit to seclude myself in a locked room every so often and with a fierce (and evil) face, whirl around in a circle with my fists knotted, socking the angel. This was the guardian angel with which the Sisters assured us we were all equipped. He never left you. My dislike of him was poisonous. I’m sure I even kicked at him and landed on the floor. You couldn’t hurt an angel but I would have been happy to know I had dirtied his feathers—I conceived of him in feathers. Anyway, the Lord removed this fixation from me by His Merciful Kindness and I have not been troubled by it since.  —in a letter to “A.”

…I hate like sin to have my picture taken and most of them don’t look much like me, or maybe they’ll look like I’ll look after I’ve been dead a couple of days.  —in a letter to Janet McKane

It’s a very pompous phrase—the accurate naming of the things of God—I’ll grant you. Suitable for a Thomist with that ox-like look…I don’t mean it’s an accomplishment. It’s only trying to see straight and it’s the least you can set yourself to do, the least you can ask for. You ask God to let you see straight and write straight…This is something I don’t fail to practice, although not with the right motives.  —in a letter to “A.”

If this were the 70s (John and I are watching The Bank Job and a favorite style blogger of mine—Amanda Brooks—is kind of obsessed with 70s style, so I suppose I am pining a little for the era I was born into and didn’t consciously get to inhabit), my CB handle would be Weathergirl. I write a lot about weather here, namely the greyness of Ohio, but I am struck every day by the earth’s atmospheric effect on me. Yesterday was all sunshine. The boys and I were out in it for several hours. I made sure to face the sun. All day I was playful, relaxed, unconcerned.

Today you can’t even tell there are clouds. The sky looks like it was created waxen, colorless. It’s impossible to name. If someone formulated a paint color to reproduce it, I’d name it Pallid, or Pasty. Maybe Wan. I am likeways situated. I feel lusterless, bleary-eyed. I look for color to rest my eyes from it.

Our church is bright—yellow walls, rich brocade-colored icons. The Mother of God looks kindly on me as I try not to lose it with my children. Her arms holding the baby Christ wrap around me, just as kind Lori manning the candle desk takes in Jonah toward the end of Liturgy because Gabriel is more than enough to handle. She gives him jobs to do and a pad of blank paper to draw on.

And then Gabriel, who has been all obstinance and mega-phone pronouncements, finally nestles into my lap and is still. The choir begins the communion hymn, and he (just as loudly) belts it out: “Receive the body of Christ / Taste the fountain of immortality.” The only word he has trouble with is immortality, but after a few repeats he’s got that too. And then the song is over and people are patting me on the back, congratulating me for having such a good little singer, such a good little boy. He, the holy terror of pew 9.

The boys drag me downstairs to see what treasures coffee hour has in store. I am sure they must have been reading over my shoulder last night:

Writers and other artists are sometimes prone to isolation, and in that isolation, we are likely to feel varying degrees of alienation from our communities—so much so, we may also feel justified in self-centeredness, even if it seems to us more like self-preservation or self-defense.

However it may feel or seem, and however we may justify it, this disconnect from those around us is not, in and of itself, a good thing—though it may, off and on, lead to a good thing…

I was nudged into seeing that my own habitual sense of isolation—duly considered—might take on a spiritual dimension; with the pairing of love and affliction. I was invited to think of my own discomfort as a discipline, even an ascetic discipline, and a means to an end—something, that is, that I might work through.   Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering

“My own discomfort” amply describes the way I feel as the boys drag me to the basement for coffee hour. I am so not a joiner. But thinking about this mild sort of social anxiety as a discipline, well, that makes sense. It feels like a discipline, and practicing it would probably have a more beneficent effect on my person than keeping the fast or saying my prayers without fail.

