Finally Back!

 I won’t bore you with why I haven’t posted lately; really the most banal of reasons, and I would have to admit that I am not the IT maven I think I am.

Anyway, I figured out how to get back in because a friend of mine said I have some important things to say. Honestly, I don’t feel like I add much to anything, particularly since COVD killed my older guy’s momentum.

In short, he’s still working his part time gigs. No FTE. Yet. I must remain hopeful.

Younger fires on all cylinders. This kid, who was never the academic powerhouse his brother was, comes by his academic prowess honestly. He doesn’t have his brother’s photographic memory, so applies a rather rigorous work ethic to his academics.  This semester, he took basic psych, nutrition, his Microsoft class (in concert with his VoTech) and an upper level theater course (in which he blew me and dad away with his performance).

He did well; well enough for him to take on a full course load next semester (and, if that weren’t enough, he auditioned into a choral class that required him to get special dispensation from the VoTech for early dismissal twice a week to attend it).

Hell, why not?

He also has a weekly radio show he enjoys doing at the college radio station. And he continues to enjoy working at the pizzeria.

So that’s good.

In other news, we added Gary to our cockatiel flock in September; he’s a younger bird trying desperately to get Paulie’s affection. We just had our fourth trip to the vet this month for Paulie, and he’s not doing well. We’re just trying to keep him comfortable.

For the new year, I’m going to pray for some direction for elder. We didn’t come this far to fail.

So, there was supposed to be a recessional.....

 **Audience is asked to stand in place until academic staff and graduates have exited the field.
(from the commencement program).

This didn't happen, but I get ahead of myself.

The difference of having my two four years apart is as different as my two...two completely different people with two completely different sets of things going on. Looking back over the last 17 years in this school district through the lens of our unique perspective (because I know there isn't a family like ours, or we would have met them by now), I have to say the boys did okay, measured by the yardstick of the norm.

However, we sit outside of that, so by any measure, they blew the roof off of every expectation anyone has ever had of them.  Well, except for me and dad, because neither of us expected any less from our kids.

But, we're not done, yet.  They both have a whole lifetime ahead of them. 

But, in the moment, there's this moment, where all the teachers and graduates process in, caps, gowns, sashes, medals, ribbons--all the pomp and circumstance. What's different about this moment and the one four years ago is, well, everything. Elder's class was just ahead of The Last Normal.  Then pandemic, then everything shut down, derailed, and everyone is in the same damn ocean flailing because the boat that was our "normal" sank into the unprecedented.

So younger's night looked like elder's, except it wasn't.

Graduation was an hour earlier--why?  Because Ida took out the stadium lights last September when the world ended, and they haven't been replaced, yet. It was an hour earlier, and an hour hotter.  But, all of the family and friends packed the stands, like four years ago, because we could, and because we all need a little more of the "normal" that sank. Even the speeches reflected the difference of the last four years from when they arrived. In sophomore year, they were supposed to be off for two weeks--not to return in person for the rest of the year. That year lost what we had last night--that "normal", that celebration.  Their junior year started in that same fashion--and a lot of activities were canceled, and the seniors who were supposed to have "their year"....didn't.

And this is the thing that put all our kids in the same boat...in the same struggle. Everything we had expected just wasn't THAT anymore. 

Four years ago, the closing, class response, and recessional went off with precision; everyone stood in place while the graduates and faculty filed out and glided by twos back to the A-Plex.

Last night,  it was not that. 

After the Class Response, "Uptown Funk" blared through the speakers.  The graduates tossed their caps into the air.  Then they all started looking for their caps.  And then they all started hugging, shaking hands, exchanging fist bumps.

And then any semblence of "normal" went out the window.  Dammit, this was a celebration, so the hell with that recessional.  Let's all go down to the field and join them!

So we did. 

It's a good way to close out this chapter. 

We'll enjoy this moment. Because we still have a lot to do. 

His Way (or, "Stay in Your Own Damn Lane, Mom")

 Lately I can't seem to hit a snag without going into a spiral. 

