Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part One)

"...the Holy Spirit overshadows me and sends angels to guard me."

Aleister Crowley - Diary of a Drug Fiend

Sometimes I sit out on the front porch in the evenings, waiting for Shane to get home and watching the neighbors as they come home from work.  They drive up the block slowly, carefully avoiding small children on bikes, strangers walking dogs, and mothers jogging half naked while pushing strollers with tires that look like they belong on small S.U.V.s.

These neighbors often drive right past my house and I can sometimes, for just a moment, catch a glimpse of their faces right before they're swallowed whole, one by one, by the garages that line our block, a row of car sized mouths that ensure no one need be bothered by actually seeing one another.

Their faces often carry the remnants of small worries, what happened at work maybe, or whether or not they have all the ingredients for the dinner they're planning, doubts about kids getting to Cub Scout meetings on time, rush hour traffic.  And I sometimes find myself envious.  Envious of them and their normal lives.  And envious of the people they so carefully avoid running over.

My children aren't the ones out front on bikes.  Cale still runs out into the street if I let them out front.  It's not every time, but it's still often enough.  He's almost five and he's never had any interest, whatsoever, in doing something appropriate like sitting on a bike.  He prefers, instead, to repeatedly try and get himself killed.  Or to start screaming suddenly for absolutely no reason at all, slapping himself as hard as he can in the face with his own hands, leaping into the air and throwing his body into the street, and pinching his own legs until bruises remain.  It's really quite the scene.  It leaves strangers staring and wondering what the hell I've done to my kid.
I'm experienced with this now though.  I have an emotional mommy shield six inches thick, specifically designed to ward off looks of judgment.

My son does this partly because he has no safety awareness.  That's the Autism in him at this point.  But he also does it because he can't communicate.  You know that annoying stage somewhere between 18mo. and two and a half years old when a child becomes frustrated because you don't know what they want?  ALL the time?  There's a reason it's called the terrible twos.  It's about lack of communication and the need to overcome it.  And the moment words finally come, the terrible twos seem to magically disappear.

With Cale, the lack of communication has never been overcome.  So the frustration grows - becomes uglier and uglier.  His tantrums may last for thirty seconds, or they may last for over an hour.  There's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it other than attempt to hold him down (which is incredibly fun while the neighbors are watching), and there's absolutely no way of predicting how long it will last.

These behaviors make hanging around out front, well, doing anything actually - camping, hiking, swimming, going to the park, the store, leaving the house at all, anything whatsoever, noisy.  And sometimes life threatening.  And, therefore, a bit of a drag.  So we stay in the back yard or in the house 99.9% of the time.

We don't have a dog.  We had one for a minute once, but it didn't work out with the kids.  And I haven't jogged in a long time.  I used to, although usually not half naked, but that was before Cale outgrew the stroller.  After that he proceeded to get us kicked out of every single gym within a five mile radius of our house.  Now I just sit on the front porch, trying to glimpse neighbors' faces, and feeling the fat cells multiply on my ass like some viscous yet benign cancer.

I sit on the porch a lot these days in my spare time, smoking cigarettes and waiting.  Waiting for the kids to come home from school, or for Shane to come home from work.  Waiting for the therapists to show up.  Waiting for them to make Cale talk or, at the very least, stop tantruming so that I can carry on with my life.  Waiting for my purpose to be something other than doing the dishes and acting as a shield between Cale's head and the floor as he attempts to hurt himself again.  Waiting for the motivation to fold another meaningless load of laundry.  Waiting for the paint to peel.  Waiting to live.

I feel like a coyote in a trap watching everyone else go happily by.  They worry about their dinners and their Cub Scout meetings.  And I quietly contemplate chewing my own leg off.

I was sitting on the porch this morning, waiting for my kids to come home from school, when I had a "moment of clarity."  I was smoking cigarette after cigarette after cigarette when I suddenly, and quite profoundly, thought of someone.  At the exact same time I just as suddenly, and just as profoundly, became keenly aware of the fact that I'm dying on this porch.  And I was able to remember something crucial.

After that I was able to recall several more crucial somethings, things that had been coming to me over the previous weeks but that I hadn't put altogether yet.  I'll get to these a little later though.  First I'd like to talk about this someone.  Well, several someones actually.  I'd like to talk about Reminders.

My dearest friend and I recently had a conversation about "Crazymakers," as Julia Cameron calls them in the Artist's Way.  Crazymakers, in an incredibly brief nut shell, are people who can cause me to forget my own truth.  Or rather, I should say, my reaction to them can cause me to forget my own truth.

Crazymakers' activities are, but are not limited to, showing me limits, doubts, and fear.  They cause unnecessary chaos in my life, try to get me to live by their agendas instead of my own, and try to make me believe that I can't, or shouldn't try to, do this or that.  They have logical and compelling arguments, a lot of times, that are specifically designed to stop me dead in my tracks.  For a full description go to p. 44 in the Artist's Way. 

A tiny, yet classic, example of a Crazymaker in my life is the psychiatrist's office, "Sorry ma'am.  There's absolutely no possible way we can get Cale in to see the psychiatrist, nor can you talk to the psychiatrist, until Cale's next scheduled appointment two weeks from now (no matter how hard, how often, or how suddenly he's slamming his head into the floor)."

In that moment I may really perceive this to be a dead stop, which can turn me, in my own mind, into a powerless mother who has no choice but to sit back and watch her son self-harm until the psychiatrist's office decides it's convenient enough to see us.  I become a victim.  Someone who has to watch her son suffer with nothing that I can do about it.

This is absolutely not the truth of course.  I'm a powerful mother.  Sure I may feel sorry for my son and myself for a little while that the psychiatrist I've chosen doesn't mind if my son cracks his skull.  But I don't let that stop me from moving forward in the situation.  I simply keep calling the psychiatrist's office multiple times a day, politely presenting detailed descriptions of my son's current behaviors.

I also called the state right away with the detailed descriptions of my son's current behaviors.  And they too started calling the psychiatrist's office multiple times a day.  The state even sent someone over to the psychiatrist's office to speak with them in person about the situation.  And the next step was going to be the state filing an official complaint against the psychiatrist's office.  Not surprisingly, the psychiatrist managed to find the time to get back to me relatively quickly. 

These people don't mean to be Crazymakers.  It isn't personal and they aren't bad.  They simply may not share my truth at that particular moment.  They have a different truth of their own perhaps, their own agenda to follow.

Learning about Crazymakers got me thinking about another character in the play that is this life of mine.  I'll call them Reminders.  These are the people who remind me of the truth about who I am.  They're the exact right persons at the exact right moments who just appear, as if by magic, to remind me, usually unknowingly, of something crucial.  

