Independence Day, Part 2 of 2

It was one of those clear, perfect evenings that follows a very hot day.  And even though there was no creek nearby, there were tall, pine tree covered mountains completely surrounding our little RV park.  The forests outside of our immediate clearing were thick and woody too, the kind that you can barely see through, with bright green, moss covered trees.  It reminded me of the Oregon coast.

My kids were sitting next to me in lawn chairs, right in the midst of all this gorgeousness, under the most breath-taking colors of a mid-summer sunset, playing video games. 

Sigh.

And Cale was behind the trailer obsessing over the water from the hose, with the neighbors right there watching him from their color coordinated lawn chairs, wondering what was wrong with him.

“He’s Autistic,” Shane explained to them at one point.

“Yes,” the lady smiled at Shane, “I gathered that.”

We’d been to town already and had spent $30 on five, tiny soft-serve huckleberry shakes.  And unable to imagine what an actual meal would cost, we’d decided to do something my way.  We’d cooked hot dogs over a fire for dinner, with s'mores for desert.

No one else cooked over an outside fire there.  In fact, we could actually smell the grilling of steaks and peppers and potatoes, that was happening inside of the motor homes.  It was just odd.  The owners of the camp ground had to bring us a portable fire pit to use, in fact, because the “camp” site itself didn’t actually have one. 

Sigh.

I don’t mind being a spectacle.  I’ve been one of those for most of my life, so it really doesn’t bother me all that much.  What I can’t stand, however, is missing things.  Missing life. 

I’m the one that’s always there.  Or, I used to be anyway.  I’m the one that’s always at the party, or the wedding, or the event, or the birthday, or at any other kind of celebration for that matter.  So I was hit with quite the little wave of self-pity when I didn’t get to be there as Alden and Isabel watched their first Fourth of July fireworks display.

Shane and my mom took Alden and Isabel into town to watch the fireworks, and I stayed behind with Cale.  It was for the best really.  Things were already so unfamiliar for Cale that my mom putting him to bed probably would’ve sent him over the edge.  I snuggled him up at his bed time, sang him his song, and closed the curtains to his bed.  Then I went outside the trailer, sat down, and stared at what was left of the fire.  

It was getting dark outside.  I could hear the booms from the fireworks going off in town, and I felt alone.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” my brain started in on me almost immediately, “I was supposed to be able to be with my kids for these kinds of things.  Nothing, in fact, is how it was supposed to be.  We were supposed to go camping for crying out loud.  CAMPING.  This isn’t camping.  Where are the nearby pine trees?  Where’s the rush of a passing by creek?  The very most basic BASICS are missing here.  I mean, what kind of a camp site doesn’t even have a fire pit?”

I sat there for quite awhile, staring at the dark mountains and listening to the fireworks that I couldn’t see.  And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I went inside to make a cup of tea in the microwave that wasn’t supposed to be there.  As I was doing so, I saw my son’s wide eyes peeking out from between the curtains in front of his bed.  The increasingly more frequent sounds of the distant fireworks were starting to scare him.

“It’s okay baby, Mama’s right here,” I said as I got into bed with him.  He eased right up and smiled when I started singing his song again.  Then he put both of his little arms around me and squeezed, and I didn’t feel alone anymore.

A friend of mine once told me that God doesn’t make deals.  “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit,” to put it into pre-school language, and you can feel however you’re going to feel about it until you’re done feeling that way about it.  Then you change how you feel about it if you care to. 

I was so angry about my son’s Autism for so long.  And I’d like to clarify here that it’s had nothing to do with my son as a person.  It’s had to do with the profound, inflexible, unfix-able, unchangeable disability that comes along with him, and the fact that it often keeps us from living the lives we thought we were going to live.  I still, on occasion, have moments of anger about this, especially when missing first time events of my other children’s lives. 

I adore my son.  I don’t talk about his good qualities nearly enough – like the fact that celebrations mean nothing to him at all.  He doesn’t notice when it’s someone’s birthday, or when it’s Halloween or Christmas or Mother’s day or Father’s Day.  To him, every day is a celebration.

And he doesn’t acknowledge or care about gifts.  He doesn’t acknowledge or care about stuff of any kind for that matter.  He doesn’t compare peeling pop ups to shiny new motor homes, or consider what might be the right or wrong way to camp.  To him, all of it is special and none of it is special.  And it doesn’t occur to him in the slightest to worry about what others might think of him.  He’s so cool that way.

The Autism isn’t something that I can change or avoid.  And I had to be angry about it for as long as I had to be angry about it.  Eventually, however, I got sick of feeling angry.  That’s when feeling peace instead of anger became paramount to all else. 

Only then could I let go of the “how it was supposed to be’s.”  Only then could I stop having to be “right” about things - the idea that a mother should be there the first time her children see Fourth of July fireworks, for example.  How do I know what a mother should or shouldn’t be there for?  I mean, it’s not like Alden and Isabel really notice.  They’ve never known things to be any other way, so they don’t even know that something’s wrong.  I’m the only one who notices that.  And how long do I want to do that for?

Someone that loves my children is always there for them, and always has been.  It just hasn’t always been their mom.  It’s been the exact right someone that was supposed to be there for them instead.  I’m not the end all be all for my kids.   

It’s only when I let go of my old ideas - stop thinking I’m right about how things are supposed to be - that I become open to new experiences (like RV-ing), and open to the idea that the Autism itself is an incredibly special gift.  It’s a pain in the ass, don’t get me wrong.  But it’s also a gift, because Cale’s Autism has taught me more about the things that really matter than anything else ever has.  It’s such a privilege to have him in my life.  