I realized as I was running kids to where they needed to go that I whiffed not once, but twice on two completely different things that needed to get done. The second was a good 48 hours since I missed that appointment. 

The other one was indoor last night, where we were so intent on getting cars and elder where they needed to go that we completely forgot younger, who had indoor percussion.  Who said at 8:30 as we were all finally sitting down to dinner, "I guess no indoor tonight."

Only my dinner plate prevented me from doing a *headdesk*. And then commenced a whole downward spiral wherein I started tearing myself up for all my failings with both kids, and now I can't remember anything unless I leave myself a trail of Post It notes.

So hubby, ever the master at intervening in one of these episodes, gave me a stern talking to this morning. 

Totally well meant. I picked up what he laid down. 

So I made a list of things I needed elder to do today.  He himself whiffed on an appointment yesterday, so he also had some making up to do. We sat together at the dining room table with his laptop and phone and started knocking some of the easier stuff out together. 

Actually, he knocked it out; I sat by and made sure he did it. 

Which is really all he needed all along. I was knocking out some of my own to-dos alongside him as he made up his missed appointment. He did one thing, though, that I am particularly happy with: one of his workmates asked for someone to sub for them tonight. For the first time, with a little prompting from me, he volunteered to pick up some hours. So that's where he is right now. 

And it's occurred to me that maybe he has his own ideas of what his life needs to look like, and maybe he has his own roadmap to get there. 

So I am going to continue to carve some time out of my day to sit with him to make sure he gets the homework done. We all have our nonpreferred activities, and sometimes we need a little company while we're doing them. 

Kick start?

 So I'm trying to get elder back on the rails. 

Dear, mulish elder.

My head hurts just thinking of all the things we need to do. He's doing little to nothing to help his own situation, pleading "frozen with indecision."

We reconnected with the Office for Vocational Rehab, and the half hour on the books stretched for an hour. It was a good meeting, and his case manager gave us a lot of good leads to get started.

But.  He needs to start.  Not me. I did this already.

And he's not wanting to start anything. 

He's got a long list of things he needs to be doing. 

And I can't seem to motivate him to do any of it. 

Elder Rules

 So we have an update to the scheduling dilemma....

Elder followed up with one of his managers just now--no script, kinda showed, but he was ok without it. Full disclosure, I was not even on the same floor when he made the call, but he has one volume setting: loud.

Anyhoo, I heard him dial in and greet his manager professionally, politely, and enthusiastically. He was appropriately apologetic for any inconvenience he was causing, and they came to a mutually agreeable solution. 

And he came upstairs with a gloating grin. Because he showed me, didn't he?

I grinned back. "So what did we learn?"

Grinned dimmed slightly, "when you tell me to schedule time off, to schedule the time off."

"And that would have solved a whole lot of grief up front, wouldn't it?"

Still grinning, but now slightly annoyed: "Yes, mom."

What kind of mom would I be if I didn't ensure he learned something from his escapades?

Checking Boxes

 So yesterday ended up being a mental health preservation kind of day.  In addition to my own weekly session, elder had me also sitting in on his.  I left my session recharged just enough to have his drain me again. 

I need to be positive here. He's come a long way in some ways the last two years--he's had a lot of his own management stuff to put in place before we can move the ball forward. Apparently, he's only willing to move the ball forward if the ball staying behind negatively impacts his contentment. 

Case in point:  we have a family thing coming up, and both dad and I told him to alert his work so he wouldn't be scheduled. He did not. He was scheduled over the event. Now he's upset.  He's even more upset that dad and I aren't going to reroute plans to accommodate the work thing (natural consequences). So now he is working to reroute his schedule. 

I'm a little bit holding my breath here; this is the preferred job, he's been there almost 5 years, and I would hate for him to lose it over something stupid, like his taking the wrong tone with a manager. 

I listened in on his half of the conversation with a manager on the phone last night while pretending to be intent on something else. He sounded fine. He didn't resolve the issue, but he hung up the phone in a better mood and told me he would get back in touch with them today and see what he can arrange. 

