Concrete (part three of three)

“If the world was left to you socialites, we would still be in caves talking to each other.”

Temple Grandin

I’ve been thinking a lot about a church camp that my brother and I attended when we were growing up.  This is for a couple of reasons, I think.  Just before my recent bout with wondering if I’m making it look like there’s something wrong, instead of different, about my brother, I had been writing about some of the experiences that my brother and I had at camp.  Then, just a few weeks ago, a friend of ours, who went to that camp with us, was killed in an accident.

It stopped me in my tracks.  I mean, I hadn’t seen or talked to the guy in probably twenty years, but there’s still something about this kind of thing that makes you re-evaluate what’s important.  I hugged my husband and kids extra hard, e-mailed a couple of other old camp friends, and was seriously distracted by how unimportant something like selling my house actually is.  This might’ve been okay, too, if I hadn’t been in the middle of having an open house on the day I found out about the accident, with people asking me questions about really stupid things, like maple floors and plumbing, all afternoon.

I wanted to go the funeral and say good bye, not only because it would be my last chance to, but also because I thought it might be a comfort to this person’s family (his brother, in particular, who also went to camp with us) for as many of us as possible to attend.   

There were several of us that I knew that were planning to go, so it’s not that I thought my own presence would make much of a difference.  I guess I don’t know, exactly, why I felt so strongly about attending.  I just did.  The funeral was going to be held in another town, however, about a five hour drive away from where I live. 

I have friends that live in that town, so I didn’t have any trouble arranging a place to stay.  But Shane and I only have one vehicle, and Shane didn’t want me to leave him and the kids without a vehicle all weekend.  So I called my dad and asked him if I could borrow one of his vehicles.  My dad told me that he’d locked his vehicles in his garage, however, before leaving for Arizona, so that my brother wouldn’t be able to get to them while he was away.  And I should mention that my dad’s garage isn’t just a garage.  It’s more like a maximum security penitentiary for man “toys.”

“My garage is locked up really tight,” my dad said.

“Oh really?” I answered.

“I think I put all the keys to it in my safe, though,” he continued, “I can give you the combination so you can check, but you’ll have to get yourself into the house in order to get to the safe.  Maybe you’re brother could let you in the hou… hey, wait a minute!”

My sense of relief was so complete that it actually hit the bottoms of my toes.  “He could break straight into the garage for me,” I finished my dad’s thought for him.

“Yes, he probably could!” my dad laughed, “And to think that I actually locked up the garage in order to keep him out of it.  That was rather silly of me, wasn’t it?”

“No,” I said, “What’s silly is that I got mad at him, not all that long ago, for his breaking and entering abilities, yet now I may need him to use them for me.”

I ended up not going to the funeral anyway.  It was right before Christmas and I had family coming into town that were, unbeknown st to me at the time I was making arrangements to leave, scheduled to arrive at my house on the day of the funeral.  It was also because the roads were supposedly going to be bad.  And because I had recently spent all of our money on Monster High Doll stuff and games for the WII for Christmas.  And what were the other reasons?  I know that there certainly seemed to be an overabundance of them.  Whoops, do I sound irritated about this?

“You’re a good friend,” somebody said to me later, “that you’ve would’ve dropped everything, had you been able to get away with it, to go and say good-bye.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, “Because I didn’t actually do it, did I?” 

I had the strangest dream about these camp friends of ours a couple of weeks ago.  Only I never got to actually see them in my dream either.  It was kind of like one of those showing up someplace naked dreams, only the other way around.  I can’t remember the details of it, exactly, but I know that we were up at the college in town here, and that my friends were scheduled to arrive there later that night.  Just before they arrived, however, I realized that I hadn’t showered, or done my hair, or put on any make-up, or anything.  I looked in the mirror, and I looked terrible.  So I left. 

I spent the whole rest of the dream trying to get home, get ready, and then get back up to the college again.  And, of course, every possible obstacle was in my way.  First, I couldn’t find my car, so I had to run home.  At home, I couldn’t find any of the things that I needed to get ready.  Everything had literally disappeared off the face of the planet. 

That’s when I realized that I didn’t want having to look any particular way to keep me away from my friends, so I left home and started trying to get back up to the college again.  Not only would I show up without any make-up on to see people that I haven’t seen in years, but I’d also be all sweaty from running.  Lovely.

On the way back to the college, I got lost (yes, somehow, in my own dumb home town, I got lost).  I ended up in a parking garage (on foot), at one point, that was like a giant maze.  I ran up and around, and up and around, and up and around some more, and there never was a way back down, or out, or anything.  I ran into one concrete wall after another, one road block after another, and, before I could actually get back up to the college, Shane woke me up and told me that it was time to get the kids ready for school.  

It bothered me all day long.  I figured that it was just a reiteration of how I felt in trying to get to that funeral, however, until it occurred to me why I’d left the college in the first place.  That was the disturbing part.  I mean, why would I have cared what I looked like?  God himself couldn’t keep me away from that college if those people were there, much less not having any make-up on.  So what was that about?

I finally figured out that the dream wasn’t to be taken literally (duh).  It was more of a metaphor instead.  You see, worrying about what my brother thinks, or what my kids think when they grow up, or what anyone, for that matter, thinks of my writing, is sort of akin to having to have make-up on.  It’s about wanting to look good, or wanting to be liked, or wanting to be acceptable, or whatever.  And that’s powerful stuff.  It actually had the power, in my dream, to get me away from what really matters. 