Now, I feel it important to point out several things.  The first is that I cannot necessarily choose whether I am being a Crazymaker or a Reminder in someone's life.  I can certainly be present, give a person my undivided attention, and really try to see their truth.  I can try to help.  I can be a good friend to them.  But I cannot possibly claim to know another person's truth.  Only they know about that.

I act as a Crazymaker in the lives of some people and as a Reminder in the lives of others.  I don't always get to know which role I'm fulfilling either.  If I try to be a Reminder for someone then I'm probably being their Crazymaker.  The best I can do is to live my own truth.  And my truth may then act as a reminder for someone else of their truth.

Second is that most people, in my relationships anyways, end up acting as Crazymakers at some times and Reminders at others.  Which brings me to my final point which is that I have a choice.  I can turn a Crazymaker into a Reminder.  It's not near as much fun as encountering Reminders that don't make me crazy, but it is possible.  I'll use the psychiatrist's office again as an example.  They tried to teach me that I was powerless in the situation.  But I learned about the power that I did have in the situation instead.  

It's not easy turning Crazymakers into Reminders.  It often requires learning about who I am in relationship to things.  Things like power, fear, faith, the nature of my own truth, the nature of someone else's, just to name.  And the Crazymaker may absolutely resist me as I turn them into a Reminder.  They may threaten to remove their love or approval as I draw that big fat line in the sand.  But sometimes, especially if I can snip away at my attachment to what others think of me, Crazymakers make very good Reminders.

Cale's Autism, if you haven't put this together already, is my single biggest Crazymaker.  But I still have hope that it might, one day, become my ultimate Reminder.  I suppose it will all depend on what I'm willing to learn about myself in relationship to the Autism, and what I'm willing to do with that information.  And this brings me to the those crucial somethings I spoke about earlier.

I'd like to tell you three of my Reminder stories.  I'd like to tell these stories mainly because story telling is funner and more productive than sitting on the porch.  But also because each of these stories contains a powerful truth for me.  These are truths I've used my whole life.  And I'm finding myself drawing on their power again now.

 Reminder Story #1 - Guardian Angel
(It's safe to move forward.)

My very first Reminder was a boy on a dirt bike.  This is my smallest, most precious, and most succulent Reminder story.  It's also my least profound and most boring but that, I think, is what makes it so gorgeous.  It was so mysterious to me for so many years, but then turned out not to be so mysterious after all.  I love that about it because I'm one that would take an ounce of reality over an ocean of mystery any day.

When I was a little girl, four years old to be exact, I used to walk about three blocks home from kindergarten every day.  I rather enjoyed these walks until, one day, this little girl in my class started telling me graphic and horrible stories about kidnappers who liked to steal and hurt little girls.  She told me she'd seen them in the neighborhood and that I'd better be careful walking home from school in the afternoons.  Naturally I became terrified of walking home alone.

One day, I only made it half a block before my anxiety reached such heights that I couldn't go any further.  I turned around and ran, as fast as I could, all the way back to the school and into my kindergarten classroom.  Sobbing, I explained to my teacher that I needed my mom to come and pick me up.

My kindergarten teacher was this young, beautiful woman with long, dark hair that draped down to the bottom of her back.  She had soft eyes and an unusually kind face.  She got married that year and changed her name, which confused us all a little.  All year long, whenever someone called her by her maiden name, she gently corrected them with her married name.  She was also allergic to dandelions and would sneeze when I would bring her a bouquet of them the size of my head.  Just sayin'.

She talked to me softly that day.  Then she took me by the hand and walked me out to the street.  She knew the neighborhood was perfectly safe (this was thirty two years ago by the way) and I think she wanted me to face my fear.  She told me she'd stand there and watch until I made it up the block and around the corner.  That way I'd only have two blocks left to go.  I started walking and every three steps or so would stop and turn around to see if she was still watching.  She stood there and watched the whole time it took me to get up the block like she promised.  Then I went around the corner.

Realizing I was alone again, I got scared.  Very scared.  I started hiding behind bushes every time a car drove by, not knowing if the drivers were out looking for little girls to steal and hurt.  Pretty soon I began to shake uncontrollably under the weight of the knowledge that I was very, very small, so I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and began to cry.  Then, just before I turned around to run back to the school again, this big boy on a dirt bike flew out of an alley, spraying the sidewalk with gravel and skidding to a stop right in front of me.  He wore a baseball cap and was absolutely gorgeous.   

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," I said back.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

I told him where I lived and he said, "Come on, I'll take you home."

I was speechless as we walked.  He acted like this was a bit of a chore for him, yet he was doing it anyway.  I stared at him all the way to my house, didn't take my eyes off him one time.  I couldn't figure out why a big boy like him was being so nice to a little girl like me.  I had never had any big boys be nice to me before.  But there he was.  He may as well have sprouted wings because I actually thought, with my four year old mind, that he was a guardian angel.  "What grade are you in?" I asked him.

"Third," he answered, "Is this your house?"

"Uh huh... thanks," I said.

Then he sped away as fast as he could on his bike.  I didn't catch his name.  And I don't remember ever seeing him around the school again.

Throughout elementary school, whenever I thought of this incident, I remained perplexed as to why a third grade boy would stop and be kind to a little kindergarten girl.  I thought for sure that he couldn't have been a boy at all.  He had to have been a angel, sent by God to deliver the truth It's safe to move forward.  I went around for several years telling the other little girls at school not to be afraid to keep going.  "When I got scared," I would say, "God sent an angel on a dirt bike to help me keep going."  And eventually, when I got older, I filed the incident tenderly in my mind under Miracles.  

Years and years later, when I was in my early twenties, I made a terrible decision one night.  I'd been ditched by my friend at the bar (no doubt because she wanted to go home and I wanted to keep drinking).  Then I met some guys who invited me to an after hours house party.   "Sure, I'll go!" I answered, my blond curls especially thick and seeping disastrously into my brain.

I had been drinking, obviously, and any wise judgment I may have otherwise had had melted like cheesecake on a radiator.  If you've never put cheesecake on a radiator, try it.  It's funny.  So I got into a strange car with a strange group of guys and off we all went to this house party.  As we were driving through what seemed to me like the middle of nowhere, I suddenly became profoundly aware of how incredibly stupid this was.  I got a very bad feeling and started getting scared, but I didn't want to say anything just in case I was having nothing more than an irrational overreaction.

When we got to the party, everyone was getting sloppy drunk and there wasn't one other girl anywhere.  I did not feel safe and I could foresee a thousand possibilities, none of which boded well for me.  "How could I be so stupid?" I thought to myself, "And what the hell do I do now?"

