Wedding Shower

My daughter recently married their high school sweetheart in the back yard of our house.  In the months leading up to the wedding, while the couple contemplated various venue options, it surprised me how many issues Isabel had to grapple with in an attempt to make sure each of their wedding guests would feel safe and comfortable at the wedding.  It was Isabel’s number one priority, which caused my mama bear pride to swell to the size of Mars.  But it was also difficult - and a bit fascinating - to watch my beautiful child agonize over this.   

When Shane and I got married 27 years ago, I didn’t have nearly as much to grapple with.  Although, in looking back, I really could have agonized just a tad more than I did.  I was 23 years old at the time, and I had no idea how to plan a wedding.  And we didn’t yet have resources like google or Youtube to point out every possible detail that ever existed about any kind of wedding a person could ever think of.     

I was also a pretty self-centered kid.  I’m afraid I just didn’t think about other people all that much.  When Shane and I selected our lovely little wedding invitations, I was delighted by the delicate silver writing and tiny pink roses embossed into the paper.  But I honestly wondered what the R.S.V.P.s were even for.      

For our venue, I called the Parks and Recreation department and reserved a spot in one of our local parks, where a creek trickled by and willow trees swayed, dappling in the sunlight overhead.  Then I selected a wedding cake out of a catalog at Albertsons, and scheduled to have it delivered to the park on our wedding day.  Oh, and I bought myself a dress, and told my maid-of-honor to pick one out for herself as well.  That was it.  That was all I did for our wedding.  

Thankfully, Shane’s mom purchased and brought some decorations to the park.  My mom paid for a band to play music during our reception.  And I’m not exactly sure who rented the tables and chairs and tent (I think it might have been Shane’s best man).  

If I had considered my guests at all, I might have done things differently.  I might have, for example, made sure every guest had a chair to sit in.  I might have made a back-up plan in case it rained (thankfully it stopped raining right before our wedding ceremony).  And I might have had more to eat than just cake.     

But hey, hindsight is 20/20.  

Isabel, on the other hand, did things very differently than I did.  And they are 20 years old (three years younger than I was when I got married).  Isabel not only considered every physical detail for each wedding guest (every person would have a chair, a spot at a table, plenty to eat and drink, etc).  They also considered every possible thing that might go wrong.  Starting with the pronouns.  

The only time in a young person’s life when they have to get both their entire family, and the entire family of their fiancé, together with all of their closest friends, is at their wedding.  It is one of those rare social occasions during which vastly different kinds of people - people for whom the bride and groom both care a great deal - come together and co-mingle.  Perhaps this is why getting married has made it onto the list of top ten most stressful events in a person’s life.          

So how does a person make sure the correct pronouns are used, at all times, for each and every guest at a wedding?  I watched my thoughtful and considerate child agonize over this for months.  We even considered pronoun name tags for a moment, although Isabel quickly dismissed this (I think they just needed to see that I was willing to support the idea).

In spite of my constant reassurances that no one in our family knowingly discriminates against anyone, I still had to confess that I honestly don’t know whether or not everyone in my family is educated in such matters.  We still have some family members who, for example, might not even realize that sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate things (two separate things that have nothing what-so-ever to do with each other), let alone that there is specific language to be used in each case.  

Isabel has their own complicated history with these things (but I will let them tell you about that should they ever care to).  I will just say that Shane and I were really quite surprised when Isabel started dating a boy.  But not nearly as shocked as we were when Isabel decided to be the bride, and wear the big, princess dress and everything.     

Now, Isabel does present as female.  Some of the time anyway.  Their pronouns are “she” and “they.”  And Isabel did, in the end, end up marrying a boy.  The groom’s pronouns are “he” and “him.”  But their own situation is more complicated than that.  And the vast majority of the couple’s friends have a more complicated situation as well.

