Love

At The End Of The Day….

Jaycee Kemp1 Comment

I was in a research study recently involving blogging, deciding upon content, deciding upon platform, media, etc. It truly was an interesting experience–I guess no one ever directly asked me to tell my story in such a way before. While they interviewed over a dozen already, many of which where “mom bloggers”, I was the only one interviewed who addressed experiences as a family living with disability.

Their takeaway they volunteered to share with me? Their experience with other parent bloggers did not include the same judicious protection of content/overcontemplation of concern regarding the forms of dignity I discussed, nor did it involve the level of scrutiny that dug as deep as our level can go. And yes, they do blame their kids for tough days or recognize the universal struggles in a laughable or relatable way and are rewarded for that relatablity on social media. No one else struggled in that balance the way we do.

In our world, there is a fine line which moves it’s position depending on who you are talking to. We have a job as family caregivers of disability to be relatable advocates who set the bar for how we and our kids are perceived by the rest of the world. And unfortunately, I do believe it can be at the expense of self care or which ultimately affects they way we cope within our family systems for the benefit of our charge. We are held to a much higher standard out there in cyberworld under much more challenging circumstances than other parents. I forgot about this piece I wrote a few years ago, but it was on a day I had a similar epiphany at the end of a long, hot summer. Sometimes, I want to say funny things about being a mom too. And yep…sometimes I am selfish.

Running through Water

bunny hillThere are some days that my heart breaks selfishly a bit.

Days like today.

As A2 gets older there really are no more play dates. While kids are generally kind, there are limits to their patience. It’s hard to figure out how to play with another kid who wants to stand at the bottom of the water slide flapping rather than going down. His peers are now preteens and the adults that are close by interpreting for him, ensuring safety and cuing socially reciprocal behavior are going to inhibit his peers age appropriate wing stretching.

Today, as I sat entering in my second hour in direct sun making sure my guy didn’t keep going past the “do not pass” sign at the base of the water slide, I couldn’t help but notice the world around us. I had nothing else to do but try to clear my mind of things…

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Autism Acceptance Month 2019: C is for Community, Comradery and Common Ground

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  • 1000 ever changing fingerprints at the Smithsonian in Washington DC

Autism Acceptance Month 2019: C is for Community, Comradery and Common Ground

These words resonate for my own beautiful boy. My own beautiful family. I am an accidental blogger. There are many reasons I am out here….none of which have come to fruition (yet). A morphing book for a few years and when people ask, they are surprised to learn it has nothing to do with me or my child directly. I kept learning how I should be out there to those who would be interested in the content.

But, you see, this is still all very weird to me.

I didn’t want to write on social media because the dissent and judgement within and among communities…the ones I believed were the same, were awful. It seemed to me everyone has ill intention, everyone is ignorant. I have enough drama, thank you very much. Why would I invite more? By not writing at all meant not sharing it, which meant self care.

I didn’t want to write because even in my personal life, very few people get to know my details. Talking and sharing vs. relating and sharing are different. People tend to fade to black in a cinematically predictable way when sometimes those things are just way bigger than one can make them look while out and about buying the groceries and weed killer. Those melodramas occupy enough space, thank you very much. Why would I drag people into that when we maintain so well over here? By not writing at all meant protecting thoughts and ideas which are uncomfortable or inconvenient to others. Ultimately for me too since disappointment tends to hit me like a wrecking ball.

In the end, regardless of where we know each other or how, I am fairly certain, we are looking for the same end result. By not writing, I did not have to debate this.

Having perspective is a little like breathing. We all do it and at the pace comfortable for living to the best of our ability. That breath adapts to our situation even when it changes. Sometimes it is even vastly different than our original irrefutable pace. When I walk up the steps to my room at home, I find myself stopping and catching my breath 3 or 4 steps before the top when just 4 years ago I could perform literal circus tricks in a hot yoga studio.
And while my Lululemon tush wouldn’t have said it out loud, it may have not really understood what it meant to need rest before reaching the top of a staircase, because it never had to before. I may have had recommendations on the misguided beliefs about why it meandered its way up at that speed in the first place. And I might have been wrong-ish, but a vague foundation of knowing why. It didn’t completely make me wrong any more than it also didn’t make me wrong for now knowing I now need to rest for a moment on the banister.