I knew that I was a very long ways from where I lived.  It was winter, freezing outside, and it was the middle of the night.  So I was afraid to leave.  I didn't have any money for a cab, didn't have any friends I could call, and certainly didn't have the courage to ask one of these strange guys for a ride home.

I felt like crying.  I wanted desperately to go home.  I sat down on the couch and started to shake.  And that's when I remembered, vividly, all about feeling very, very small.  I'm not kidding you when I say that that is the thought that was interrupted by his voice.

"Hi," this gorgeous creature on the couch next to me said.

"Hi," I said back.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Jessica," I answered.

"And where are you from Jessica?" he asked.

I told him where I was from and politely asked him where he was from.  We started talking and quickly discovered that we were both born and raised in the same town (the one we were both still in) and that we'd gone to the same elementary school.  However, since he was older than I, and we'd therefore never been in class together, we quickly gave up on trying to figure out if we'd ever met before.  But we talked for a long time about the school and the neighborhood it was in.

He told me he spent his entire childhood riding dirt bikes with his buddies through all the alleys in that neighborhood.  He reminisced about popping wheelies and creating make shift jumps out of plywood and concrete blocks.  Nope.  Still didn't make the connection.  But then I proceeded to tell him about my kindergarten teacher, no doubt because feeling small was still fresh on my mind, and he said, "Oh wow!  I had her for kindergarten too!  Only her name was different when I had her.  She got married and changed her name the year I was in third grade."

I stopped and stared at him.  "That's the year I had her for kindergarten," I said, "So you were in third grade the year I was in kindergarten?"

"Yeah.  I remember that year clearly.  Oh I was so bummed when she got married," he continued, laughing rather nostalgically, "I had the biggest crush on her.  She was really beautiful wasn't she?"

"Yes she was," I replied, "So... did you... well... do you remember ever walking one of her little kindergarten girls home from school one day?"

"Oh yeah," he answered, rolling his eyes, "She had me walk hundreds of her little kindergartners home from school over the years.  And I did it every time she asked.  Like I said, I had the biggest crush on her."

I kept on staring at him.  Then, "I thought you were an angel," actually slipped out of my mouth.

I might've been more disappointed that my angel story had been a sham had I not desperately needed to remember that particular truth at that particular moment.  I also realized that my kindergarten teacher may, in fact, have wanted me to face my fear, but that she hadn't just sent me to do it all alone.  And this healed a little something somehow.

So he wasn't an angel.  But, as it turns out, "a regular boy on a dirt bike" works just as well for me.  I remembered that I could move forward.  I didn't have to stay at that party.  I could call my dad if I absolutely had to.  There's always a way.  But by then, of course, I wanted to stay for just a little longer.  I kept on staring at this guy, my eyes filling uncontrollably up with tears.

He looked me in the eyes for a long time.  Then he smiled.  I wanted to hug him.  I wanted to do more than that to him actually.  A lot more.  I wanted to keep going forward!  He considered letting me too, for a little while.  He enjoyed being a momentary hero I think.  But, ultimately, he decided to honor himself, and the girlfriend he confessed to having, so we didn't.  Instead, he offered to take me home.  Again.

Whew.  I'll tell my next Reminder story tomorrow.  For now I have to sleep.

Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part Two)

"He wanted to be an analyst.  I said to him, "Do you know what that means?  It means that you must first learn to know yourself.  You yourself are the instrument.""
Carl Jung - Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Ever since I found out about Isabel and Cale's Autism, I've wondered why in the hell I ever went to college.  I spent a lot of money on college.  And if God's plan was for me to be a stay-at-home mom - to do the dishes six hundred and fifty thousand times each day, try to mother three children, and be required to participate in a multitude of never ending therapies for Isabel and Cale for the rest of my life - then why on earth did I waste all that time, and all that money, getting an education that I'd never be able to use?  It's been a serious sore spot in my relationship with God for several years now.

About three weeks ago, I had to rearrange some book shelves to make room for Cale's therapy tools.  In order to do so, I had to move all of my old college text books into one location.  I got them all lined up in two perfect rows and then sat down, feeling satisfied that I completed my chore, and began reading their titles.  It had been a very long time.

Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Problems, Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence, Theories of Developmental Psychology, Human Behavior, The Nature of The Child, Interpersonal Communication, Sensation and Perception (no shit), Learning and Behavior, Educating Exceptional Children, Exceptional Lives - Special Education in Today's Schools, Psychology of Learning and Instruction, Educational Psychology, just to name a few. 

I sat there in absolute shock.
 
I have the foundation, just about, for a career in ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis).  ABA is what's been missing for my kids, the thing I've been searching all over the city desperately for (with seriously varying luck I might add, but which got me learning about the education requirements for an ABA therapist/educator).  "So why," I thought, "don't I just finish up my education so that I can use ABA with my kids myself?  Plus, then I'd be able to use it to go back to work once Cale's in school all day next year."

What this means for me, basically, is going into the therapeutic education of children with Autism.  This would serve my own children for the rest of their childhoods and probably beyond.  I also might be able to participate, some day, in getting ABA into the public schools.  Because the public schools need ABA training for students with Autism worse than people in Hell need ice water.  That's just my own opinion of course.

The more I thought about this over the next few days, the more it sunk in that God, in spite of me, had been preparing me for my children for years before I actually had them.  All I need to do is finish it up.  Since I already have a B.A. in Psychology and a Master's degree in Education, it would only take me about a year. 

To be this close to it, however, seized me instantly with fear.  Not so much the heart pumping, sweat pouring down the sides of my face, unable to move kind of fear.  And not even so much the procrastinating type, the can't call because I'm paralyzed on the front porch kind... wait a minute.  Huh.   

Seeing that I was paralyzed, and because she was looking into the program for herself, my hab. worker brought me the paperwork on ASU's Autism/ABA programs.  She handed it right to me.  The next brick in my road could not have been more clear.  But, I began coming up with excuses about why I couldn't do it, the old gas tank that is this head of mine fueling itself up for a clean get away.

"I've been a stay-at-home mom for a long time now.  And I've let my teaching license expire.  They probably would never let me into the program."  But, actually, that's not it.  "I'm getting a little old to be stepping back into college again."  But, actually, that's not it either.  "I wouldn't be able to leave my kids long enough to attend classes every day.  Scheduling it in would never work."  But, that's not it either.  "Where would I come up with the money for such an endeavor?  Can I really justify stealing time and money away from my already strapped family for my own personal gain?  And then what if I failed?  What a waste it would be."  All of this is bullshit of course.