Add to this the fact that there is some alcoholism in our families, and a bride may as well immediately drop kick any illusion of control at a wedding.  But I couldn’t really tell Isabel that.  They had to eventually come to this conclusion on their own.  And, in the end, they did, and we all decided that all we could really do was provide a safe and loving environment, and hope for the best.  

Although, to be honest, I did find myself memorizing the pronouns of each wedding guest, and calling various family members to alert them to the situation.  And Shane and I quizzed each other.  Like, a lot.  

“The ‘sir of honor’ is a…?” one would ask the other.

“A THEY?” the other would answer.

“Nope.”

“Oh, a… a HE?”

“Very good!  And the ‘best man’ is a…?”

And so on.  Hey, changing one’s language is hard.  Even Shane and I still struggle with it sometimes, and we have been practicing it for a long time.    

The other thing Isabel had to grapple with in relation to their wedding, was what to do with their little brother, Cale.  Isabel decided right away that Cale had to be there for the wedding (which touched my heart).  But with this being the case, there were two primary concerns. 

First, Cale is a wandering risk.  Second, Cale (who is nineteen year old now) doesn’t always keep his clothes on.  

Cale doesn’t necessarily try to run away.  He doesn’t actively check doors or gates or windows for access to the outside world.  But if he does happen to notice the effortless swing of a door or a gate as people walk in and out of it, he might just “go for a walk.”  This is how he thinks about it, I have no doubt.  The problem is that once Cale turns a corner, he is lost and can’t find his way back home again.  And he can’t talk.  So he can’t communicate about who he is or where he belongs.    

This has happened three times now.  The first time it happened, one of the kids left the side gate open in the back yard while getting a bike out, and I just didn’t realize it.  Cale had never tried to leave the house before, so I honestly don’t know how much time went by before I realized he was gone - two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes - but as soon as I realized it I called 911.

Apparently, Cale found his way to a neighbor’s house a couple of blocks away.  He opened her sliding glass door, walked right into her house, and made his way to her kitchen.  She got up from her chair and followed him, asking who he was and if she could help him with something, to which I’m sure he replied, “Deee youuuu,” in his sing song voice.  Cale then opened up her refrigerator and helped himself to some of her juice.  Then he walked back to the sliding glass door and left the house.

This neighbor, being a sensitive (and thankfully unarmed) person, could tell that something was very wrong with this situation.  So she followed Cale out the door and down the block, while dialing the police.  She stayed near him until the police picked him up in an Albertsons parking lot about a mile away from our house.  I know all of this because this same neighbor came by our house the following day to make sure that everything had turned out all right for Cale.  I could feel tears of gratitude in my eyes as she explained what had happened, and I felt the urge to hug her, but I restrained myself and instead just thanked her over and over again.

The other two times Cale got out, he left through the front door.  It is frightening how easily something like this can happen in a family (when I think Shane has locked the door, Shane thinks Alden has locked the door, Alden thinks Isabel has locked the door, Isabel thinks I have locked the door, and so forth).  Regardless of who left the door unlocked, Cale took the opportunity to to go for a walk.  We all realized it very quickly.  But sometimes Cale walks off really fast, and he disappeared before we could tell which way he had gone.

Our dog, Gus, found Cale that time, a few blocks away from our house, and, I’m sure, started to guide him home.  However, Cale and Gus both smelled food, so they took a detour into a neighbors’ back yard.  These neighbors were barbecuing with a bunch of their friends.  And, apparently, it took everyone awhile to figure out that this blond kid and the black dog, who had by that point helped themselves to their food, didn’t actually belong with anyone at the barbecue.  These neighbors got my number off of Gus’s dog tag and called me.

The third time Cale got out - same situation with the door (although, after this one, no one at our house has ever forgotten to lock the door again) - he walked almost five miles on a 100 degree day before the police found him approaching a river.  He had crossed the traffic on a highway (and Cale has no safety awareness).  When the police picked him up, the police officer handed Cale a gallon jug of water.  Cale drank half of the gallon before he stopped drinking.  