Not related:  I went to my own appointment earlier in the day and someone called my name. It was someone who knew me who was there with her daughter.  I said hello, exchanged pleasantries, and then R came out for me. I laughingly told him when we got back to his office that everyone seems to know me and my boys, so they have me at a disadvantage. And now they can go advertise to the world that I'm in therapy.

We talked about that a few minutes, where it's a shame there's stigma attached to seeing someone to keep your head screwed on straight. I observed that for all the stuff we have going on, we have 100 problems and Horsham Clinic ain't one of them. 

(and this had always always always loomed in the back of my mind that this could be a thing.  Even despite everything elder has gone through, this is not one of those things.)

So yay, no crisis. Just the slog. 

Back to that. I had to hear about what a nag I was during elder's session.  Not that I have to defend my position, but it always seems to fall on me to explain (for the millionth time) that his goal is full time, competitive employment--benefits, the whole nine.  His therapist looked at me with something that looked like pity, that I would even DREAM such a thing is possible. 

Meanwhile, my younger guy is plugging along and quietly slaying all manner of things.He kept me up late last night waxing poetic about Jaws and asking me if we could watch it together. I'm sure we can clear a couple hours to do that this weekend. 

(I need to remember to pay his tuition)

This week has been all about checking all the boxes. I did a little of my own this week. A couple of things were less about goals and emotional needs and more about doing the things because I didn't want guilt about the consequences of things left undone. 

I should feel better about having done the thing, but I don't. 

That's kinda why therapy.

I need to celebrate the things we accomplish and keep reminding myself  that these things are worthy of celebration. Our work never ends. So we need to allow ourselves a minute or whatever time we need to acknowledge when our hard work pays off.

Let's celebrate that check in the box.

And keep building.

No Easy Way Up the Mountain

 Back at it. I had my moment of resting on a peak and enjoying the sunset, but now it's time to get serious (insert spit take). Except that elder is not ready to get serious, and that is 95 percent of my issue.

(Let's be clear that this is my issue.  He's fine with the status quo.)

We had (briefly) glimpsed a FT opportunity that would have been too perfect; in an ideal world, one of his jobs would allow him to convert to FT.  Unfortunately, our world is not ideal, and I'm back where I started this week, spinning my wheels and exhausted.

However, it's currently 49 degrees and sunny, so maybe a little outside time on the balcony can help...

A Puzzlement

 Another 3 am epiphany....

Lately, I have been obsessed with sudoku.  We have books of it we have gotten for elder, and since he's not solving them, I am, obsessively.  My daily crossword is not the challenge I need it to be, I guess.

On the face of it, it seems a huge waste of time. There are certainly many other things I could and should be doing.  Dig a little deeper, and you understand the way my brain works. While I am actively working a puzzle (apparently, the knottier, the better), I have a myriad of backend processes going. My latest internal hegira has been going backward in time and trying to figure out the whys and hows of my thinking and feeling. At first blush, it seems incredibly selfish and self-serving, but at 3 am, the why of this journey had become crystal clear.

Elder.

I've been lamenting for months about stuck. I've been reading this state as any parent might--laziness, lack of motivation, inertia...you get the idea.

It finally hit me that it's not *just* autism, and it's not *just* trauma--it's also anxiety.  Fear of rejection. Fear of the unknown. All the fears, if I'm honest.

When is self-regulation not self-regulation?  When it's fear. Masked. 

That would be younger. 

So it's no surprise that unbraiding all my shit, as inconvenient as it may be to some, is largely in service to helping my guys understand what they are dealing with and how to deal with it. So, no apologies, I gotta do what I gotta do....

The boys are counting on me. 

My Star

 I met my sister from another mister in October 2004.  We had been a part of an online support group of parents of children with autism, so I guess you could say we knew each other before we met. The occasion was a fundraising walk for autism, and a bunch of us met up at the old spectrum to participate--the farthest flung coming from New York and Maryland.

