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.