"Why am I afraid?" is the only real question here.  And most of the time, I can't figure out the answer to that question with my brain.  I have to look back, again, at my actual experiences for the answer.  So I did.  And I came upon an old hurt, which surprised me a little.  And in facing this old hurt, I remembered a tired and incredibly typical old truth.

 Reminder Story #2 - Becoming Something Different

(When one door closes, another will open - if I let it.)

My education was a total fluke.  I never knew what I was interested in, nor did I ever have any idea what I wanted to be when I got done with it.  But I absolutely loved college.  My idea of heaven on earth was a college classroom.  So I just kept randomly picking classes that I thought looked interesting.

When I finally had to graduate, I'd put together enough psychology classes and enough art classes to get B.A.s in both in Psychology and Art.  Then I went to work as a counselor in a group home for about a year before I just had to get back to my preferred environment.  So I went back to the college, opened the catalog to some random page, which Master's Degree in Education just happened to be on, and thought, "That'll do."  Then I went on to get a Master's Degree in Education without any actual interest in becoming a teacher.

In an eventual attempt to use all this education of mine, I became an Art teacher at an alternative high school in my home town.  "Alternative" meaning that most of my students had been kicked out of the regular high schools.  It was hard for me at first.  Soon after I started, Shane asked me if I liked it.  I told him that I loved it.  I loved my classroom with the old black and green checkered linoleum floors, the smell of charcoal, paint, and rubber cement, the sun pouring into the windows in the afternoons, the ability to make art every day.  "I absolutely adore it," I said to him, "I just wish I didn't have to have all these kids in my room all the time."

I very quickly, and quite dramatically, grew to adore my students.  But in order to bring that about, I first had to change my thinking a bit.  You see, I'd always had a huge passion for Art history.  And I'd always just assumed that others felt the same.  So I started out the year delivering long, heady lectures about one hundred year old, dead, french painters.  I jumped around the room, wide-eyed, discussing them as if my current life depended on it.  Then I assigned essays to see if my students were actually listening.  They weren't.

I genuinely couldn't understand why my students seemed more interested in huffing the rubber cement than in learning about Matisse.  But I knew that many of them didn't have the easiest of lives and I could understand the need to escape into rubber cement (amongst other) highs.  What became clear to me right away was that my students needed people in their lives that they could trust.  People who loved them.

Providing entire groups of kids with love that they can trust, all at the same time, and throughout each and every day, requires structure.  A lot of structure.  And providing structure to that extent exhausts a person like me.  I dumped all of my energy into it, sunk deep down into the furthest depths of my reserves, to access the strength to provide that kind of structure.  Because whether or not my students felt loved depended on it.  I got very, very clear about the expectations in my classroom.  And this helped things a lot. 

The other thing I had to do was to distract them from the rubber cement.  I had to make Matisse meaningful somehow.  Fun.  Fun for them, not me.  So I created projects that I thought might interest them.  And, as it turned out, cutting out giant chunks of cardboard, painting them, and then creating individual wall sculptures, which we later glued all together into one, giant wall sculpture and hung in the school's main hall, was much more interesting for them than listening to lectures.  In fact it made their own Art larger than life.

For weeks I watched my students stand in the main hall with their friends, pointing out their part in the giant, unified sculpture.  They told their friends and the other teachers all about Matisse, how we'd made the sculpture exactly, and that they thought the sculpture should stay in that spot forever.  Our principal agreed completely.  So the card board, large appliance boxes that several of my students had rummaged alleyways to find, were transformed into something that had a permanent place on our school's wall.

Many of these kids had never actually done anything like this before.  Watching their genuine awe through the whole process made me feel kind of sad for them, but incredibly proud of them at the same time.  And that's when I realized that my students, not Art history, had become my passion.   

Money was always tight in the school district we were in and one day, in an attempt to spot places they could cut spending, the school board began looking into closing down our school.  We, the staff and students of our school, responded with a polite fight.  We all went to board meeting after board meeting after board meeting after board meeting, attempting to persuade the board to keep our doors open.  We had to evaluate and specify every detail of our program.  We had to demonstrate, clearly, the value of our students, the value of our staff, and the value of our school for the future of our community.  It was such an eye opening and magnificent experience to do this. 

I watched my students, the ones who'd started the previous year huffing rubber cement (and doing meth) show up, repeatedly, to these board meetings with purpose, and intent - bright eyed, dressed up, and there to share their experiences about how the school was their home, about how it was changing their lives to get a second chance.  "Please don't give up on us," came politely and calmly out of their mouths.

My students were present the day the other students came to a board meeting, ONE board meeting, and presented their arguments about why they should get the school district's money instead.  Some of these were my husband's old students, although he no longer lays any claim to them.

These were incredibly bright kids with ridiculously articulate mouths.  They were clearly the Honor roll batch - fresh hair cuts, clean clothes, gifted, snooty - debate team types, from wealthy families, who'd probably never seen one single real problem in the entire course of their young lives, ones who seemed to believe that elitism is still the wave of the future as opposed to that flat, dead thing in the past (whew - still a little bitter I guess).

They showed up, laid out their arguments, and then one of them finished with this, "We don't do drugs (like hell they don't) and we don't get kicked out of school.  We get excellent grades, we will succeed in life, and WE are the future tax payers in this community.  Invest in us.  We should not be deprived of the opportunities to run our extracurricular activities." 

The shock of it ran all the way down my back, through my legs, and hit the tips of my toes with a thud.  Those words - so perfectly articulated, so beautifully laid out by debate team standards, so thoroughly and sincerely brutal - stay in my memory to this very day, clear blocks of ice left standing on my brain.   

In the end, the school board did decide to close down our school.  But they, at least, let us finish out the school year.  During the last weeks of school, I didn't provide a drop of structure.  Not one.  I told my students they could do whatever they liked in my class.  Yet they remained absolute angels.

One of my students came to my desk one day, during these last weeks, and asked me, "What should I do today Mrs. Spears?"

"You can do whatever you'd like sweetie.  You can draw or paint or doodle.  Whatever you want," I told him.

"Wow.  They're really going to close down the school aren't they?" he asked.

I stopped what I was doing and turned around to look him in the eyes.  "Yes, they are," I replied, "But you are going to be just fine in the regular high school next year."

He looked down at the papers on my desk and said, "But I didn't make it in the regular high school before."

"You were younger then," I said, "And you're more grown up now.  Just show up.  And try.  And doors will open for you.  You can succeed.  I know it.  You'll be okay."

"But Mrs. Spears?" asked this big, tough, sixteen year old boy, with tears filling his eyes, "What if we never see you again?"