As I sat there holding Cale, I remembered that my friend also said that the plan for me was set in place even before God made the rivers.  That’s a long time, don’t you think?  And it got me thinking, maybe we get to live a bunch of lifetimes. 

I have to believe that there’s enough time for everyone and everything.  I mean, I’ve been camping, by my own definition of it, a lot already, thanks to my gutsy, glorious parents who always insisted on living life to the fullest with whatever they had.  Maybe I get to just enjoy RV-ing now.  I must confess that it’s quite nice to have a microwave in the middle of the mountains. 

And maybe I’ll get to see Alden and Isabel watch Fourth of July fireworks for the first time in another life.  Maybe this life just happens to be the one in which I get to pay attention to Cale.    

I sat there awhile and thought about all the people I’d like to spend a lifetime paying attention to.  There are a few of them.  There are some that I would even trap and snuggle for a lifetime if I could get away with it.  My husband, for example.  I’d really like to just trap him somewhere and do nothing but hold him in my arms for an entire lifetime. 

Maybe Cale was one of these people in a past life.  Or maybe I was one of the people he wanted to trap and snuggle.  I mean, I was definitely feeling trapped and snuggled.  Maybe it’s simply our turn now, in this lifetime, to hold each other.  It’s all so much bigger than we can see. 

As I pondered these probably silly ideas, Cale fell asleep in my arms.  I looked down at his sweet little sleeping face and I suddenly felt, with my whole being, that everything was exactly how it was supposed to be.  I was trapped, most definitely.  But I was also free in a way that I had never been before.

Alden and Isabel and Shane and my mom told me all about the notorious fireworks display when they got back, and, as they did so, I couldn’t feel even one last drop of self-pity.

“It was SO GREAT Mom!” Alden and Isabel shouted.

“It really WAS soooo much fun!” Shane explained, “I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

My mom laughed out loud and asked Shane, “What would you say that it resembled?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shane replied, “A Civil War battle field maybe.  It was absolutely nuts!”

“People were setting off giant rockets all around us,” my mom explained with a big smile on her face, “which was fine when they shot straight up like they were supposed to.  It was when they fell over and THEN launched that it set people running!  I thought about coming up here to watch Cale so that you could run down and see it for yourself, but then I realized that you would’ve made Shane and the kids leave.”

“Yeah,” Shane smiled, “It’s SUCH a good thing Jess wasn’t there.  She wouldn’t have let us stay for more than about two minutes.”

They were right too.  I wouldn’t have.  It really did go exactly the way it was supposed to.  It was the perfect end to a perfect day, in spite of me.

The next morning, after Cale had obsessed over the water in the hose behind the trailer until he was literally bursting at the seams for a bigger pool, with the neighbors right there watching him from their color coordinated lawn chairs, he started screaming.  And after he’d screamed uncontrollably for about an hour or so, attracting the attention of every single person in the entire campground, yet it was still going to be another hour before the swimming pool opened, we decided to pack it up and go home.

Alden and Isabel were sorely disappointed.  “But the little girl in that trailer gets to stay here for four days, Mom!” they explained.

I put Cale in his car seat in the Land Cruiser with the air conditioning running and shut the door.  That way we didn’t have to listen to the screaming while we packed up.  We managed to get the trailer squished back down again fairly quickly.  Then my mom and I, at the beckoning of Shane, tried to push the thing towards the Land Cruiser so that Shane could hook it back up. 

It wouldn’t budge.  And I’m no wimp.  I can hold up my end of any couch, dresser, wardrobe, anything, just as well as any guy.  Having to deal continuously with an almost seven year old, never-ending toddler has provided me with an almost unnatural amount of upper-body strength.

Turns out there were boards in front of and behind the wheels to keep the trailer from rolling away.  Super Man couldn’t have moved the thing.  No one blamed anyone for forgetting that the boards were there though, because no one could be wrong.  It’s amazing how much relationship erosion that one, little tool can prevent.

Shane got into the truck and pulled forward, then got out to see how close he was, then got in and backed up, then got out to see how close he was, then got in and pulled forward, then got out to see how close he was – each time shutting the door as he got out so that we didn’t have to hear Cale’s screaming.  It went, “aaAAAAUUUUGGG!!... silence… aaaAAAAHAAAUUUUGGG!!!... silence… AAAAUUUUGGG!!... silence… etc.”

If we weren’t a spectacle before then, we certainly were by that point. 

While my mom and I were pushing the trailer the last inch or two to get it into place, I looked up and saw our neighbors again.  They were less than fifteen feet away, as usual, on their color coordinated lawn chairs.  They were laid back with their heads resting in their hands behind their necks, smiling as they watched us.

“We’re the family you watch when you want to feel grateful for what you have,” I whispered to my mom, “They’re probably saying to each other, ‘Aren’t you glad we’re not them?  We’re sooo blessed, aren’t we?’”

We were all giggling with mixed emotions at own ridiculousness by the time we got on the road.  And once Cale had stopped screaming and things had calmed down a bit, we began to decompress.  “Wow,” Shane said to me, “We survived.”

“We camped and the kids saw fireworks,” I replied, “Mission accomplished.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Are we ever gonna do it again?” I asked Shane.

“Not without a proper set up, we’re not,” he said immediately, “We need a motor home.  I’ve decided.  There will be nothing to pop out or attach to a truck.  It needs to have space and air conditioning and a bathroom with a bath tub in it for Cale.”

I looked at him and blinked my eyes, “They put bath tubs in motor homes?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “and it’s the only way to go with our kids.”

 “You know,” I said, smiling as the surrender sunk all the way to the bottoms of my toes, “I’m with you on that.  I think I like your idea of camping.”