The boys, of course, are just in it for the food and are disappointed to see only a small bowl of pretzel sticks, some red punch (that Jonah can’t drink—we avoid artificial colors) and some rather discarded-looking Raisinets. But the youth are selling bagels as a fundraiser (which I find amusing—Mmmmm! Have a plain bagel! Treat yourself! Support our youth! And don’t forget a cup of hot brown (I think it’s coffee…) liquid to wash it down!), and our spirits are revived. Jonah decides to go sit by Mary, the priest’s daughter, as he gobbles his half down, and I am introduced to Matushka Elizabeth’s mother. We start talking about Missouri (where she’s from) and then Kansas (where she’s worked), and then she’s talking about St. George in Wichita (my home parish). She’s seen how beautiful it is, and it’s like the sun to hear her talk about the place and the people there.

Yes, yes, we take the sun where we can get it. Trusting that it will appear is the work of it. “We may not choose our afflictions,” Cairns writes, “but we do choose what to make of them.” He gets more specific about “the dark heart of our trouble—namely, what keeps us separate, severed, and self-absorbed is a habitual disinclination to take seriously the suffering of others.”

…we seldom partake in the failing and suffering of our various members, and we therefore fail to realize the fullness, the reality, the appalling mystery of life as One Body. Simply put, I am now supposing that until we come to recognize everyone’s failure as a personal failure, we are unlikely to ever succeed as we must.  Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering

There’s a thought to put a damper on my sweet little judgmental heart. But there’s comfort there too. As I wrestled my children through church—pinching them a little too hard to sit still, setting my stubborn will in combat against theirs (I’m looking at you G), practically storming out with both of them in tow so that I could get hold of my temper as much as let them free from that jail of a pew—my personal failure (I hope I hope) was taken on by this community I’ve set myself within. Lori saw. She gave Jonah a job to do. Lovely Emil behind me didn’t just pat me on the shoulder because Gabriel knew the words to that hymn. He was also saying, “See, he’ll be okay.”

       

Spring bizarre

It’s officially Spring. Not that you can tell if you’re in Ohio, unless you look down. Snow drops, crocuses, and daffodils have pushed up through all manner of frozen earth, sidewalks and manmade plastic-tarped rock covered patios. The sun shone a good thirty minutes this morning before the sky covered itself as with a blanket. And yes, it was a grey blanket.

One day last week Jonah and I discovered and rediscovered respectively the meaning of bizarre and the ways Spring wears that word like a bright yellow raincoat.

The radar was clear. We put on our coats and headed to school, only to discover the sky was spitting icy rain at us. It was hard to tell if it was actually ice coming down from the sky or if the rain was just that blasted cold. The deck was slippery with it either way. We decided to brave the walk with our umbrellas as shields against the pelting drizzle. Ice falling out of the sky (not as snow) was something of a new concept to Jonah. I thought he used the word “bizarre”—which he didn’t—but my mishearing led to a discussion of the meaning of the word (from the Italian bizzarro, angry). The rain certainly felt angry, or at least aggressively indifferent to our tribulation.

I though J might catch hold of the word, but somehow he translated bizarre into awkward, as in “This weather is so awkward! I can’t believe how awkward it is!” I corrected him once, then thought better of it. Jonah has an innate sense of language that has held him relatively steady in the course of his seven years. His first word was “twah.” He used it whenever he threw something (which was often). John did his magical word origin research and discovered that an early Indo-European root of “throw” was, in fact, “twa”. When I later looked up “awkward” I read: late Middle English, in the sense of “the wrong way around, upside down”. A fair description of the some times mercurial inconstancy Spring stirs up.

We rounded a corner and found the street littered with nearly frozen worm bodies. Hundreds of them. I don’t recall there being a heavy rain the night before; but there they were, having squirmed their way to higher land—an instinctual search for safety (or at least not-drowning). We tried to dodge them as we continued to hold up our umbrellas as shields.

As we turned the next corner we were overcome by the stench of skunk (comprised of a chemical I have since learned is traditionally called mercaptans). It was strong enough that I worried we’d carry it all the way to school with us. On we trudged on, giddy with our travails. “Spring!” we laughed. “It’s so completely awkward!”