I can't count how many identical conversations I had during the following weeks.  And, shockingly, I didn't tell him, nor any other student, to round up some buddies, find some debate team kids, and kick some future-tax-paying ass.  It would've been unprofessional of me.  Instead I told him, and every one of my other students, that he would always be able to call me, or any of the other teachers, any time he ever needed help with anything.  But you know how that goes.  Kids like these don't call.

The whole thing broke my heart at depths I didn't know existed in me, and left an awful taste in my mouth for any future public school teaching.  I politely declined applying for other available Art teaching positions in the district.  By then, Shane had been accepted at Thunderbird anyway.  And a month after school got out, we moved to Phoenix so he could begin work on his M.B.A.  I never, one time, looked for teaching jobs in Phoenix.  That door, for me, had closed.  I never wanted to be a teacher again.

They didn't just close down my old school.  They demolished it.  And turned it into something altogether and completely different.  Now it's a Walgreens.  And I'm a stay-at-home mom.

Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part Three)

"I felt that I was home.  Back on my old campus, I felt free to teach in a way that I had never before.  I felt a freedom... "

Caroline Myss - Entering The Castle

Several of Cale's therapists, as well as the staff in his classroom at school, are beginning to give up on Cale talking.  They're talking about teaching him to use sign language or some mechanical device, "We have to be realistic," they say.  They don't call it "giving up" of course.  They call it "adjusting our expectations."  These words look so steady on the screen.  So stiff.  I'm afraid you can't tell their meaning by reading them - you can't see that they're shaking.

Each time we take a step down on the "Autism" latter - another rung away from "might be able to function normally some day" - the corners of my eyes turn down again.  I worry sometimes they might stay that way permanently.  I wish I could describe this kind of sadness.  I somehow think that describing it would give me release from it.  But it wouldn't.  It would take me further into it.  Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to give adequate words to strong, negative feelings?  I think that's why.  We're not supposed to stay in them.

It has been wonderful, and vital, at this particular time in my life, for me to have a brand new focus.  Something to excite me again. 

I went to an information session at Arizona State University and learned about three different programs.  My husband came with me for support, God bless him.  I won't bore you with the details of each program but, in a nut shell, I have two basic choices. 

One choice is to tack an Autism/ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) focus onto my existing Master's degree.  This program has an education focus, would take me about a year to complete and, when done, I'd know just enough ABA to work as an ABA therapist/educator - either privately, through Autism centers, or in the schools.  It would mean working directly with children with Autism all day every day.  And, with just a little additional education, I could also do FBA's (Functional Behavior Analysis) and put together BIP's (Behavior Intervention Plans) for special needs students in the public schools.    

The other choice is to try for a doctorate in Applied Behavioral Analysis (I'd have to go to a different school for this one).  This program has more of a psychology focus, would take a lot longer to complete, obviously, but when done, I'd be able to teach Applied Behavioral Analysis to Master's level students of ABA - therapists, educators, etc.  I could become a professor.       

I decided immediately on the first choice.  All the classes are on-line (it's not actually offered at any of the campuses) which means I'll still get to be at my house twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, to be a mother/therapy assistant for my children.  This option is the fastest, easiest, and most effective way for me to learn just enough ABA that I can help my kids with it which, after all, is the whole point.

While we were walking through the campus on the way in to this information session, it didn't surprise me that I felt completely comfortable with the experience of being at a college again.  But it did surprise me that by the time the session was over, and we'd gotten back outside again after having spent just one, short, glorious hour in a college classroom, I was thoroughly and incandescently intoxicated by it.

As we made our way back out to the van, walking past all the familiar and never-changing things about college campuses - green, leafy trees, brick buildings, young students trying to study, baked, at picnic tables - I felt like I'd come home.  I wanted to kiss things - the sidewalks, the bricks, the text books carried roughly in the arms of strange looking hippies, the strange looking hippies.

It had literally been years since I'd been on a college campus, and it filled places in me that I'd quite forgotten existed.  I didn't just breathe it in.  I sucked it in.  Desperately.  Devoured it.  And then tried to hang on as it slowly faded away into my stinky, crumb-filled minivan.

    

My husband had been yacking at me all the way to the van.  And once we'd gotten in and gotten settled down, he started up again straight away, "I don't understand why you don't want to go for the doctorate."

"I can think about that later," I said to him, "Tacking the Autism/ABA training onto my Master's degree is what will help our kids the fastest.  It seems to me to be the next brick in the road.  But you're wanting me to jump three bricks ahead.  One thing at a time, please?"

"But what if these classes won't apply towards a doctorate?" he couldn't drop it.

"Then if you decide you want a doctorate later on, these classes will have been a waste of time,"  he continued, answering his own question. 

It was a gorgeous evening, so we decided to stop on Mill Avenue for a quick dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant before beginning the drive back home.  We sat down at a table outside, ordered, and then continued our conversation.

"Before I can teach others how to do ABA therapy, I first will have had to have done it, and probably for a very long time, don't you think?" I asked him, "I need experience before I can look into a doctorate."   

"Jess," he said, "We have two Autistic children.  There's no way you're not going to have done it.  You already have more experience with it then you ever thought you'd have.  Any doctoral program is going to take that into account.  You have a serious advantage that way.  Besides, you're not going to get through any doctoral program, believe me, without having the exact right experience required for that degree."

I sipped on my Coke, the hamsters in my head hopping onto their little wheel.  "Maybe some day in the far, distant future," I thought to myself (I didn't say it out loud cuz I didn't want him to think he was winning), " I really could spend my days on a college campus teaching ABA.  There would be time spent other places too of course - therapy centers, training centers, and schools - but that's okay.  Maybe all the years of work - the never ending therapies, the constant screaming, the kids' self-harming, the hours and hours of pain-staking repetition required to teach my son any one single thing (to no avail half the time) - won't have been for nothing.  Maybe, some day, my reward for it all could really be to teach others about this stuff, at the college level!"

I'd never had a thicker, sweeter, wetter (hee hee), dreamy-er dream ever once in my whole, entire life.

Shane's voice brought me back into the present moment.  I suddenly remembered where I was and the dirty house I'd be going home to after we ate.  Shane was talking again, "It's not a sequence of events, "bricks in a road" as you put it, that we're talking about here.  It's about choosing one of two different directions.  And you're talking about going one direction, later backtracking, and then going the other."

 Do you see what I live with?  He was a debate coach for years.

"Oh, I see," I said, "Because one has an education focus and the other has a psych. focus?" I asked.

"Uh huh, " he said, "It's about what you want to do.  Let me ask you this first.  Do you really think that ABA is the end-all be-all for Cale?"

"No I don't," I answered.

"So let's say that we knew ABA would never help Cale.  Would you still want to make a career out of it?" he asked.