After that, we built a new fence around our back yard (it is really more like a wall made of wood), and we put locks on both side gates.  We also put a child proof (and often adult proof) lock on the front door.  And no one that lives at our house has ever forgotten to lock that door again.           

Naturally, Isabel was a bit nervous to have their wedding in a public place that Cale could easily wander away from.  I think this was the main reason they ultimately decided to have the wedding in our back yard.  It is a safe and comfortable place for Cale.  The only problem with having the wedding at our house was the fact that, when Cale is at home, he has a tendency to take off his clothes and try to get into our hot tub. 

In the end, Isabel decided that Cale’s safety was more important.  But they did communicate their fear, over and over again, that Cale might get naked during the wedding.  At one point, for example, I bought some beautiful bobbing flower lights to float on the surface water in the hot tub during the wedding.  But Isabel quickly decided that having the lid off the hot tub during the wedding would only encourage Cale to pull off his suit and climb into the water.  So we left the lid on the hot tub during the wedding, and even put heavy pots of flowers on top.

The wedding day itself was a beautiful day.  We couldn’t have asked for better weather, or for a more perfect evening.  The mid September cool had just started to yellow the leaves on all the trees.  The fall flowers I had spent the summer planting in my garden and around the yard had grown, budded, and eventually bloomed, one by one, into the wide bursts of orange and red and pink and yellow that lined the walkways and lawn.    

Sunflowers taller than the groom himself drooped big yellow heads over the grass.  Lights draped overhead.  The wedding arch that I had constructed out of branches from both our yard and from Flathead Lake, rose and curved and sparkled with tiny twinkle lights.     

The groom, and later the bride, walked down the isle to the song (the instrumental) that opens the movie Little Miss Sunshine.  Isabel’s big brother, Alden, who came home on leave from the Marines to be here for the wedding, walked down the isle with Cale.  The boys both wore blue suits that matched the color of their eyes.  And Cale, with Alden’s help, played the role of flower boy.  With two fingers, Cale picked one tiny petal at a time out of his little basket, and then, with a stiff, straight arm, dropped it onto the grass.   

Isabel came down the isle moments later, arm in arm with their dad, Shane, with tears in their eyes and a bright, beaming smile on their face.  

During the reception, as the sun was setting and the glow from all the twinkle lights grew brighter and brighter, all the guests sat together and chatted and ate and laughed.  Everyone seemed like they felt safe and comfortable.  The food was amazing.  The speeches were even better.  And, the whole time, Cale paced around the yard in circles.  This is his preferred activity when he can’t sit in the hot tub and pour water.

Cale didn’t get naked one time all evening.  Although he did, I found out afterwards, pull down his pants and start peeing in one of the bushes.  One of his cousins stopped him right away and talked him in to pulling up his pants, and then walked him to the bathroom to finish the job. 

I didn’t think anyone had actually seen this.  But later, at a gathering of Isabel’s friends, I found out that practically everyone saw.  When I later told my Mom about this, even she had seen Cale peeing in the bush at the wedding.  “Well, honey,” she said, “Its hard not to notice two little white buns peeking out from under a dark blue suit.”

Eclipse

My friend, Jason, recently talked to me about my blog.  He didn’t ask me why I haven’t written in it for so long.  I suspect he knows that is not the way to get an artist to start producing again.  Instead he simply told me he has read every blogpost I have ever written.  Then he stood up in front of a bunch of his friends and gave away over a hundred (at least) of his own drawings, while he talked about how important it is to put beautiful things out into the world.  

Jason is one of the most powerful examples I have ever known of what it means to be an artist. 

I hadn’t forgotten that I am an artist or anything.  I draw or paint or garden or write nearly every day.  In fact, I have recently become fascinated with space - with the moon and the planets and stars - and I have been experimenting with some science fiction writing.  Short stories mostly so far.  I would like to, one day, write a story about a group of people that live on a generation spaceship as they make their way to another star system.  I would like to explore the psychology of deep isolation in the face of the unknown.  