There's a picture of four of us, somewhere, me, with baby G in my arms, a spider monkey of a toddler, and K and two other women. K had purchased a colorful weighted lizard for one of her boys and walked with it slung over her shoulder. G rode in his stroller, flanked by elder and dad.  The four of us dropped K off at the train station later, and I think that was when our friendship began.

We emailed each other daily and occasionally talked on the phone. My kids were in the autism sibling study at Kennedy Krieger, younger the subject, elder, the control. When we met, G was about two years outside of his dx, and the worry of a dx that would eventually come was the other shoe I was waiting for to drop. 

K dismissed me. "G is a star," she said. 

I always wondered what that meant. But her words were always there as he grew up, even those really dark days when he retreated into himself, and I was afraid I'd never see him again.  He was a star. Stars shine. And for a while, he was dark.

How was he going to shine?

He found lots of ways. I could sit here and type out a pretty exhaustive list of the things he's done in the last 17 years or so to make good on Miss K's words. While elder worked today, we ran errands with younger, who went off a few times to do his own thing while dad and I took care of business. And inwardly, I marveled at the fact that he COULD, in fact, go off on his own and do his own thing, and it really wasn't that big a deal. 

But to me, it's a huge deal. We didn't know if we'd ever get here. And each frontier we push back brings a whole new set of challenges. Make no mistake, we still have huge swaths of ground we need to cover with both kids.

But.  The older guy just got his first post secondary degree and continues to work two jobs he's held for five years (in March and June). And I had to post the pic below because I still can't believe that happened. All things being equal, everybody has stuff they need to overcome. My older guy complains a lot about his allotment. My younger guy, on the other hand, quietly keeps pushing forward.

He'll always be my baby. And he'll always be my star.

Fighting His Own Battles

 It's been a busy couple days here at Autism Central.

Younger looks like he is rolling his way to the playoffs in bowling.  Although he is not rolling Varsity (fortunately, he already has his letter, so he doesn't care--much), he's leading his squad to victory on the regular. His second marking period has no grades below a B, despite his challenging course load, and he starts spring semester as a dual enrollee at the community college this week. YAY.

Elder got his diploma, an Associate Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, magna cum laude. For his next trick, he will start applying for full time jobs.  In the meantime, he is finding himself in situations he calls "Curb Your Enthusiam."

We're sitting at dinner tonight, recounting our respective days. After dad asks me about my day, Elder says, "you know what, I had someone yell at me today for answering the phone." 

Dad and I both set our utensils down and look at him.  He continues,"Yeah, it was like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'  This girl and someone else were waiting on someone and I answered the phone, and she let me have it."

"Um," I raise my fork, "you are doing customer service, now. And she has to know that."

"Well, she told me I shouldn't be doing that," he continued. "But it's okay, I went to [the executive director] and complained."

Dad and I exchange glances.  Elder goes on, not noticing our reactions or ignoring them altogether, "She told me I was providing excellent customer service and told me to cut [complainer] some slack because she's having a hard time."

We sit with this a sec.  Once upon a time, there would have been some major script-writing and war-rooming over an encounter like this. Elder looks over at us, shrugs and smiles, "It's all good."

It is all good. He's doing the things on his own, on the fly, in the moment. 

The next time I start complaining about stuck, I'm going to re-read this and remind myself he is not nearly as stuck as I think he is. 

The Neverending Story

 Younger missed his alarm, hence, his bus.

He doesn't do that often. Most of the time, he is the best regulated person in our house.

Which is a high standard to maintain; perhaps he is feeling it.  Anyway, that would have been enough for one morning if he didn't say halfway to our destination "Damn, I forgot my earplugs.  But you can come back and drop them off."

Context: today is a long day; school, bowling, indoor percussion, in that order.  The earplugs are for the last. He won't need those until 6 pm.