This is a question I was prepared for because I'd been asking myself this question again and again for over two weeks.

"Yes.  I'm fascinated by it is why.  And the more ABA I do with our kids, the more fascinated I become even though the actual results have varied so much.  It not only teaches them how to communicate more effectively with me, but it forces me to look at how I'm communicating with them.  It may never get Cale to actually talk, which breaks my heart, but it gives me a way to keep on trying.  To never give up."

Do you remember that movie Lorenzo's Oil?  In the movie, one can clearly see the purpose of the son's illness.  It was so the father could find the cure - not, in the end, in time to save his own son, to keep him from becoming severely disabled - but for the future of other children with Lorenzo's disease.  Now, I'm not saying I think I'm going to find some cure for Autism, or even that I think there is a cure for Autism.  That precedes a whole round of debate of which I am not willing to be a part.  I will say this though.  It's awfully insulting to a parent whose worked their ass off for their kids, to hear they've failed somehow because they didn't cure their kids of Autism.  But that's all I'll say about that.

I'm also not saying I think ABA is some sort of end-all be-all for children with Autism.  Obviously.  All I'm saying is that I have to hope that there's a bigger purpose for my childrens' Autism than their own future.  And there might not be.  I don't know.  I do tend to be a hell of a dreamer.        

"It's like our kids are my own, personal teachers," I continued telling Shane, "It gives their Autism a purpose, somehow.  And I need it to have a purpose.  Do I think it's the end-all be-all for them?  No.  Nothing is.  But I do think it's one (of many) of the things that might help them," I answered, "Plus, it comes easily to me and I enjoy it a great deal."  

"So then the question becomes," he continued, "What is it that you want to do with it?  Because one focus is designed, specifically, to set you up to work directly with kids with Autism forever.  The other is much more extensive in regards to the knowledge itself, will still give you experience working directly with kids with Autism for awhile, but is designed to, in the end, set you up to teach others that knowledge.  So the question boils down to this.  Do you really want to work, directly, with kids with Autism all day every day for the rest of your life?  Honestly?  Is that what you want to do?"

"No," I didn't hesitate for one second.

And I'll tell you why.  Because Autism lives in my house.  It's there to deal with first thing when I wake up in the mornings, while I brush my teeth, while I pee, while I wash my hands.  It often tries to get into the shower with me.  It's there to deal with while I get dressed, brush my hair, find my shoes, etc.  It's there to deal with all morning, all afternoon, and into every day's end.

If I dealt with it for a living, I'd do it all day every day Monday - Friday.  Then I'd have to keep doing it after I got home from work, each and every single day, no matter how ready for a break I was.  I'd do it all weekend too.  I'd never get a break from dealing with Autism.  Ever.  As it is now I can send it to school for a couple hours each day.  But other than that I eat with it, sleep with it, breath it, hope it doesn't start slamming Cale's head into things at the grocery store.  It's part of my every waking moment, and it fills my dreams at night.  It's always there - Right there.  My husband was on to something here.

"Okay," he said, "Then let me ask you this.  If you could do anything in the entire world that you wanted to do, what would it be?"

"I'd help our kids.  And I wouldn't mind doing ABA with other kids with Autism too, but I wouldn't want to have to do it forever.  Because, frankly, I foresee the possibility of quick burn out," I answered.

"Oh, Hell yeah," he said, "But that didn't answer my question.  I'll ask in another way.  If you could do anything in the entire world that you wanted to do, for you, what would it be?"

"Anything?" I asked, "Well, if things didn't depend on time, money, our kids, or anything else, then I would like to learn every possible thing there is to know about ABA.  I wouldn't learn just enough to help our kids.  I'd learn everything about it.  In fact, I'd become the world's leading expert on it.  It's sooo cool Shane... "

Then I went on talking incessantly about all the fascinating and wondrous things I've already learned about ABA, during which he tried to look interested.  He rested his elbow on the table, his face in his hand.  He listened for a long while.  Then he started nodding off... just.. about to.. fall... asleep, when our food came.  He was up with a start.  Apparently ABA isn't as interesting to him as it is to me.

The lamb was good, the pita bread was warm, but there wasn't enough hummus.  In fact, it was the tiniest glop of hummus I'd ever seen in my entire life.  It barely covered one piece of bread.  After I got done bitching about the hummus, I asked him what he thought I should do. 

"You should get a doctorate," came flying out of his mouth.

"I can't do that right now," I said, "It would take too long."

"Why not?" he asked, "It seems pretty clear to me what you want.  And besides, what's the hurry?  So it takes you five years?  Or ten?  Who cares?  There's just no hurry."

I looked at him.  He leaned forward, his beautiful face hanging just over the world's tiniest glop of hummus, and looked me straight in the eyes.  Then he asked me very gently, "Why would you think that you couldn't just do what you want to do?" he asked, "Why would you think you had to settle?"

I stared into my husbands eyes.  I love my husband's eyes.  They're the most magnificent set of eyes I've ever seen.  They're dark green - like my favorite pair of khaki's.  And their love has surrounded me through the years, a warm, familiar blanket during the colder times in this life of ours.  Right then, staring into his eyes, I remembered something crucial.  I remembered that I didn't settle when it came to choosing him.

I'll tell my "Broken Picker" story tomorrow.  Off to bed.

Journey off the Porch - Series of Four (Part Four)

Reminder Story #3

(Why would you think you had to settle?)

When I was little, my Grandpa once told someone, "The sun rises and sets on Baby Jessie, in my eyes."

They used to call me Baby Jessie - a nickname coined by my very first friend, a boy I grew up with named Tony.  Tony's mom and my mom were friends from church.  He was a year or so older than I and we used to crawl around on the floor and eat crackers together when we were babies.  Hence, "Baby Jessie" - a nickname that stuck well past the years I would've liked it to.

This name later shortened ("Baby Jessie" was pretty long to say) to just "Baby" a lot of the time, which was fine until about junior high-school (if his little sisters are reading this they're surely saying, "What?!  Junior High!  You started trying to nip that in the ass at eight years old!!").  Okay I did try to stop it earlier, but I was wishy-washy about it so it never really worked.  But by the time I had a teen-aged boy calling me, a teen-aged girl, "Baby," I doubled my efforts at nipping it in the ass.

Setting aside any condescension this nickname might imply, Tony was incredibly kind to me.  His intention was never to be condescending.  Instead, there was a little secret specialness to the name - a little reminder of how long we'd known each other.  What made it hard to let go of, for me, was the feeling that had grown between us over the years (which was the kind one might have for a sibling).  And what made it hard to let go of, for him, was simply that he struggled to see me as a big girl even after I'd grown into one.  So when I finally demanded that he stop, he had a terrible time of it - genuinely struggled to get the "Baby" out of his head.  After all, he'd called me that his whole life.  But I kept reminding him and kept reminding him, "Damn it Tony, it's Jessica.  Call me Jessica will you?  I'm a big girl now."