The love for our children. The love for ourselves and the life it seems we thought they should live with us. The love for ourselves as individuals doing the best we can and trying to find others who might say the same. We all want the same thing and it seems to always be based in love and dignity and preservation. Even when from a different angle, that does not appear to be the case.

Before deciding how someone else’s world is not just wrong and different, but destructive, I implore you to stop on the 3rd or 4th step up on the way to your room to take a breath first and then decide how to describe how to better take that breath.

It is easy to say this perspective is not about privilege when we have the option of discussing it in the first place. It is easy to say it is not about privilege when we are groundskeepers and spectators of those we are discussing. If we have love in our hearts, perhaps the common ground in our community is to say we are trying to champion and triumph the same fights. And knowing that is when I decided perhaps I should write.

Days of Awe. Mostly Without Feathers

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Hope is the thing with feathers. 

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops–at all

Until it is hunted, killed, braised, barbecued and eaten.

–Emily Dickinson

Ok.  Emily can only take credit for only part of this….

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Three years ago this week, I was given the honor of speaking in front of my congregation during the High Holidays on the topic of hope. When the rabbi approached me 4 months earlier and told me the topic, I was sure I could pull SOMETHING together. I was flattered and thankful for the opportunity.

And then I fully realized my task.

Asking for five minutes of my time to convey what hope was like for me…in what I assumed had to do with parenting a child with a disability, suddenly morphed into the equivalent of digging for research for a dissertation. I was not sure what hope meant at all, though in fairness, I am not sure I ever fully understood what hope was.

I stumbled on the video link a year afterward and found the old me. Hearing this stranger speaking from the heart was jarring, yet familiar.

This is the (abridged) transcript from that speech.

I’m here to share my story of hope.  My family and I have been congregants here for the last 10 years.  I have two versions of the story I was going to tell today and I’d like to thank the rabbi for allowing me the opportunity to go rogue and tell a third one instead. 

So, I came here this morning with these two versions of my story of hope, not knowing which one I was going to tell.   And mostly because of Rabbi’s sermon last night on vulnerability, I decided to take the two stories and meld them somewhere in the middle to share my story in hopes that if there are people sitting here who feel the same way, they can recognize they are not alone. 

You see…sometimes its not about being hopeful or hopeless. Sometimes there is this vague middle ground, if that exists, in hope. 

I have a child with Autism and he is a sweet, beautiful boy.   And he lives with Autism.  An Autism that impairs him from a life of independence. 

I’m part of a family who is also living with Autism.  An Autism that impair us from a life of independence. 

Showing vulnerability is not particularly an issue for us because we have to wear our vulnerability very publicly.  I’m also pretty visible in the community, and because of that I sometimes feel like I am the “Autism Representative”. 

So, Side A is extra-super truthy.  It shows a side of hope that’s hidden away. That only parents with children with significant disabilities can understand. We hide away. But by sharing this truth of hope, I learned that being vulnerable or weak sometimes has a detrimental effect on my child…both from an emotional standpoint and also from the standpoint of receiving services or receiving help.  It also sometimes leaves me with a compound disappointment chipping away at my worldview of hope in a world where no one can tell me the outcome of my beautiful boy’s life. 

Side B is the very pretty version and it’s the version you might expect to hear.  Its even capped off with a prayer.  But its inauthentic and frankly on Yom Kippur I couldn’t see standing up here knowing there are possibly families I will be doing a disservice by presenting you with the shiniest, most inauthentic version that I could possibly provide of hope.  So thank you, Rabbi for giving me the opportunity to come and share my story.  To spend months studying and contemplating hope in a way that I didn’t anticipate.  Hope is not optimism.  It is not about expectation.  I have realistic expectation for my child.

It is definitely not the thing with feathers. 

I came across a quote by the playwright Tony Kushner and he refers to hope as a moral obligation.  Through all of this, that made the most sense to me. 

Hope just is. 

It’s part of our human condition.  That quote captures the vulnerability of hope as well. 