The thing that matters in my writing, and in my own life, is my own truth.  I clearly need to quit worrying about what that “looks like” to others, and worry only about whether or not it’s acceptable to me.  But that got me wondering, is it acceptable to me?  Obviously it isn’t yet, otherwise I wouldn’t have been afraid to show it to my friends in the dream.

I wrote a paper, one time, when I was in college.  In it, I talked about accepting peoples’ differences.  “We should accept the differences in people with disabilities,” I explained, dryly.

The professor, who had a sister with Down’s syndrome that he liked to talk about, was an absolutely gorgeous sixty year old man (seriously, I had never seen a body like this on someone past the age of twenty five – I’m just saying).  He wrote on this paper of mine.  And, because I had a little crush going on, I think, I couldn’t wait to get home and read what he wrote. 

“Accept the differences?” he asked in disgust, “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

“Oh, SHIT,” I thought, but then I read on.

“How about celebrate the differences?” he asked, “We should be celebrating the differences in all people, with absolutely everything in us.  That’s the only thing that brings true unity.”

So, I should be celebrating my brother’s breaking and entering abilities?  I should be celebrating the fact that my daughter’s mantra is, ‘I’m stupid’?  I should be celebrating the fact that my son can’t talk, and that he’s twitching involuntarily?  I should be celebrating the “always-ness” of all of the damn “somethings”?    

Can you see where I’m going with this?  My own “truth” clearly needs a little shower.  The one story about my brother breaking into my house is, again, a perfect little example.  

When I needed my brother to break into my dad’s garage for me, I felt like I did while watching Girl With The Dragon Tattoo at the moment when Lisbeth saves Mikael (after we’ve spent the whole movie mistrusting Lisbeth, to some extent, yet all of a sudden we’re saying, “Oh, thank GOD she is who she is!” - because we all know, at that moment, that she’s not just the right person for the job, we also know that she’s going to get it done).  My brother was suddenly the most beautiful person on the face of this planet.

I’ve been thinking about the fact that my daughter’s mantra might become, “I’m smart, smart, smart, smart.”  I’ve also been thinking about my baby Cale and his little green iPad.  And I’ve realized that yes, there is an “always-ness” about the “somethings.”  But sometimes the “somethings” are absolutely amazing. 

Autism brings some heartbreak, there’s no doubt.  But it also brings all of these gorgeous little gifts - gifts that I wouldn’t be receiving if I didn’t have people with Autism in my life.  And these things aren’t just acceptable.  These things are worth celebrating with absolutely everything in me.  It’s all about deciding what kind of experience I want to have. 

The more I go along, the more I realize the sheer pointlessness of putting things into the categories of “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong.”  It’s best to clump everything into the category of “It is what it is” or “they are who they are” instead.  And this doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to tolerate bad behavior.  I can kick a person out of my life if I can’t accept what it means to be with them.  But what I can’t do (or, rather, what it’s pointless to do) is sit in the relationship and attempt to change who they are.

I’d like to take a moment here and commend my camp friend for the recent change in her relationship status.  Emotionally unavailable men are just that (unavailable).  And there’s no earthy reason why you should accept such a thing.  I’m glad you sent the last guy on his not so merry way.  That took guts that not a lot of people can muster.  And I’m delighted beyond description that you eventually found somebody else, someone who’s able to reciprocate your own gorgeous availability.  You’re an amazing person.   

My brother can be exasperating for sure, because he may break into your house and not see anything the matter with it.  But I’ve decided to keep him (and my kids too, for some odd reason:), for all of the exasperating, and things worth celebrating, this means.  But I think that my writing is the strongest when I’m coming from a place of love instead of irritation.  You know?  And maybe that’s all that all of this has been trying to tell me.  Just come from a place of love.  It really is that simple.

On the morning after I had that dream, as I was driving home from the gas station, I saw my brother walking down the street (my brother doesn’t drive - but that’s another story).  He was meandering down the sidewalk slowly, smiling at the ground, and kicking clumps of snow into the gutter as he walked. 

“Want a ride?” I yelled out my window.

He didn’t, particularly.  But, in an effort to be polite, he said, “Sure.”

“How’s Dad?” I asked him as he got into my vehicle.

My dad came back from Arizona a couple of weeks ago, so my brother no longer has my dad’s house to himself.  “He’s good.  He has company right now, though, so I’m just heading over to the coffee shop,” my brother answered.

I wrestled with it all the way there, and couldn’t even bring myself to say it as my brother got out of my vehicle at the coffee shop.  I had to call him later instead.  “Alright!” I said, “You can go to my house any time you want (and I gave him a way in).”

Good Lord.  No wonder my brother thinks “normal” people are nut jobs.  I felt a whole ton better though.  I mean, I know full well that nothing’s going to come from my brother being at my house. Actually, I should rephrase that, because one of the neighbors saw my brother going into my house a couple of nights ago and called the police.  We managed to talk the police officer off the ledge about it, however, and they left my brother alone.  So what I should maybe say, instead, is that nothing’s going to come of it that I can’t handle. 

I should also mention that within three days of letting my brother back into my house, I got two offers on the place.  It’s inspected well, the appraisal was done yesterday with no issues, and we should be closing by the end of the month (just in time).  This one, small, seemingly unrelated act of love, was apparently just the stool softener that my life needed:)  God bless.