At least today the sun met us first thing. The wind was strong, blowing mini-snow-flurry squalls in and out throughout the day. Grey sky, blue sky, grey sky. Sun on black coat warm enough to make you bring your zipper down. Wind that leaves your ears red and burning ten minutes after you’ve been inside.

But yesterday the sun was a titanic fluorescent tube hung above the clouds. The sky glowed lemon-lime; I could feel it buzz, even if the frequency was too high to hear. The strangeness was communal, all of us wondering a little just what it is we’re meant to be.

 

Art and Prudence

Take these passages as a kind of counterpoise (love that word) to the seeming harsh and unforgiving nature of Lent and the Fast. And please forgive me if I offend. Eric Gill can be controversial and is certainly not for everyone.

Gill was a deeply religious man— “largely following the Roman Catholic faith,” as Wikipedia puts it—though many of his beliefs and practices were far from orthodox. I will say outright that certain of his acts were downright perverse. I cannot judge the acts of men, but I can recognize truth where I am given to receive it. Gill gives me much to consider, especially in terms of the artist and the prudent man, and the gulf between the two.

St. Augustine said: “Love God and do what you will.”
         Dilige Deum et fac quod vis.
The artist says: “Love and make what you like.”
         This is the highest prudence.
         But the prudent man thinks them dangerous sayings: for though most men know what they like doing
         or making, few men know certainly that they love God…

There is some ill-feeling between the prudent man and the artist.
         The lovers’ quarrel between art and prudence has become an unloving “scrap.”
         The opposition has become a conflict.
The man of prudence is shocked by the artist’s inclination to value things as ends in themselves—
         Worth making for their own sakes—
         Loved for their beauty.
         He sees idolatry at the end of that road.
He is also shocked by the artist’s acceptance of all things of sense as beautiful and therefore pleasing in themselves—
         Worth having for their own sakes—
         Loved for their pleasantness.
         He sees sensuality at the end of that road.
Upon the other hand, the artist is shocked by the prudent man’s inclination to see things merely as means to ends—
         Not worth anything for their own sakes—
         Their beauty neither seen nor loved.
He is also shocked by the prudent man’s inclination to see in the pleasures of sense mere filthiness.
         To him that is  kind of blasphemy.
The prudent man accuses the artist of sin.
The artist cries “blasphemer” in reply.
         They see no good in one another…

As artists it is for us to see all things as ends in themselves—
         To see all things in God and God is the end—
         To see all things as beautiful in themselves.
         “The beauty of God,” says St. Thomas Aquinas, quoting Denis, “is the cause of the being of all that is.”
It is for us to see things as worth making for their own sakes, and not merely as means to ends.
         We are not “welfare workers.”
         We do not even seek “to leave the world better than we found it.”
         We are as children making toys for men and God to play with, and “playing before him at all times”…

These quarrels can never be settled until most men of prudence are also artists and most artists have
         become men of prudence.
This pleasing state of affairs will not come about until the present civilisation has passed away.

         [passages taken from Eric Gill’s Beauty Looks After Herself]

Gill closes the book with the (extended) conclusion that “We make what we believe to be good—in accordance with our beliefs so we make.” It is our work (I say “our” because, like Gill, I believe all men are artists) to Look after goodness and truth, and beauty will take care of herself.

© Eric Gill, “Madonna and Child” (1925), The Tate/London

Cravings

It’s the first day of Lent Proper—Pure Monday as it’s liturgically called—and I’ve had a pretty typical start to the season of repentance.

I lost it with my kids over the most minor of transgressions. Was it necessary to scream at Gabriel for dumping a box of magnetic letters on the floor? He’s three. He dumps. It’s developmental, not to mention genetic.