Just a few days ago I heard an anecdote that captures the best possible way I can describe what its like to sometimes sit in the shame of feeling hopeless for a perfect child living in a very imperfect world with a very scary and nebulous future.  *It’s the story a man told about his grandfather’s wife dying.  After 65 years, she was his lifelong partner and his driver and he wasn’t sure what state he was going to find his grandfather in the first time he saw him after she died.

So he walks in and says, “Hi Grandpa—how are you?  How are you doing?”  And his grandfather says “Did you know that for $4 I can take a shuttle to anywhere in the city?”

 The grandson says, “That’s great grandpa.”

And the grandfather says, “So, went to the grocery store the other day with a list and I went to the lady at the counter and I said ‘Can you please help me with this list?  You see, my wife just relocated and her new address is heaven.’” 

The grandson sits back and laughs and says, “Grandpa, you always help me see the glass as half full.”

The grandfather sits back, looks at the grandson and says, “No….its a beautiful glass.”  

So, my moral obligation today was not to make you think that those of us who have children not following the path of expectation are hopeless.  And it was also not to come up here and make you believe we are full of hope.  Because it lies somewhere in the middle.  If you are a person who sometimes struggles with hope…please know you are not alone.  Thank you.

On this Kol Nidre, if you observe, may you reflect on what hope means to you in a finite and fragile world also full of love and optimism and come out the other side recognizing the glass.

*an excerpt from the film HUMAN by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (2015)

Edited and rewritten from 9/2016

 

 

Sometimes We Cry

Jaycee Kemp1 Comment

I cried twice today in public.

Once for me and once for him.

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I cried within 3 minutes of arrival, but with dry eyes and a smile on my matte face. My diaper bag disguised as a monogrammed symbol of excess rather than a symbol of unanswered questions about wipes and formula and a change of clothes for my adolescent. No one can see what is happening behind my eyes, especially if I cannot see the pity behind theirs.

I cried twice today because sometimes the race to suppress overactive tear ducts in a maelstrom of circumstance and emotion is an unfair competition of tortoise and hare. Sometimes I try too hard and one too many drops pools before one accidentally pushes its way past the checkpoint and spills down a cheek. It is quickly wiped away.

I cried twice today as I held up a wall, socially grinning and making silent deals with God to make no one talk to me. Us moms, we were all in the same place to help, but I was not on the list of volunteers, I figured it out and showed up anyway. Even the words I needed to hear would be a sucker punch to the throat and I would then choke on false pretense that transcends somewhere poetic. I don’t know where transcendence lies exactly–there are so many reasons those tears might seem to be faulty to everyone else. So I hold them in as long as I can and my tongue is held hostage, leaving me still alone.

I cry and sometimes my child sees it happen and sometimes he does not. It doesn’t matter because he knows my humanness anyway, just like he would if his genetic dice were rolled differently. Today he did not see those drops of glistening emotion and I am no less embarrassed, no less ashamed, no less human for it either.  And neither is he.

My child is an enigma leaving us to figure out what HIS autism means, what HIS cognitive deficits mean, what HIS communication disorder means. I am tasked to teach my child how to move through this world happily, safely. Though we live in similar space as everyone else, he traverses along some alternate dimension often invisible to all the other children so I don’t really know how to do that.  And because of that, sometimes, I cry.

My child’s joy is palpable and my heart levitates outside of my body watching him experience it. He can display the weight of his world, but then laugh at the same time if presented with the right silly face. I am never sure which emotion is primary for him but my own worldview tells me joy prevails because I could never do that. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

My boy wants to be part of the world but sometimes stands motionless with shifty eyes because he knows exactly the problem, which he perceives is him. While I perceive a world that does not know what to do with him. I am certain I am the only one who reinforces that. He worries. He should be worried, because I don’t always know what to do with him either. And sometimes another child sees his light from across the room and without fanfare, crosses over, takes his hand and leads him to the dance floor to be part of the world. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

My boy buoyantly hoots and flaps and has a cognitive itch that somehow seems to be reached by repeating my name over and over and over in the space that should be the calm of our home. Diligent years he sacrificed to learn that what few words he might have are meaningful and understood because we have a limited time to teach the world otherwise. I taught him those things by making sure he always had a response. And in those times caught in an endless loop, he gets one from me, but it might be birthed breech–cord wrapped around its neck-choking and feral and blue in my fallibility. And because of that, sometimes I cry.