As if I had nothing better to do. I do have to work, and oh yeah, run the other guy to his job and back. But I haven't had my coffee yet, and I am smart enough to not blurt when I haven't been properly caffeinated.  I pause for a second.  "Um.  How about I do that when I have a reason to be back this way--either when I drop your brother off for work or when I pick him up?" I don't mention that he could keep these things in his backpack so he doesn't have to worry about remembering them. 

He already does a lot of that executive functioning stuff--all the stuff the rest of us have a hard time with. Like I said, he gets held to a higher standard.

If that weren't enough, work fell off elder's radar today. Around noon, I started watching the time and listening for him to come up and get changed. When he hadn't shown up by 12:39, I went down to see what was keeping him.  He looked at me blankly and told me he wasn't due in until tomorrow.

Um. It was there that I kinda lost it.  He managed to quickly get himself together, and I was able to deliver him to his workplace--on time, with time enough for him to review the Costco shopping list with me. 

Which has led me to consider all the coping mechanisms each of us has in place for our respective blind spots. As a collective, we can write a fairly exhaustive manual on literally all the coping strategies. The list is as awe-inspiring as it is mind boggling. Considering what each of us has on our own plates, we are doing okay.

Could be better, but I am grateful for okay.

I took advantage of the sortie with elder to get younger's ear plugs over to him.  Meanwhile, a couple of my former colleagues started chatting, and I couldn't attend, because driving.  The high school was in the middle of a lock down drill, but they allowed me to come in and drop off the ear plugs.

I stood outside the high school and pondered the absurdity of it all.  Elder asked me "What's the point?" as I was driving him to work.

What's the point, indeed.

 

Cloud

 So I woke up yesterday at 4:30 am in the deepest darkest hole I've been in since about 2005.

It was the morning of younger's IEP meeting. Also of the panel that elder was asked to join at the last minute.

Down there in the pit with me was all the unspoken accusations, that I didn't do enough for either kid, that I sold them both short and down the river, that I'm not doing anything to help my partner, that I'm no use to anyone at all, really, so why bother?

Fortunately, he woke up right about then and put all that to bed.

But that didn't stop me from dreaming that someone walked away with my mom bag and everything in it (in short, my whole life.  I was chasing after it when I woke up). The whole chasing thing got me out of bed to make sure my bag was where I left it (it was).

But I had other hoops to jump through. Things went a little sideways job-wise and all the static from the night before magnified what would otherwise have been just a nuisance and nothing worth trifling about. Come to think of it, I have had a whole lot of that this week--outsized reactions to minimal bumps.

Trauma will do that to you.  Someone drew a cartoon that aptly describes the thing.

So, yeah. That.

The meeting went fine; younger has his way forward and needs to keep doing his thing. We have a teachable moment with his job, W-2s and all that good stuff that we set to have tomorrow. Elder did his panel, and that went fine. His conversations with his transition coordinator could have gone better this morning. I went down to investigate.

The usual. The anxiety.  The disability. He's freaking disabled, but we can't get the system to see that.  It's almost as funny as having to reapply for benefits every year to prove both guys have autism--I mean, it's not like the autism goes away, but here we are, year after year, proving the proven,

I went down and vented my spleen...again...still...and I saw him tear up. And he apologized.  

And went right back to what he was doing. 

So that might be part of my black hole. For a hot minute it looked like he might lurch forward.  But, he slid back, making excuses, I guess excuses on the face of it, but maybe there's more to it than that. (Isn't there always).

Hubby and I are at capacity.  Not sure what's left for either of us to do. 

Orange Crush

 Had this whole weird word association going on in my head with a wren outside singing accompaniment. If you expect this to be about soda or REM, now's the time to move along.

Orange has never been a preferred color, and crush can apply to a few things. Like crushing something, really excelling, or being crushed because something fell apart or went sideways, or didn't go the way you expected.

I associate orange with elder and Kindergarten. In many of the pictures of that time, he is wearing an orange shirt. And for the longest time, Texas Orange was his color of choice--he liked the way he looked in it, and it suited him. I try not to fall down these rabbit holes, but there's something in the 2005 timeframe that keeps trying to get my attention. Not surprisingly, lots of things fell apart around that time.  But I survived it, so maybe that's good enough and I leave it there. 