Because we don’t eat dairy products (as well as all animal products), I ate, let me see, four bowls of yogurt with muesli over the course of the day (yogurt being necessary for personal health reasons). Dark chocolate is “legal,” so while telling myself I’d only eat one square, I ended up eating half the bar. So much for self-control.

I spoke a short prayer Saturday night as I attempted to turn my attention toward the season of Lent. Watch out when you ask God to show you your sin. Thankfully, the Orthodox Church offers numerous opportunities to participate communally in the work of repentance. The Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is a beautiful example. Several phrases stick in my mind from the service last night:

“I have darkened the beauty of my soul with passionate pleasures, and my whole mind I have reduced wholly to mud.”

Mud pretty much sums it up. Mindless internet surfing, addictive “story” watching (Dowton Abbey, Cadfael, Nashville), eating jars of Nutella one spoon at a time—none of these are cardinal sins, mind you, but they are definitely symptoms of a mind concerned more with entertainment and escape than simplicity and humility. If anything, these indulgence express an utter lack of concern for the state of my soul.

“The end is drawing near, my soul, is drawing near! But you neither are nor prepare. The time is growing short. Rise! The Judge is near at the very doors. Like a dream, like a flower, the time of this life passes. Why do we bustle about in vain?”

I’m not going all despondent on you here. Just attempting to take stock. The good thing about the fast and long services of prayer is the stillness that accompanies them. The emptying nature of Lent makes room. It is necessarily an empty room at first. It’s not easy to sit with yourself, to get a good look. But the same prayers that empty also can fill, because that’s what love does. As St. Isaac of Syria puts is:

“The love of God proceeds from our conversing with Him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness arrives with the stripping away of self.”
from The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life

And also this:

“Blessed is the person who knows his own weakness, because awareness of this becomes for him the foundation and the beginning of all that is good and beautiful.”  Daily Readings with St. Isaac of Syria

Having written all that, and recognizing the life-giving truth in it, know what I want to do? Turn on some music. Make plans. Get myself busy. Finish the movie John and I started last Friday. In short, I want to Run. Thankfully, G needs me to help him get on the toilet. I need to eat breakfast. Laundry needs folding. That “stripping away of self” doesn’t have to be self-inflicting. The circumstances of my life, engaged with my whole self, are opportunity enough.

Bring me out

Western Easter and Eastern Easter are more than a month apart this year, so as the West gets ready to celebrate Palm Sunday, we are just entering Great Lent. A gap this wide is hard to bridge, and it’s tough explaining to a seven-year-old. G’s just barely getting the concept of birthdays (so far he’s had three this year—his, Jonah’s and his dad’s). An understanding of Easter (or Pascha) will be a few years coming.

In the Russia church we attend, Forgiveness Vespers (a service akin to Ash Wednesday) is celebrated directly after Liturgy (in some churches, the service is held in the evening—making it easier to attend alone). Instead of being anointed with ash, the Orthodox shift into the season of repentance by asking forgiveness of every one attending the service. The first half of the service reads like a typical vespers until halfway through. As the choir sings a penitential hymn, the colors of the church—vestments, altar cloths, etc.—are changed from gold to dark purple. I missed most of the prayers while I tried to keep J and G fed and in the pew, but the phrase “bring me out of my affliction” caught my ear. Gabriel was sitting on my lap, and I asked him, “Are you afflicted?”

“I’m not afflicted, you’re afflicted!” he returned. From the mouth of babes.

This word pleased him to no end, and he continued to repeat his phrase with mischievous glee. “You’re afflicted! I said you’re afflicted mommy!”

A little later, both the boys were intrigued to see everyone drop to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the floor. We did a number of prostrations during the Prayer of St. Ephrem, and by the last few, G and J were laid flat out on their bellies at the appropriate time, or thereabouts. By this time Gabriel was super antsy. We’d been in church for more than two hours, and he was dancing around at the entrance to the pew as Fr. Nicholas gave a short homily. But he was still listening. At one point, Fr. Nicholas made reference to “the tools we use” in the Lenten season (prayer, fasting, alms), and G called out in the megaphone voice he saves especially for church, “He said the tools we use!” And then, “Mommy!”—as if it was possible not to hear him the first time—“He said the tools we use!”