But after seeing Jason, I realized I HAD forgotten the ‘putting beautiful things out into the world’ part.  I haven’t shown anyone my science fiction writing.  In fact very few people even know that I am doing any.  I can get a bit self-centered I’m afraid, and I have a tendency to forget that at least a part of the point of making art (of living life too) is to share ourselves with others.  Thank you for the reminder, friend.  And please, do stop by and see the rings of Saturn on your way home.  I have been obsessed with them lately.  The rings of Saturn aren’t solid ice.  They used to be a moon, which shattered into billions of individual shards that now float separately in space, yet are all fixed in formation by the system’s intense gravity.  AND there are MOUNTAINS around the edges!  Vertical structures of sparkling moon guts that suddenly rise up to over fifteen times the height of the Rims!  (the Rims are the sandstone cliffs that surround our home-town)

I am absolutely obsessed.   

My curiosity about space started when I bought a telescope during the pandemic as a way to spend time with Shane and the kids.  Our oldest, Alden, peered through the eyepiece at Saturn a few times, feigned mild interest, then shuffled back into the house to finish whatever video game he was playing.  To be fair, Saturn is tiny and rather unimpressive when viewed through a telescope.  Shane and our middle child, Isabel, didn’t even make it through the re-alignment process most of the time (I don’t have an automatic tracker on my telescope - and planets are always on the move) before they went back into the house.  And Cale couldn’t be torn away from  his water pouring.  He is still non-verbal and lives in his own world much of the time, so I’m not sure he even knows space exists.  

I found myself watching the sky by myself most nights.  Which was just what I needed I think.  It did get me through the next few years.  Our best friends of twenty-plus years had divorced each other by that point, and one had stopped talking to me.  If I understand things correctly, it was because I couldn’t take sides.  I can understand this point of view (if this point of view is even accurate).  I mean, image having to walk through one of the most difficult things a person could walk though, and through it all your best friend doesn’t take your side?  I would have stopped speaking to me too.  At the exact same time, I really couldn’t take sides and still live with myself.  It was one of those no-win situations.        

Then our oldest son, Alden, graduated from high school, joined the Marines, and suddenly flew off to boot camp.  Isabel moved in to an apartment with her high school sweetheart.  And they bought a puppy.  My grand-doggie, Juno.  Then Shane’s dad passed away.  My father-in-law was one of my favorite human beings on the entire planet.  We spent the next several years taking a lot of trips to Disneyland - a place we all love, which also happens to remind Shane of being with his dad.   

Then my grandma passed away.  On a day when the moon blocked the light from the sun.  She was my mom’s mom, and I was her only granddaughter, so she spoiled me with her attention the entire time I was growing up.  When I was in kindergarten, my best friend convinced me that a particular house I had to walk past to get to school every day, had kidnappers living it in.  I was terrified to walk to school.  So, one day, my grandma picked me up from school, walked me right up to the front door of that house, and rang the door bell.  We spent the next hour having milk and cookies with the nice lady who lived there.  And I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.  

On the day my grandma died, I watched the eclipse with my little pair of solar glasses on my face (I don’t have a solar filter for my telescope).  And I missed my grandma already.     

A couple of months after that, we had to put our dog, Gus, to sleep.  Kidney failure.  Then I had to put one of my ducks to sleep.  Neurological failure.  She was old.  Then my other two ducks, who were also getting quite old, died, one at a time, in their sleep.  

It was around this time that I ended up in the hospital with vertigo.  I literally couldn’t physically sit up, let alone stand up.  That night, in the hospital bed, I had a dream about a bear.  I was inside the bear.  Or maybe it wrapped around me somehow, like a cocoon.  