I worry one day my boy will read my words and will be hurt or angry or curious or furious and he will demand an explanation and he will walk out of my life because to him these were not words of awareness or advocacy or change. They were the words of HIS life. But that bittersweet day will be the day I will breathe easy with a newly missing piece who can navigate this world alone if he has to. I worry too my boy will be a man…still without the ability for any of that. And in my end, all the sacrificial words spoken on his behalf and judged were not enough to change the world around him leaving him alone.  And because of that, sometimes I cry.

These are the words of OUR life. He and I are both doing the parts we think we are supposed to do no matter how imperfectly executed. Because he is my best boy. Because I am only his mom.

And sometimes We cry.

Sometimes We Smile (or Sometimes We Cry:Part 2)

Who Will Light The Moon For Him?

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amazing-beautiful-beauty-blue.jpg

I sat on the edge of my boy’s bed and ran the back of my hand across his smooth, cherubic cheek. At the same age, my older son’s voice was already changing.

Most nights I wait until I know his door has been closed, the light is off and I hear the dog downstairs rooting around his aluminum dish for nighttime grub. I wait until the heft of daylight is tucked neatly beneath his bed and he has held silence for a few moments as it has held him for the last 12 hours.

The shadows and light cast on the walls of his room in the friendliest of ways–not because of the shadowy reflection of Mickey Mouse ears and baseball trophies, but in the way that my sweet boy has never been afraid of the dark.

“Mooo peeeese” he says more as a statement than as a request. I much oblige and ask if he would rather have space than the moon. He always prefers the moon.

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I fumble with a cheap plastic rocket ship on his nightstand. I’m always surprised by just how dark it is and how difficult it is to find.  It has a clock that forever blinks 12:00. His internal clock is spot on, so I have never bothered to fish out the manual from the library of lost causes, loose change and plastic ware to reset it. Every night, I push a button to reveal a constellation of stars, or an astronaut or a full moon large enough to beckon high tide thousands of miles away and swallow his room in white foam and ocean spray. While sometimes it is “spaceman” who will watch over him after I leave the room, it is mostly the moon he wants before he says “ready” in his polite request for me to let him drift off on his own. If only he could learn to push the moon button by himself at 2:00am to lull himself back to sleep instead of requiring my semi-conscious presence to be his field of poppies.

I finally find the correct button, and even though one of the spotlights has gone dark over the years, the most perfect Supermoon hangs low and flickering in the rotation of his ceiling fan.  Maybe it makes it look like the man in the moon is bidding him a fair adieu with the consistency and persistence he likes to wave goodbye to people who don’t appreciate the value of farewell as much as his imaginary spaceman. Or maybe he likes the idea that someone would wave back.

“Bye Mommy”, he pours out in his child’s voice I believe sounds exactly like it did when he was four. Except he could not say “bye” or “mommy” or any combination of that at four.

That rocketship, with the projection of a perfect Moon has been around about that long. Really, probably as long as he can remember. It is only a matter of time before the remaining dim spotlight shines for the last time on his ceiling. I have a hard time imagining what it will be like to have to explain he already had the final night with his own personal moonbeam when I realize it the next evening. He will keep asking for the moon and I won’t have it to give anymore.

So I fumble in that friendly darkness every night searching for the moon button and praying that God takes the dog tomorrow instead.

But tonight, I went online and ordered the last 8 rocketship moon projectors I could find. Hopefully 50 more years and 18,000 Blue Moons. I don’t know how many of those moons he will have to light up himself, but until then, at least I know he is not afraid of the dark.