Then it was time to make the rounds. The priest started, prostrating himself and asking our forgiveness. The altar servers and deacon followed. Two-thirds of the congregation was ahead of us, so by the time it was our turn, Jonah had a good sense of what was going on and was understandably nervous about the whole deal: “I can’t do it. I’m too shy.” I gave him the option of just kissing Fr. Nicholas and then returning to his seat to read a book, but he hung in there, pulled along by welcoming hugs and head pats. The Russians like to kiss. One gregarious old man gave Gabriel three kisses on the lips. By the last kiss, G’s expression could be read as either “Who the heck is this guy?” or “Get me out of here!”

On we kissed, asking forgiveness of every man, woman and child. Old and young. J hung in there, and by the end was giddy with all the love. “Mom, I did it! I was too shy, but I did it!” As we waited in our arc of the circle for the rest of the congregation to greet us, two teenage altar servers kept an eye on the nursery door while G played. It worked out just right—better than I could have hoped or planned.

In years past, we either fled before the service started or didn’t make it at all. I am grateful for the grace of these people, for Gabriel and Jonah keeping me occupied during the service so that I didn’t have time to worry about the logistics of moving two more-than-slightly feral children through a line of strangers patting, kissing, hugging and shaking their hands. If Lent is a great sea, my children—and these people—are my life rafts. Bringing me along, out of myself.

Your grace has shone forth, O Lord:
the grace which illumines our soul.
This is the acceptable time!
This is the time of repentance!
Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light,
that passing through the Fast as through a great sea
we may reach the Resurrection on the third day
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of our souls.

(Aposticha from the Lenten Triodian for Forgiveness Vespers)

Early

It’s not the first time I’d tagged a morning: “Tomorrow I will walk early.”

I’ve been waking around six these last few weeks (you’d think, with the time change, I’d be waking an hour later, but no, not me). I doze on a little bit; sometimes (often) Gabriel comes in to cuddle and sleep another hour or two. I woke promptly at six. No Gabriel. No Jonah. The morning stars had aligned. All I had to do was swing my legs out of bed. The floor was cold, so I moved.

John immediately asked, “Are you okay?” I was already dressed—peculiar behavior on my part. Dawn was an hour away. Sophie and I set off.

Nothing amazing happened. It was dark, I was darkly dressed, and Sophie is black. Except for my ashy bed head, we merged with the last of night. It took a few blocks before I got past my coffee craving, just as the sky began to lighten. I noticed the high clouds. Sophie kept quiet pace, only stopping to eat one fast food wrapper. I like to think she relished the solitude as much as I.

I tried to pray, but they felt dry. Like the leaves I missed in the fall that still gather in piles on the drain by the house. So I stopped speaking the in my head. Maybe my walk was a prayer. I didn’t feel like thinking about it; I get all twisted up in this arena, and I let the thought go.

What occurred to me next (my best thoughts are the ones I don’t try to think) was much better anyway. For all of our street lights and alarms, our smart phones and daily schedules, there is an intrinsic order keeping us. It moves consistently, whether we recognize it or not. I don’t want to simply call it God. God’s energy is more close to what I mean. As the sun imperceptibly rises (until that last moment when it appears, and you wonder how you missed the moment again), the birds begin to call out. I heard geese honking, cardinals calling back and forth to each other, blue jays crowing like the bullies they are.

How to say it? It’s just that I remembered who runs it all. Growing up a good Baptist girl, I read the bible and memorized Scripture. It’s a habit I miss and would like to regain. But this short verse played in my head: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” The second half of that goes, “the world, and they that dwell therein.” Come to think of it, I didn’t memorize that verse as a girl; it’s a verse commonly read in Orthodox services (another reason to be in Church—what happens there takes seed).