All eight of my great-grandparents were there.  They stood outside the bear, their faces peering in through the shaggy, brown fur, and they all tried to coax me to come out.  It took all night, but I did eventually come out.  And when I woke up the next morning, I could walk again.  It was probably because of the medications they gave me in the hospital.  But I also started thinking about my great-parents a lot, and I started seeing bears everywhere - on t-shirts and coffee cups, on greeting cards I received, etc.   

After this I began to realize that I am going through menopause.  My daughter recently bought me a pair of socks with words embroidered onto them, which say, “Menopause.  What the FUCK?”  What the fuck indeed.  But I’ll spare you the details about that, other than to say that I just haven’t been myself lately.  And I’m finally coming to accept that this isn’t just some temporary glitch.  I’m not going to be turning back into the person that I was before.  I am becoming someone new.   

Through it all, the planets shifted back and forth in front of the stars.  The moon rose and set, and rose and set again, sometimes multiple times in the same day (I still don’t really understand the movements of the moon).  And in the winter time, I pointed my telescope at the tiny drip of stars just below Orion’s belt (I call it Orion’s penis) and watched the Orion nebula, suspended like a little blue cloud in space.  

Cale sat in the hot tub beside me, pouring water back and forth between two cups, then pouring it back into the hot tub again.  In fact, now that I think about it, I almost never watched the sky alone.  Cale was usually there.  I will probably forever associate star gazing with the sound of water pouring onto water.  Or the sound of water pouring directly onto the deck boards underneath us, creating a slick sheen of thin ice for me to slide my giant telescope across to get it back inside.   

During the last blogpost I wrote, I talked about how Cale’s caseworker and psychiatrist had started looking into group home placement for Cale.  Which confirms just how long it has been since I have written a blogpost.  Cale’s psychiatrist and caseworker did, briefly, look into group home placement for Cale.  But then they both lost their jobs because the state of Montana gutted its case-management program for people with developmental disabilities.  This was during some of the first shifts in our county’s political climate.    

If I understand things correctly, the state did away with case management for people with developmental disabilities altogether for a little while there.  Then the state was sued by somebody for its lack of case management, so it implemented its current “case management” as a substitute.  All I know for sure is that what used to be a monthly meeting during which Cale’s case manager coordinated and focused a team of specialists in assisting Cale with his life, has become a yearly meeting during which Cale’s “case manager” fills out some paperwork ensuring the state that Cale still hasn’t changed and that he still needs the few remaining services he has left. 

             

Still, we really can’t complain.  Cale has two loving parents to advocate for him, so he gets most of what he needs.  But I can’t even think about all the people with disabilities who have been left without real advocacy.  Not without dropping into an immediate and overwhelming depression anyway.  So I’m just going to change the subject for now. 

It was shortly after this that we found a private psychiatrist for Cale, who, fairly quickly, diagnosed Cale with a form of Pandas.  Here’s what happened, in a nutshell.  The last time Cale ended up in the hospital (it happened every now and then throughout his childhood), they diagnosed him with serotonin storm like usual (even though none of his medications really affect serotonin levels).  They sent him home afterward with no further clarity about his condition.  The one helpful thing they did do was draw his blood and see that his strep titers were obnoxiously high.  Yet he had never shown any symptoms of a strep infection. 

Cale’s new psychiatrist later noticed these strep titer levels as she examined his paperwork.  This happened just after Cale had screamed and cried, non-stop, for fourteen days straight.  He was experiencing the most intense bout of OCD symptoms I had ever seen him have.  He was literally stuck arranging his clothes and shoes and anything else he could find, into different patterns on his bedroom floor, screaming and crying throughout the process because he couldn’t stop.  If I took the stuff away from him, he attacked me.  He HAD to keep going with it.  This continued all day and most of every night for fourteen days straight.  He was absolutely exhausted.  He had long, bloody scratches all over his body where he kept digging his fingernails into his own skin.  And, at one point, he got so frustrated that he shattered his bedroom window (and he somehow didn’t get more than a few cuts from it).