#bluemoon #supermoon #autism #motherhood

 

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A2 fearlessly finds his way

 

 

It’s Not Your Mother’s Mother’s Day

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(originally posted Mother’s Day 2016)

To my children on Mother’s Day:

You did not ask to be born.  You did not ask to walk this earth and you certainly did not create your own realities and struggles….at least not yet.  You did not get to choose me as a mother.  I can guide you in ways that I think will ease your journey but ultimately your external successes and failures will be YOUR successes and failures.  You get to have those on your own and I will rejoice and celebrate and swell with pride as if I created those monumental moments but I do not get to take credit for those.  I will feel guilt or shame or sadness in your failings or perhaps I will distance myself from them for those same reasons, but ultimately I don’t get to take credit for those either.   Whatever respect or love you have for me through each stage of your lives is created, taught and fueled by me and  while those things feel like an expectation when it comes to a mother, in every other situation those things are earned….I will assure you it is the same in our case. It is not my expectation that you celebrate me today.  If anything, the onus is on me to celebrate you.  You made me a mother and by proxy after 35  years I was given the gift of the ability to feel love unconditionally.  I don’t choose to love you…..I have no choice.  What I do with that part is up to me. You do not owe me for being attentive to your needs, by making you a priority.  That is my contract with you regardless of circumstance.

So on this Mother’s Day, I celebrate you both.   The loves of my life.  May you:

–Never feel as if your existence was a burden to me.

–Always feel like a joyful priority, even when I have forgotten to appreciate that myself

–Recognize that you are separate from me….that my sadness is not your sadness…my expectations should not be your expectations, my disappointments are not your disappointments.  If I am doing this right, I will not feel like your obligation.

–Know that in my humanity the above might not feel that way because nothing makes me feel more joy than your joy….nothing makes me feel more worry than your worry…and unfortunately there is not much I can to about that.

–Never feel less because I acknowledge your differences.

–Always feel safe in telling me your thoughts and ideas no matter what.

–Know that when I don’t understand your needs that you may not be able to change that but you can ask me for more patience

–Always feel the love and respect I have for you and I hope that I have done my job in teaching you how to have the wisdom to distinguish and create healthy distance as you grow when others are not treating you with love and respect who should be.  Including me.

–Know that if I am feeling selfish or if I cannot manage something when it comes to you I will protect you from that by being honest so you never misunderstand my intentions.

If I am raising you right, for me every day should feel like the holiday we are told is Mother’s Day.  But for today, I celebrate and thank you for being given the privilege of being your Mom. Now let’s get to the Zoo.

xoxox

 

 

 

Now I lay me down to sleep….

Jaycee Kemp4 Comments

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4:17am

My beautiful boy wandered into my room tonight.  His curly hair tousled around his cherub cheeks, pajama bottoms twisted in a spiral around his hips from tossing and turning…he marches in quickly as if he had somewhere important to be and then suddenly stops at the foot of my bed with purpose.  He rubs his dazed eyes all the while smiling that big Cheshire Cat grin of his. “Hug”, he says as he makes that long trip to the other side of my California king.   I can’t say I hate it when that happens.  He is warm and cuddly and doesn’t thrash and kick like he used to when he was little.  To the best of my knowledge, A2 has never slept a full night in his life and no one can tell me why.   As he gets older, he seems no worse for the wear for it either.  The stretches between night time explorations have become longer and my husband and I have become a tag team settling into separate sleeping arrangements at night over the years to ensure at least one of us wakes to the new day refreshed.   He tells me “scootch magooch” as he encroaches on the sliver of bed where I sleep and drifts off as swiftly as he made his declaration of his sleep intentions.

The thing is, my husband and I never wake up fully refreshed.  There are Things That Keep Me Up at Night. Who will hug him when we are gone?  Who else will find his sweet smile so endearing even at 3:00am?  We try to be optimistic about his future.  A2 will likely never be able to live independently, but dammit, we bought him a house and we rent it out to people today so in 15 years he will have a place to live….maybe even with 24 hour support staff and 2 or 3 other guys who are sweet spirited sports and music fans like he is.  We live in an expensive school district despite struggling to afford it to make sure he has the best education and connections for his future.   Though we are socially isolated as a family because such is the nature of autism, I remain involved with my religious congregation so he is never alone. SOMEONE will always know and recognize him.  I advocate and I write and I stay present in the disability community so he will always have that community too when it comes time for some else to step in as a guardian when I can no longer do it. A touchpoint for that kind stranger to get guidance or direction. We save the best we can.   We plan for the best possible services and outcomes to give him a meaningful life worth living. We are uncertain what services  will help house him, feed him, care for him.  We can’t be sure that there will be vocational training or health insurance or social security disability payments. All of which is unnerving when you know there will be no one to love him or snuggle with him or wipe away tears.  So we plan as best we can knowing surely, there will be some kind of services for him.