And as spring is upon us, I am feeling for every seed, every hint of a seed I can find. The earth is full. The earth is the Lord’s. We dwell in the world. We dwell. As much as we scurry about, we remain in a particular place. The word dwell is related to the Middle Dutch dwellen, which means “stun, perplex.” I’ll leave it there—the fullness of what I recognized this morning early certainly stunned me plenty.

Liner notes

I admit some nostalgia for the era of the mix tape. I started off my career with a Sony boom box (or some manner of Chinese knock-off). I’d sit on the floor (shag green and yellow carpet) of the bedroom I shared with one or the other of my sisters, the radio tuned, my finger at the ready above the record button. I’d wait for the first few bars of a song to play (I got really good at recognizing a song by its opening notes) and make a split-decision. Much rewinding and resetting. Finding ways to stay occupied while I waited for the next song (a decent metaphor for what being a adolescent generally entails).

Eventually I got a double tape deck, and things really took off. When I sat on the bus to and from basketball games I’d be listening to tapes friends had made me (Peter Gabriel, The Indigo Girls, Crosby Stills and Nash, Mr. Mister’s version of “Kyrie Eleison”, Bob Dylan and U2) as the popular girls had Bon Jovi singalongs in the back of the bus. Those were the days. I still have exactly two of those tapes. I’m not sure how they survived the rewinding and fast-forwarding. I fear getting them out because G has already dismantled a favorite tape I made while in England.

Anyway…

A lot’s happened since I last published a post here. Too much to catch up on, and I’m no good at playing catch-up because it usually ends with giving-up, the writing abandoned all together. So let’s get back into the swing of things with a good old playlist. I’ll try to keep the liner notes short.

1. Jonah’s Birthday
On Tuesday, Jonah turned 7. There was (still is) a mammoth Spiderman balloon. Chocolate cake and buttercream frosting. Chocolate chip cookies to take to school for friends. A modest celebration. Enough I hope. He even let his brother open one gift, though G still thinks the jump rope he pulled out is his and not J’s. It was a good day, and stray packages keep arriving by post, the highlight of which (I’m a little embarrassed to say) was a plastic pool of fake vomit. Other than his Hagrid keychain, it was pretty much the only thing he asked for.

2. John left for Boston. My mother simultaneously arrived from Kansas.
We passed the ten minutes waiting for her to arrive at the airport (we had just dropped off John) talking to a colleague/friend of John’s who was waiting with his daughter to pick up his wife. Actually, he mostly chatted with Jonah while I tried to keep track of Gabriel. The timing felt like good fortune—or is it a happy accident? We’ll call it serendipitous and let it be.

3. John came down with a stomach bug gifted by the boys. I did likewise.
I stumbled around for half a day, making excuses for the strange feeling in my stomach. By afternoon, I gave in. By evening, I was curled up in the fetal position in my bed while my mother tended to the boys. John pushed through valiantly as he attended a conference and socialized with friends. We sent pitiful pictures of ourselves by text in commiseration—him from the train, me from the front seat of the Subaru while Jonah was in dance class.

4. Gabriel had his three year well child check-up.
Ear canals finally clear. Still almost off the charts for size. Declared healthy and strong, if a stinker. Charmed the nurses with his antics. Impressed the doctor with his vocabulary. I’ll stop bragging now.

5. Jonah jumped 120 times (without stopping) on his pogo stick.   
All of a sudden he’s a master on the thing, and his balance is astounding. He’s even starting to steer and can jump down the driveway and back up again. He says he’s chasing squirrels. Click HERE to see. He saw a unicycle in an I Can Read book at church on Sunday and said, “I want one of those!”