This is one of those odd things that I'd take back if I could.  Tony was killed in an accident when I was in college, leaving behind a whole host of people who absolutely adored him.  And I wish I'd never gotten after him.  I wish I'd let him call me whatever he wanted.  The things that seem like such a big deal sometimes just really aren't.  

My entire life I've had these incredible men (and boys) around me.  These people have adorned my childhood and beyond - a present and loving father, my brother who was my only sibling and best friend, uncles, cousins, friends, Tony, and the grandpa in whose eyes the sun rose and set on me (I was his only grand-daughter).  I've always watched, fascinated, the ways in which they've handled themselves in the world.  And the ways in which they've treated others.  It was directly from them, in fact, that I learned early on how to pick the men from the boys - metaphorically speaking.   

My grandpa used to clip me fat, pink and red roses from his garden.  Then we'd go for walks, me carrying around bouquets the size of my head - with gloves on of course, "Baby Jessie" mustn't get sliced by a rose thorn."  They're almost disgustingly romantic.  But they're memories I wouldn't trade for a million dollars a piece.     

One year when I was very little, he bought me a kitchen set for Christmas complete with miniature sink, refrigerator, and stove/oven combo.  The kitchen didn't come with a cupboard/counter top, which I, a spoiled rotten brat, immediately pointed out, "Where will I put my dishes?  And where will I prepare my pretend food?"  My grandpa went into the garage and, by the end of that week, produced a little cupboard with real counter-top on top, salvaged from their real kitchen remodel.  The unit even had a tiny, little drawer for my plastic silverware.  "You're absolutely right," he said, "No kitchen is complete without a counter top and a cupboard."

Now, my grandpa wasn't made of money.  He was orphaned at an extremely early age and was never given any advantage with which to succeed.  However, he was smart.  And he worked hard.  So by the time I came along and ever wanted for something, he managed to get it for me (even if it meant he had to make it himself). 

One day, and I can't remember how old I was, my grandpa laughingly said to me, "Jessie.  You're going to need to marry someone who is rich.  You can always learn to love them."

I thought that was terrible.  Not only that but it also, taken literally, made absolutely no sense.  He wasn't rich and my grandma, who owned her own business for over twenty years, loved him more than all of life itself.  And he loved her double that.  So sometime later, during my high-school years if I remember right, I asked him exactly what he had meant when he said that.  

He said he meant that I'd always had high expectations (and that he hoped he'd had something to do with that).  And it was his opinion that I should continue to have high expectations, especially of any potential husband.

"Find a man who wants to provide for his family, who wants to give you all the things you want in life.  It's not everything, and it's not always even possible in this day and age to provide for a family or give them everything they want.  But find someone who wants to.  Because that's the mark of a real man," he said.

I told him I thought that was a little old-fashioned.  So, just to make sure that I could buy my own kitchens in the future, my grandpa later paid my way through college.  He said this was specifically so that I'd never have to rely on someone besides myself to meet my expectations.  But I thought it was really because he thought I had a broken picker. 

What the hell is a picker, you ask?  It's the thing I picked my boyfriends with.  I stole the term from some friends of mine:)  And I thought it was broken too.  For awhile.  

When I started out to find the "perfect him," I happened to be intensely attracted to boys that treated girls like garbage.  Or at least that's what I thought at the time.  But what was really happening, I realized much later, was that I was simply in high-school.  And the boys I dated, well... they were in high-school too.

When I was a high-school teacher a few years ago, I remember telling the girls not to have high expectations of the boys in regards to relationships, "You don't understand honey, he's in HIGH SCHOOL.  Boys at that age have one, and only one, priority with girls.  It's got to be the only reason they're willing to put up with high-school girls at all.  It doesn't mean they're bad.  It means they're young." 

But when I was in the situation myself, it didn't feel like a simple matter of timing.  It felt like the slow decline of a drug addiction.  I started out with high expectations, but then I seemed to lower my standards little by little.  I crossed one line after another - "I'll never date someone with a mohawk."  But I couldn't resist.  He was beautiful.  "I'll never date someone with a leather jacket."  But he's gorgeous.  "Okay, I'll never date someone with chains hanging off the leather jacket."  Hmmm.  "I'll never date someone who does drugs."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who does those drugs." "I'll never date someone who cheats on me."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who cheats on me twice."  "Okay, I'll never date someone who cheats on me three times."  And on down it went from there.

I thought I was attracted to boys that were, well... bad.  But they weren't really "bad."  They were mostly just "boys."  And every now and then Tony would ask me where one of them lived and tell me the guy might mysteriously end up a bloody smear on the sidewalk somewhere.  I would never tell him where anyone lived.  I'd poo-poo him instead, "It's my own fault.  I picked the guy.  But from now on, I'm only going to date nice guys.  Guys like you."

Then I'd grab the very next loser that came along and make him mine. 

By the time I was sixteen, I'd gotten sick of high school guys and found a whole new solution.  College guys.  "These are MEN," I thought.  However, as it turns out, college guys that date sixteen year old girls aren't men either.  And by the time I was in college myself, I thought I'd completely lost the ability to differentiate.  It's the only reason I could come up with how I ended up with this guy:

"You've thrown up on your pants again.  Did you steal money out of my account again?  What do you mean you lied about getting that job?  You can't pay any rent again?  You don't care that you cheated on me?  You don't care that I cheated on you?  No job?  No car?  No hopes or dreams?  You're still so baked at twenty five years old you can't get off the couch?"

I had sought excitement and found only boredom.  I had hoped for intimacy and felt only hurt.  I had pushed for closeness to the point of extreme distance.  I had looked for men and found only boys.  I wanted a "soul mate" more than anything else, and I had searched to the exclusion of anything real or worthwhile.  I had lost myself somewhere in the process of seeking the "perfect him."  I had completely forgotten that I used to hold roses with gloves on.  

About this time I'd been driving up to someplace to see a friend of mine from a summer camp that I used to go to.  And I took the loser with me few times.  Thankfully my friend never asked.  But he did, and rather sneakily I might add, try to hook me up with a couple of his friends here and there.  That probably should've been a clue into the inner workings of my picker. 