But tonight there is no sleep because now I am not so sure.  I know in the morning light I will look at everyone with a suspicious eye and wonder who around me willingly voted for another reason to keep me up at night. Half the population wanted political change and they got it and whether the overt intentions were there or not, they were willing to make children like my child the sacrificial lamb.  My child will always be dependent on others to be his voice, to protect him….his rights, his body, his dignity . My child and others like him often have no option but to live in poverty and have no political influence as adults.  I am terrified for him because no matter how much we plan, no matter how much we go without today, if it is acceptable for the leader of our country to marginalize him, make fun of him, call him the R word what does that say for the people around us who brush that off and traded my baby in for not voting for the vague “yeah, but she’s worse”?   What happens when it is a decided that my “standard retard” is a drain on the system making everyone elses’ life more difficult?  There will be a supreme court in place likely for the rest of his life who will err on the side of believing that as a universal truth.

The only politics I ever talk about in my writing is my belief that most people are good but misinformed. Perhaps not in my lifetime, but certainly in his, I believed that it was possible to change the world around him enough that true inclusion and a dignified life were possible and through that, the need for the work of disability advocacy would dwindle.  Perhaps I truly believed all that because I see the innocence in his eyes.  He is a pure soul who has helped me see good first and maybe I can spread that message for him.

So, forgive me if you were one of the people who so desperately wanted political change if I seem a little distant from you.  While I am hopeful that my fears are akin to “they’re taking all our guns from us!” it’s a bit harder for me not to be devisive when we are talking about my baby.  But don’t worry….A2 won’t judge you.  He is forgiving and will love you anyway.

Days of Awe. Mostly Without Feathers

Jaycee KempLeave a comment

Hope is the thing with feathers. 

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops–at all

Until it is hunted, killed, braised, barbecued and eaten.

–Emily Dickinson

Ok.  Emily can only take credit for the first part….

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Three years ago this week,  I was given the honor of speaking in front of my congregation during the High Holidays on the topic of hope. When the rabbi approached me 4 months earlier and told me the topic, I was sure I could pull SOMETHING together. I was flattered and thankful for the opportunity.

And then I fully realized my task.

Asking for five minutes of my time to convey what hope was like for me…in what I assumed had to do with parenting a child with a disability suddenly morphed into the equivalent of digging for research for a dissertation. I was not sure what hope meant at all, though in fairness, I am not sure I ever fully understood what hope was.

I stumbled on the video link a year afterward and found the old me. Hearing this stranger speaking from the heart was jarring, yet familiar.

This is the (abridged) transcript from that speech.

I’m here to share my story of hope.  My family and I have been congregants here for the last 10 years.  I have two versions of the story I was going to tell today and I’d like to thank the rabbi for allowing me the opportunity to go rogue and tell a third one instead. 

So, I came here this morning with these two versions of my story of hope, not knowing which one I was going to tell.   And mostly because of Rabbi’s sermon last night on vulnerability, I decided to take the two stories and meld them somewhere in the middle to share my story in hopes that if there are people sitting here who feel the same way, they can recognize they are not alone. 

You see…sometimes its not about being hopeful or hopeless. Sometimes there is this vague middle ground, if that exists, in hope. 

I have a child with Autism and he is a sweet, beautiful boy.   And he lives with Autism.  An Autism that impairs him from a life of independence. 

I’m part of a family who is also living with Autism.  An Autism that impair us from a life of independence. 

Showing vulnerability is not particularly an issue for us because we have to wear our vulnerability very publicly.  I’m also pretty visible in the community, and because of that I sometimes feel like I am the “Autism Representative”. 