6. My mom and I drove to Cleveland to hear Temple Grandin.
She’s a kind of animal rights/autism activist, but not like you might think. She’s designed humane systems for the handling of cattle and a hugging machine for the calming of agitated humans who can’t tolerate human touch. She calls herself a “grey hair” and has no use for handling high functioning autistics with kid gloves. Not much use for labels either. “Don’t let autism run your life!” she proclaims. “Do stuff. We’re forgetting how to Do Stuff.” “Get out of the basement, away from the video games. Get a job!” She’s against the abstractification of education and for any kind of hands on making. She’s currently working on a book about the way different brains work (particularly the autistic brain). She is autistic herself. She is hilarious. Clair Danes portrayed her in the movie Temple Grandin. The event was held at the Cleveland Public Library, a beautiful and worthy destination in and of itself.

7. Late Saturday John returned from Boston. 

8. Early Sunday my mother fell ill.
She too tried to deny the obvious. She had to change her flight (to the delight, if confusion, of Jonah). She slept for almost two days straight. She is now feeling much better and is currently reading books to G so that I can write this.

9. The boys and I attended Church.
If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you probably know the portent that sentence can hold. See the fire alarm story HERE. The morning started with the annoying reality of Daylight Savings Time, followed by my misjudgment in allowing G to take his entire toolbox in the car. He was told he could bring one tool into church. Having chosen the Phillips head screwdriver, he promptly wanted the flat head. After entering the church, he could not do without his saw and threw a fit for not having it. I finally scooted J into church to sit with our friend Melissa while I tried to talk G down from the edge (and a full blown tantrum). The promise of nuts and a mint finally did the job, after which he was ready to light our candles. We three headed to the candle stand at the back. G was doing his skippy, trippy run and, characteristically, tripped, falling and hitting one of the very wobbly legs of the unsteadier than I knew candle stand. Before I could stop myself (because that’s how bad habits work), I whisper-spoke “Shit!”. I’m pretty sure only a few ladies in the back row heard me, and I sometimes imagine (or not) they give me dirty looks about the behavior of my children anyway, so I tried to focus on the reality of my own sin and added swearing to the list of habits that need breaking this Lent. After that near catastrophe, it was (relatively) smooth sailing.

10. John wore a t-shirt.
I have not, in the almost eleven years I have known my husband, ever seen him wear a cotton t-shirt by choice (under extreme duress, yes, when required by a collegial event). He, of course, stepped out in style. I only wish he would have also bought me a Walt Whitman “Yawp” shirt at AWP. I would have promised never to wear it on the same day.

11. John and Gabriel built a G-sized work table.
It’s in the garage. Finished in the hour it took Jonah and I to take our Sunday afternoon walk/bike ride. G finally has a toy saw in his possession (thank you Grandma Debbe), as well as numerous screwdrivers, a level, and a pipe wrench, so the work bench was essential, not to mention inevitable.

12. Gabriel is actually Spiderman.
Jonah was likewise enamored at age three. G wears the same musclebound suit, which consistently stirs in J the need to wrestle him to the ground. Sunday night G was allowed to sleep with the suit because the thought of not being able to wear the suit to bed sent him into a tailspin. When G is not Spiderman, he is a dog who crawls around on all fours and pants and eats up pages of books.

13. Godfather Joshua came for a visit.
He was in town with his cousin (Jack Korbel) for a coffeeshop concert. Jonah radiated delight. Godfather Joshua read him Calvin and Hobbes cartoons for an hour while I prepared dinner. Godfather Joshua brought an All Saint’s Day of the Dead decorated mirror to hang by Jonah’s bed to ward off bad dreams. Godfather Joshua taught him the word “onomatopoeia.” J was mournful to see him go so soon. G lamented: “I want Godfawder Yoshua come back now.”

Today my mother flies back to Kansas (she’s much better), and we return to the quieter activities of our slightly-crazed clan. Jonah might cry. But there are summer plans to travel, provided my faith and stamina hold out. Picture collage follows. Shorter (I promise), more regular posts to come…