One weekend I left the loser at home and my friend and I drove up to see his family for Thanksgiving.  We stayed at his dad's house and the plan was to stay one night and then come right back the next day.  However, due to a big snowstorm coming in, they closed the pass we had to go through in order to get home.  So we got stuck at his dad's house for a few days.  This would've been fine except that his dad had a cat and I'm allergic to cats (hospitalized repeatedly during childhood after spending the night with friends and their cats - kind of allergic - back in the days before real antihistamines).  And you know me.  I love cats.  I absolutely can't keep my hands off them.  So it didn't take long before I started getting sick.

The moment the pass opened back up, my friend made a plan to drive me home.  It was a long drive and there were still lots of warnings about attempts to drive through this pass.  Plus, there were two additional passes after this one that we had to go through as well.  He didn't think his truck would make it so he borrowed his dad's car which had four wheel drive.  What this meant was that after he got me home, he was going to have to turn around and go all the way back (through the three passes), get his truck, and then drive himself (through two of the passes again) to get himself home.

There was so much snow.  And ice.  And about half way through the first pass I found myself feeling awfully guilty about it.  So I asked him, "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" he asked back.

"Driving me home," I answered.

"Uuuh.  Because you're my friend," he answered, "and I don't want to see you get sick.  That's what friends do.  Isn't it?"

"I guess so," I answered.

Right then I looked at him.  And I realized that we had known each other for years, but that I didn't actually know very much about him.  You know?  About who he was.  I knew that he played football, swam in the lake, and went out with the really beautiful girls at camp.  I knew he was fun to fill up coffee cans with chew spit with.  And we'd done a lot of partying together.  But I wouldn't say that I'd been that much of a friend exactly.  So I decided to use the time we had on that drive to ask him questions - try and get to know him a little better.  

I asked him specifically about his hopes and dreams for the future.  I guess I don't feel comfortable going into the details of these conversations.  I wouldn't particularly want my hopes and dreams from twenty-two years old blabbed about in a blog years later.  But one of them, in a nutshell, was that he wanted to be able to provide his future family with everything they ever wanted.  And he had a plan for how to do it too.  He'd put a lot of thought into it.   

"Really?" I asked him, actually surprised, "Are you being serious?"   

"Yeah.  Of course," he answered, "Every guy thinks like that."

"No," I said, "Of this I can assure you - every guy does not."

At first it made me worry about him a little.  That's how "not normal" I'd come to believe this kind of thinking was.  His expectations of himself seemed so high.  But I was taking psychology classes for the first time (picture me rolling my eyes), so I psycho-analyzed it real quick.  "This makes sense I guess, developmentally.  He's in his early twenties.  And he's having all these wonderful, although somewhat idealistic, perfectly normal dreams at the perfectly normal age for them.  Maybe normal guys do think like this," I thought to myself.

And as I listened to him talk I realized that the desire was genuine.  That normal or not, realistic or not, the "want to" was there.  And that, according to my grandpa, was "the mark of a real man."  My friend was thinking about the ways in which he could give to someone, not the ways in which he could get.  His love for his family was already there, even though the actual people weren't yet.  It came from inside him someplace and, in all actuality, had nothing to do with anyone else.  He was alive inside.  And my genuine surprise about that pointed very deeply to the fact that I wasn't.   
  
"Wow," I finally said, "My grandpa would've loved you."

And that's when I remembered holding the roses.

I realized that my picker wasn't broken at all.  He was right there next to me in the car.  I mean, if you're not in love with this guy just from the little bit of information I've provided here then there's something wrong with your picker.  But here's the interesting part.  He was my friend.  And an old one at that.  It makes me smile to think I thought I had such old friendships at twenty-two years old!  I knew him back in the days of being a kid, well before the days of anything that even resembled maturity.  He made me think of things like sunshine.  Dirt.  And chew spit:)  So it didn't occur to me to want him.  What occurred to me was that I wanted to be like him.

All the way home I thought about the fact that I'd always been so focused on the being loved (or not) part of it that I'd never really put much thought into what it meant to actually love someone, to be someone with something to give.  I realized that my problem wasn't on the outside of me at all - wasn't about settling for "the wrong kind of guy" although that was sort of a side effect of it.  My problem was on the inside of me and had more to do with my own expectations of myself, or, I should say, my lack of them.  My problem was my tendency to settle for being less than who I really am - that instead of trying to find the "perfect him," I needed to be looking at how to become the "perfect her."

This wasn't an over night matter obviously.  In fact, I think at the time it had more to do with growing up than anything else.  It was just a beginning.  And it's been a work in progress ever since, not so much in my relationships anymore (thank God those days are over), but in every area of my life.  So my problem, I'd discovered that day, was me.  But, just for good measure, the loser moved out as soon as I got home.  And that time he stayed gone.  Not even two weeks later, I met Shane.  And I think I recognized the man in him and the woman I could be because of the truth I'd remembered.  Although, I have to tell you, I still think there was something wrong with his picker:)

This brings me back to today.  Trying to live up to my own expectations has always been an issue for me.  I think it's because of the nature of high expectations in general, that things don't always turn out the way I think they should.  Sometimes I fail.  But the only real failure, I think, is not to try.  Because normal or not, realistic or not, and whether things turn out the way I think they should or not, the "want to," according to my grandpa, is "the mark of a real man" or "woman" as this case may be.  And I'd like to become someone with something to give away regarding this Autism deal.

My friend (who has that family now:) struggled on bad roads with them at Thanksgiving time this past year.  It seems to be a reoccurring theme for him.  They made it back safe.  And another friend of mine got robbed at gunpoint in a park at 8:00 on Saturday morning not two weeks ago.  Some money was stolen, no one got hurt.  But God DAMN.  It's probably silly that I worry the way I do, and that I send such thick, heavy prayers out to everyone all the time.  But this life we have is so precious.  So fragile.  And so short.  Tony will always and forever be gone.

My plan is to spend my first fifty years in heaven telling Tony to call me whatever he'd like, the next fifty thanking my friend for telling me his dreams on the way through the snowstorm, and the next two thousand, at least, thanking Shane for the excitement, the intimacy, and the closeness.  For his courage in being with me and for his fearlessness in being the father of one regular and two disabled children - not so much that he's not afraid inside.  He is.  And so am I.  But for his fearlessness in all of his actions irregardless of his fear inside, in all of his showing up and being a lover, a husband, a father, an employee, for all of his attempts to support one hell of a difficult family through one hell of a difficult time, even when his wife wants to spend more money to go back to school.  For a long time.  It doesn't even occur to Shane not to bring out the best in me.  I'm going for the doctorate by the way, for no other reason than that it excites me beyond belief.  Because, after all, it's safe to move forward, the door is opening, and there's not one single reason in the whole entire world why I should settle.

Thanks Reminders.