So, Side A is extra-super truthy.  It shows a side of hope that’s hidden away. That only parents with children with significant disabilities can understand. We hide away. But by sharing this truth of hope, I learned that being vulnerable or weak sometimes has a detrimental effect on my child…both from an emotional standpoint and also from the standpoint of receiving services or receiving help.  It also sometimes leaves me with a compound disappointment chipping away at my worldview of hope in a world where no one can tell me the outcome of my beautiful boy’s life. 

Side B is the very pretty version and it’s the version you might expect to hear.  Its even capped off with a prayer.  But its inauthentic and frankly on Yom Kippur I couldn’t see standing up here knowing there are possibly families I will be doing a disservice by presenting you with the shiniest, most inauthentic version that I could possibly provide of hope.  So thank you, Rabbi for giving me the opportunity to come and share my story.  To spend months studying and contemplating hope in a way that I didn’t anticipate.  Hope is not optimism.  It is not about expectation.  I have realistic expectation for my child.

It is definitely not the thing with feathers. 

I came across a quote by the playwright Tony Kushner and he refers to hope as a moral obligation.  Through all of this, that made the most sense to me. 

Hope just is. 

It’s part of our human condition.  That quote captures the vulnerability of hope as well. 

Just a few days ago I heard an anecdote that captures the best possible way I can describe what its like to sometimes sit in the shame of feeling hopeless for a perfect child living in a very imperfect world with a very scary and nebulous future.  *It’s the story a man told about his grandfather’s wife dying.  After 65 years, she was his lifelong partner and his driver and he wasn’t sure what state he was going to find his grandfather in the first time he saw him after she died.

So he walks in and says, “Hi Grandpa—how are you?  How are you doing?”  And his grandfather says “Did you know that for $4 I can take a shuttle to anywhere in the city?”

 The grandson says, “That’s great grandpa.”

And the grandfather says, “So, went to the grocery store the other day with a list and I went to the lady at the counter and I said ‘Can you please help me with this list?  You see, my wife just relocated and her new address is heaven.’” 

The grandson sits back and laughs and says, “Grandpa, you always help me see the glass as half full.”

The grandfather sits back, looks at the grandson and says, “No….its a beautiful glass.”  

So, my moral obligation today was not to make you think that those of us who have children not following the path of expectation are hopeless.  And it was also not to come up here and make you believe we are full of hope.  Because it lies somewhere in the middle.  If you are a person who sometimes struggles with hope…please know you are not alone.  Thank you.

On this Kol Nidre, if you observe, may you reflect on what hope means to you in a finite and fragile world also full of love and optimism and come out the other side recognizing the glass.

*an excerpt from the film HUMAN by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (2015)

Edited and rewritten from 9/2016

 

 

Allergies and Autism and Sensory Overload, Oh My! How to Make Halloween Inclusive

Jaycee KempLeave a comment

Halloween is right around the corner…here’s some of my top tips and tricks to make Halloween fun and to hand off to any of the indignant PTO moms who have forgotten that ALL kids want to have a good time…..

Running through Water

halloween

Though Halloween parties have turned into “Harvest Parties” at school, the anticipation and sentiment of Halloween is still timeless. As a parent I find myself still caught up in Halloween and creating spooky Pinterest fails and contemplating what candy I can pilfer from my child’s treat bag without him noticing. Some costumes are so realistically scary that I am not certain that my red meat consumption hasn’t finally caught up with me and am opening my door to the actual Grim Reaper himself. There is a revolving door of Elsas and Ninja Turtles who could just very likely just be the same child over and over again capitalizing on those homes who everyone knows passes out full sized candy bars.

A couple of years ago I was coordinating a party for my child’s 4th grade classroom. 20% of that classroom had food allergies. I gently reminded parents that the goal…

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Autism’s Lost Text Message

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One night as I was plugging in my son’s iPad, I noticed he got a text.  Many parents lose sleep over whether or not to invade their preadolescent’s privacy by looking at personal messages, but not me.  My child at 11 years old is completely illiterate and he had never gotten a text before.

I glanced around as if nervously waiting to get busted for reading it, but the truth was my stomach was in butterflies out of joy and excitement.

