Susan Senator

Healed by love and sleep
Awakened to your voice that told you things.
I marvel at how you comfort yourself
I wonder if you sat down with me for more
I know you don't want to leave this place of softest blues and spiky greens,
Crows that argue and rabbits that chew, stare, and think, maybe.

This goodbye feels like more to me
A familiar maw of sadness that yawned open as the day closed.
We're going.
You're going.
I drink scalding coffee, swallow down a fresh blooming pain
and listen to you whispering sudden cool laughter bubbles in your mouth
And a symphony of birds outside
On our last day.

...All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
-Thomas Jefferson, July 4, 1776

Here's to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!

10,000 years can give you such a crick in the neck!
--The Genie in Aladdin

But 24 years, well, our little party's just beginning...

We're on the Cape this week so there's probably going to be a series of airheaded posts. Nat seems extremely happy (knock wood) and in his element: smiling and punching the air constantly; Joyful Beach Stompies; boogie-boarding; helping carry this and that here and there. He is just a joy, plain and simple. Have you ever felt so happy that you just couldn't stop moving around? Maybe that's why I need to exercise sometimes, just to pump my muscles and get my whole body into the imminent happiness pushing its way through me.

Well, that's Nat. Especially in the morning. To him, it is like the weekend, which means a "No School" day, which means wake up as early as possible and come downstairs and walk, walk, walk. So I usually get up early and try to contain it, so that everyone else can sleep. I reminded Nat gently that he needs to "walk and talk calmly, quietly, because it's early and everyone else is sleeping." And so there he was, actually tip-toeing and whispering his Stompies! It was so wonderful and thoughtful that I hugged him. That guy just does what he can.

We bought Max and Ben Rock Band last week, to celebrate a successful and difficult school year for both of them. I had hoped that this would be something that we could all do together, and so far, it is turning out that way. On Tuesday I got up the courage to sing, creating an avatar for myself: Lilia. She looks a little like me twenty years ago. Today I earned enough money to buy her some new, outrageous threads. Suddenly there I was, cybershopping for clothes and wondering if this looked okay or not, while Max, Ned, Hannah, and Ben looked on and laughed.

Max and Hannah switch off on guitar and drums, and they are both really good already. I find the guitar kind of hard to do; maybe it's because I play a real guitar and I'm doing too much with this mini one (?) Maybe I just suck. Ned tried some drumming the other day and looked like a hot rocker with his long shaggy hair and ultra-confident attitude. Mm -- mm, good.

Ben plays drums very well and now has gotten up the nerve to share some of my voice solos, especially the freestyle parts. He's a little too soft or too loud, though. He shouted right in my ear before and it still feels fuzzy. I have tried to entice Nat to come in and play with us, and he obliges, perched on Max's bed, but I suspect it is just not his bag, man.

Rock Band is a lot of family fun. I highly recommend it as a way to connect a little with your teenagers. Also, you can pretend to be a rocker, and, come on, you know you want to. Remember the Partridge Family? I was Laurie, my sister was David Cassidy. We played it with our cousins. Rock Band is this generations's version of Partridge Family. You even get to buy a bus after you've earned enough bread.

Once you let the concepts of neurodiversity split open your basic assumptions about autism, the crack just keeps widening. Early this morning I took my coffee and book into the living room, to the couch across from Nat. I slurped and read while Nat sat still, in the center of the couch, whispering to himself into the crisp post-rain air.

My current read is not that great, plus the sky is lit up a promising blue and white, so my mind kept wandering. This is my frequent mental state: running from thought to thought, barely stopping to breathe and really notice them. Because of Nat's presence, and the imminent lack thereof come July 28, the thoughts churning there were about him. As often happens when I think about this, sadness crept over me.

I couldn't push away the way I felt sorry for him. Sorry because he was going away, and doesn't really know yet what it means, to leave us and live somewhere else; sorry because I wondered if he felt that something was afoot, but could not put words to it because words are so elusive for him. Sorry because he didn't have a book, but just sits there, so often, center-couch, staring ahead of him. And that made me feel bad because I realized that he doesn't really possess much of a way to escape reality, with pleasurable leisure pursuits. (Leisure activities -- or "appropriate leisure skills," as we have come to call them because of our behavioral training -- are what most people eagerly slip into to feel content: reading, listening to music, exercising, writing, gardening, doing crossword puzzles; at least, those are my typical leisure choices.)

Nat can't escape himself the way I can. But where has all my escape gotten me? So often I run away from my real feelings (maybe you don't think I do, but truly all you know is what you read here, where I work things out on Precious). I have a huge problem with sitting with feelings, letting them in, letting them merely pass, without acting or pushing away. Trust me, I have had some pretty awful consequences with all my running and impulsive action.

Nat, on the other hand, is capable of simply sitting, literally, with himself, his thoughts, his feelings. He exists within himself, within the moment, just about all the time. And he is okay with it. I realized then, how remarkable that is, how brave, how strong. It was the first time ever that I wanted to be like Nat.

My misplaced pity evaporated and I slunk away into the kitchen, uncomfortable, as usual, with these new feelings and discoveries, and plunged with relief into more coffee and my blog.

I made a party for Ned's birthday, this past Sunday. It was a real mixture of worlds: his work friends, our neighborhood friends, my bellydance friend, some of our oldest friends, and some very new ones, too. All their kids, too, which Ned specifically requested. I tried to have the food be stuff that would please everyone: fried chicken, curried chicken salad, salmon nicoise, and of course, an excellent cake. Photos by Pete.

The cake was not homemade, because the design was too complicated, and too important. And a surprise. So without Ned's expertise, I did not feel confident that I could make Betty Crocker work out just right. So I assigned the whole thing to Party Favors, a local bakery that makes the most fabulous cakes ever. (They are the ones who made my bellydancer birthday cake, complete with a cake tent, cake palm trees, and a cake desert. The bellydancer was a frosted tiny figurine.) This is an Aptus cake, based on a fractal image that Ned generated with some code he created. (This kind of software doodling is one of Ned's hobbies. He was the first person I ever met who did math for fun. His hobbies, in the Penn facebook, were something like this: Recreational math, juggling, and other circus skills.") The name "Aptus" actually is from the words "Apple Tush," which is what Ben called the shape when he first saw it, as a baby. You can see that it does, indeed, look like an Apple Tush.

The party was terrific; the weather pretty much cooperated. And just about everyone we invited came, and they did bring their kids: around 35 people. I dragged out all of our classic kiddie vehicles for them to play with, and it was so great seeing the old toys out again, which hosed off very well after having been stored in the gross basement all this time. The little Playskool wagon is 17 years old now. This wagon was one of Nat's first toys, and as a one-year-old, he had delighted in rolling it back and forth, watching its steady and then uneven movement. As a teeny baby he had actually started singing a little tune every time he rolled it, and eventually I realized that this tune was a musical illustration of the the rolling of the wagon. Never, never doubt that there is a lot going on inside the head of an autistic person. Whether they choose to or are able to share it with you is another thing altogether.)

I took out Max's Big Wheel, now fifteen! He had been so proud of it. Ben inherited it, of course. Ben's Cozy Coupe was there, too. Or maybe it was Max's. So many boys went in and out of its door, checked its little mirror for who knows what, turned its impotent ignition. And now, my friend Pete's adorable little girl tried out those vintage wheels.

I forced Ned and Max to help me set up a volleyball net. Ben actually played volleyball with some of the kids. Nat hung out the entire time, gobbling up all the chips and salsa (when I tried to add different chips to the remaining chips, he grabbed two handfuls of the remaining chips, carried them to the dining room table, and ate them. Note to self: never mix chip types).