(Younger was never orange. He was red.)

Over the weekend I was reading back in the earlier days in the blog and was a little (not much) surprised at how prescient some of them turned out to be.  I don't chalk that up to great psychic ability, just a keen eye and ear (and fact that I prefer to listen and observe to talking, anyway). I'm also amazed at how far we've come, how all those little wins a long time ago parlayed themselves into bigger successes.

But all things being equal, we had our own devastations and heartbreaks. We're all about duct taping ourselves back together and getting back to it, hopefully doing a better job the next go-round.

I think of some of the things that other families in our shoes have achieved. I am wildly happy for them.  Inasmuch as I can, I have been cribbing from other people's playbooks wherever I can and wherever it made sense, to good effect. But in the end, we have what we have, and we need to make that work. And there's no known script for that, except for the one we are writing and re-writing as we go along. 

And the reckoning of exactly *how* autistic I am has been a bit challenging. Make no mistake, in some ways it has been an incredible asset, but in others, man, I am lucky to be alive from my own lack of common sense. I need to let the boys figure out their own stuff, but man, it's hard sometimes to sit on my hands and watch and furthermore, keep my damn mouth shut when they are trying to parse something on their own. I keep forgetting that whatever I faced is going to look different for the both of them, and whatever each of them face is going to look different for each of them, because they are two totally different people with differences in their operating systems that can't be reconciled into one "tried and true" path.

Does anyone have that, anyway?  Literally the only person I know who ever grew up to be exactly what he wanted to be when he was 13 is my husband.

So the rest of us kinda fall short like that.

Younger's IEP meeting is Wednesday.  We have a plan and a way forward, but I am nudging him to start thinking beyond the next two years. Elder is having a problem many of his contemporaries--regardless of neurological state--are having with regard to planning a life and a future.  And I am finding that the best way to manage the both of us during this time is with grace and compassion.  I'm going to figure out my work arounds to make a way forward for him. 

We did a little geocaching earlier for the first time in a year.  We'll move forward, a little at a time. Progress is progress, no matter how small. 

The Awful Rowing Toward Adulthood

 I can say with a fair amount of certainty that this includes me. 

I'm sitting here triaging my to do lists, and all of my activities are nonpreferred ones. I pulled out some of elder's Sudoku books and am trying my hand at them, since somehow working puzzles helps me process stuff I need to process, and the crosswords aren't challenging enough. 

Elder can solve a sudoku as quickly as I can solve a crossword and assures me that "I am doing fine," even though it takes me about four times as long as something it takes him less than 10 minutes to do. 

Can we monetize that?  For real?

He's struggling, too.  I need him to figure out what he wants to do and do it; right now, he is working two part time jobs that are, at best, really part time.  Part of the to-dos is to get him to sit down and start exploring his options. His main goal is "to stay out of trouble."  That's a virtual guarantee if you do nothing. I literally don't know what to do. 

Younger, meanwhile, is doing his thing, has some really long days this month because of bowling and indoor back to back.  He's in a cheerful mood despite not getting his very specific pizza on Monday (put off for another time) and just going forth and conquering in his inimitable quiet way. The dual enrollment thing is a huge win, but as per usual, he is not impressed. 

And I'm still just clearing out. Literally and figuratively. 'nuff said. 

We will get there.

Hard Stuff and Heavy Lifts

 Some things don't take a lot of time, but they do take up a lot of emotional space.

I had a couple non-preferred tasks that needed doing for weeks, and I finally sat down to do them. All told, I dispatched all tasks in less than 30 minutes, but it took me half a month to be able to do them. 

Whyizzit?

I think space has a lot to do with it. The space I am using as my office isn't conducive to doing some of the harder, non-preferred stuff. It really needs to get cleared out, but it's mostly hubby's stuff, so I don't feel like I have the agency to do what I'd like with it (read:  donate it or otherwise make it go away).