Hi A2.  This is Ryder

Are you in bed?????

If you aren’t what time do you go to bed???

Maybe I have been wrong!  Maybe school has been helping him truly cultivate and explore friendships after all! Real ones!  A2’s class picture was on the refrigerator and I ran to it to ask him which one was Ryder. I recognized several of the boys in his class but didn’t know anyone named Ryder. Unfortunately, my son has a severe language disorder called Childhood Apraxia of Speech in addition to Autism so I had no way of knowing for certain which one Ryder was because A2 enthusiastically would answer “yeh!” to every child I pointed to.

Could he be a child from the resource room?   I could not know that either because  the school will not tell me the names of any of the children in that room due to “privacy”.  The kids with whom he spends the majority of the day.  The kids who also probably never get or send texts or receive invites to play. The kids who can’t just ask each other and then come home and tell their moms.

My husband and I were feeling almost hypervigilant over where we would know this child from since the area code was from a city we lived in many years ago.  A2’s real name is an unusual one, so clearly this is meant for him.

How did he get A2’s number since A2 doesn’t even know it?  Does this child comprehend that A2 can’t read? Could this be an adult?  A teacher?  A predator?!

My joy was quickly turning to irrationality as my husband texted back to give this Ryder person a piece of our mind!

As it turns out, Ryder was trying to get in touch with A2.  Just not MY A2. 

Ryder was in 6th grade and had just moved and had met a new friend at his new school (not ours) that day, exchanged numbers and did what every 12 year old does when making new friends.

A2 was contacted by a ghost. An illusion of a promise of the world to come.

The coincidence lacked the sparkle of serendipity and sent a gut punch that made the butterflies swirling in my tummy fly out of my mouth and away into the sky out of reach.  One three lined text of 19 words, 57 characters, 6 question marks and 2 happy face emojis sent me into a 10 minute emotional tailspin ending in a disappointment.

While my reaction may seem dramatic and my sweet boy was oblivious, man alive, I know he would have LOVED for that text to be his if he knew. You see, that would mean someone wanted to tell him that they got a new skin in Minecraft, or ask him if he wanted to ride bikes to the park or see if he’s allowed to see that Jason Bourne movie. It would mean that someone might be sneaking him a You Tube video he isn’t allowed to watch at home or asking him if he thought the new girl was cute.

It would mean that someone was thinking of him right at that very moment. It would mean he had value to people other than me and his dad.  It would mean he was growing up.

Before this whole parent thing came along and made me loopy with worry, I used to help families move their loved ones into nursing homes. One particular instance, I helped take inventory of a man’s belongings and I asked him to give me his wallet so I could start a resident account for him to keep his $10 bill safe. He refused and his wife asked to speak privately with me in the hall.

“I know he has no need for money here, but is there any way you can make an exception to let him keep it with him?”

I’m certain I did not handle the situation with sensitivity or understanding because she replied, ” We were never wealthy people but he was proud of the fact he always put food on the table or could hand his sons money when they needed something. That money in his pocket makes him feel like a man. And that, child, is all he has left to feel like one.”.

I let him keep the money and have contemplated since then what the last material thing I would hold on to would be and why.

I just didn’t realize that it would come earlier in life and be a random text message that was not meant for my child.

These things.  These little things that give us a perceived sense of value–that we anchor to other things and make them into something more.  Ultimately, the text itself was probably meaningless to A2.  He however does very much care about all those things that receiving a text implies.

Having a way to communicate with the world makes you a part of it and a rolling digital scroll of blue and white messages are like the receipt to prove it nowadays.  My friend’s daughter left her phone at home while she was at overnight camp and powered up when she returned home to 1022 unread text messages. I never did ask if she read them all.

I do know that A2 will never experience the betrayal that can come with adolescent friendships and are exacerbated by text messages.  No girlfriend break up text.  No secret texts between friends who are standing right there with him, exploiting his trust.  No anxiety over the three dots or “read” receipt.

No.  None of that.

While I am disappointed that Ryder misdialed and reached out to the wrong A2, just for a moment I thought about grounding A2 from his device because he knows he shouldn’t be texting so late.