After fourteen days of this, I had finally lost my nerve.  I called all of Cale’s doctors and told them that I was going to drive Cale to the Children’s Hospital in Helena, drop him off there, and refuse to go back and pick him up until they finally figured out what in the hell was wrong with him.  I remember this moment like it was yesterday - I was on the phone with Cale’s pediatrician, who was trying to sell me on the idea that adolescence is simply just a really difficult time for children with Autism, when the call waiting beeped through.  

Cale’s new psychiatrist was on the other line.  She told me to go to the pharmacy and pick up a prescription for penicillin, give it to Cale, and see what happened.  I rolled my eyes, went and got the medicine, and gave him one of the pills.  A PENICILLIN tablet.  

Half an hour later, Cale walked out of his bedroom, smiling, and he wanted something to eat.  He has been on penicillin ever since, and he has never again had one of those melt-downs.  He has never again scratched at his own skin.  He has never again screamed for hours at a time.  And, most importantly, he has never again attacked anyone.  Okay, he did attack his sister one time because she had cookies and she wouldn’t let him have one, and he was starving.  But other than that, we have grown quite accustomed to Cale being one of the easiest and most amazing people to be around.  

None of Cale’s doctors can really tell me why the penicillin has had such an affect on Cale.  Cale’s psychiatrist says it is because his immune system over-reacts to strep bacteria, causing his white blood cell count to sky rocket and eventually start attacking the dopamine receptors in his brain.  And I guess the penicillin tricks his immune system into thinking it has help with the strep?  I don’t know.  I don’t really get it.  But I do know that Cale’s psychiatrist’s explanation causes all of his other doctors to smirk and shake their heads.  

So I guess no one really knows why it works.  And no one really cares, including myself, as long as it keeps working.  I do have to be diligent about giving Cale a pro-biotic and making sure he gets plenty of fiber, to keep his digestive system as healthy as possible.  But that’s a small price to pay for having a happy boy.  

Cale still doesn’t talk, and he still has his little Autistic fixations.  He re-arranges the Tupperware drawer every afternoon for example.  But this is drastically better than the intense OCD he used to experience.  He is also still a wandering risk.  We have to keep our doors and gates locked so he doesn’t wander off.  And he is still obsessed with water.  If he sees an unguarded water faucet, he will flood that room.  We are on our third bathroom remodel in one bathroom, our second on the other bathroom.  

But, in so many ways, Cale is so much easier than he used to be.             

Cale is nineteen years old now.  He graduated from high school last June.  The super heroes that worked in Cale’s self- contained classroom at school helped him participate in the school’s graduation ceremony.  He wore the robe and the mortarboard, complete with tassel, and everything.  He had to wear his headphones because of all the noise in the stadium, and someone had to walk with him up to and across the stage to receive his diploma (thank you so much, someone!).  But he did it!  Shane and I had NEVER expected Cale to be able to participate in his graduation ceremony.  Tears of gratitude and appreciation leaked uncontrollably out of both of us throughout the ceremony.

And the best part?  I got to take Cale home afterwards.

I never thought I would say this, but I am so thankful that Cale will be staying with us for as long as we live (or until we’re too old to handle it I suppose).  Our nest is otherwise empty.  It is so quiet at our house these days.  The kids aren’t fighting.  The dog isn’t barking.  The ducks aren’t quacking.  It is just Cale and me most days.    

Cale and I take long walks together in the afternoons.  We listen to the breeze drift through the treetops.  We crunch the crisp, fall leaves with our shoes.  We often stop at a small, neighborhood playground that has a swing set.  People do shoot rather strange looks at us as they walk by, while I am pushing my giant, giggling boy, who is now taller than I am, on a swing.  Then, as the sun begins to sink down behind the mountains, we walk back home again.  Cale climbs into the hot tub with his cups, and I slide my giant telescope out across the icy deck and wait for the dark to come.  

God speed, Jason.  I’ll be looking at Saturn, watching for you.