But I dragged out the lapboard and brought the other puter down and set myself up alongside younger on the couch.  He made pancakes this am (day off) and wants me to take him on a quest to revisit some childhood memories and take him out for very specific pizza.  Weather will probably mean we're sitting tight and we'll probably watch some of Elder's latest obsession together. 

One of the hard things was returning a call to someone I have been avoiding a few weeks, because I knew it wasn't going to go well.  She alternately praised, scolded, lambasted, lamented and cycled through these things about a dozen or so times.  I'm stuck. She doesn't agree with me, and I don't agree with her. But, I can't disagree; I hmm noncomitally, but it's pretty clear we are not in agreement. Hence the scolding and lambasting. 

But it's a 15 minute or so call, and I live through it, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

It took me 3 weeks to make it, though. I dread phone calls and don't like unpleasant ones all that much.

But there were other things to do;  Dad and Elder are taking down the lights and younger is now officially in enrolled in community college, earning credits for some of his senior year course work.

This was something I literally did not see coming. 

Woot.  I think we may have another reason to celebrate.....

You Will Dream New Dreams.....

 So, just got back from an evening out.  One of my work friends invited me to a friend's house about a month ago.  A bunch of folks about our age get together every Friday night in some guy's downstairs lair, which has two competition dart boards and a fully stocked bar.  We order pizza, talk, and throw darts. They are a great bunch of folks; I'm finding as they try to teach me to throw that they have an abundance of patience.

I threw a bulls eye tonight. Twice.

And we could literally stumble down the hill of the golf course next door to get home if we had to. 

The boys don't mind us going out--in fact, they kind of like the house to themselves for an evening. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about my ladies group that meets at the brewery once a month; that's been happening since June, and on any given evening, I never laugh as hard as I do with these ladies.  It's just fun---good conversation with good people, and oh yeah, the beer.....

I spent decades building my village, and the years flew by because I was raising my boys, and there was always, always, always things that needed doing, goals that needed to be met, fires that needed to be put out. I sped along, because life did, and I did my best to keep up.

But as I told the ladies in November, after that emotional championship weekend, it's a good thing to pause and enjoy the triumphs when they happen. I echoed that in my presentation earlier this month. The best thing about savoring these moments is sharing them with others.

I'm playing with the idea of joining a bowling league. Just for fun.

Once upon a time, many of these things were impossible; that hubby and I could go out on a date, maybe do an overnight or two (and we did, twice, pre-COVD, two overnight stays I won at separate silent auctions).  Yet, here we are.   We have the occasional speed date when both boys are otherwise engaged. We have friends now to hang out with and do things with.

We take the date car out for rides.  We need to do more of that.

I thought those times were long over. They were only on hiatus.

It feels good to....be.

Latter Day Uses of the Photographic Memory

 I have a photographic memory, which made me an exceptionally lazy student in nonpreferred school subjects. I didn't give any more time than I had to in memorizing facts for a test (so that stuff could be cycled out of my ROM for more interesting things).  But I did make it a point to actually LEARN the stuff I was interested in, not for any greater good so much as my own interest in whatever it was I was obsessed over at the time. 

To some extent, both boys share some flavor of this. Elder is more me, here--he was a rock star academically because he could learn the stuff for as long as he needed to know it.  Younger, on the other hand, comes by his knowledge honestly--he's a slow processor, but he uses this to his advantage in that he is a thorough learner. He might not get the grades, but you can bet he's mastered the material. 

As one person helpfully pointed out to me, schooling isn't everything; how can you translate any academic success into real world success?  What can you actually do to monetize it, to make a living?

Let's break the monetizing and making a living down, shall we?  On the surface they seem the same, but they are actually two completely different ideas if you dig a little. Monetizing means making money. Making a living could and to some does mean the same thing. Lately, I see making a living as making a life.

And making a life is at least as important as making a living.

What does having a photographic memory have to do with either thing? Actually, not much with the former, but yes, it can mean the world for the latter.

Back in the day, hubby used to tell me I could have been a lawyer for the amount of recall I have for conversations, actions, events and my ability to spit particulars back out at crucial instances.  Both my kids actually share this ability--which is a great party trick, btw, but what does one DO with this? In the present day, my mindfulness exercises are bringing me to particular moments in time that parallel things happening in the present day. At first, this getting knocked sideways in time was disconcerting at best, scary at worst.  What the hell did this mean? Why were these things coming back?  Am I haunted?  

Then I started blogging on some of the things, and whatever I wasn't blogging about, I was talking about; I was processing in the explanation and communication, but what was I processing and why did I need to process it?

Where I am landing is simple; the time frame I keep landing in is contemporary with the ages of both my boys; I can argue that I was more autistic than my older guy at the same age. He is infinitely less tone deaf than I was at the same age. While I was more "out there" than he is (but let's get real, COVD wasn't a thing then), man, the sheer carnage of relationships that crashed and burned for me at that time is infinitely greater than whatever he's done in his entire lifetime up to this point. Professionally, he already puts me to shame, having been at both his jobs five years now (while I have lost count of all the gigs I had in the same time frame); personally, what he lacks in numbers of peeps in his life, he more than makes up for the lack of quantity in the quality of the folks he has in his corner. 

Where the memory kicks in;  I do remember all the details, even the cringe-worthy things.  The beauty of looking back with what I know now teaches me what I did wrong; moreover, it teaches me where others went wrong.  Not everything was all my fault; and knowing this helps me heal. 

I'm not saying that my going back in time is going to fix whatever needs fixing, but I finally have an understanding for some of the whys and how I need to deal with things in the present day and do a better job of it.  And I get to use some of these lessons as teachable moments for both kids. Here's where I could have done better; here's where others could have done better.

So important, because we tend to internalize everything and blame ourselves for everything that went wrong.  It's important to acknowledge (and atone, where necessary) for your mistakes, but it's just as important to acknowledge that what other people said or did to you is 1) not your fault and 2) might not have anything to do with you at all, anyway. How people treat you is more about them than it ever was about you. 

And blogging about all this stuff might help a person or two accept themselves, understand themselves, and maybe help turn things around. 

I'm here to help.  And my kids are here to help me (and sanity check me, because as I said, their memories are at least as good as mine).

Support and Validation

 Having another parallel past and present moment.

So it's 23ish years ago, and I am at a baby shower. (the fact that I can even remember being at a baby shower is hilarious for many reasons, but anyway). I am, at best, a decent acquaintance of the guest of honor; this means that I know perhaps two or three other people in the 25 or so odd people in the house.

I'm remembering exactly two. For context, back in the dark ages before children we had a group of friends we ran with--these were hubby's people.  Things went fine until I ran afoul of a friend of a friend, who made my life miserable with the women of the group. One of those women were there; the other was the person who hubby and I had to prove ourselves to time and again. And under these circumstances--where she knew the other person as well--she chose me I suppose as the lesser of two evils. 

The other woman seemed fine on her own, chatting up the MIL and other relatives, so I didn't give any of it a second thought. 

Until one of the husbands (whose wife wasn't even at the shower and whom OW would have hung out with) quietly chewed me out later for "not supporting" her.

I didn't quite know how to say at the time that no one was supporting me.  Maybe I did.  I can't remember how the rest of the conversation went, but I remember feeling a little annoyed that I needed to treat that lot better than they ever treated me. And this was one of many episodes, for which the present day me would have stuck around for maybe one before cutting the whole crew loose. (and the fact that hubby doesn't even want to talk about these people tells me he feels some of this, at the very least).

There's way too much here to go into in one sitting, but this kind of goes back to being told by FOO and other people closer to me that I "bring things on myself."

It's worth mentioning that the thing I brought on myself that cascaded into a whole bunch of crazy was me getting the person I ran afoul of a job as a favor to the "unsupported" lady, who promptly turned on me and turned my whole department and this particular group of friends against me.

But again, I was the "problem."

This whole gaslighting thing runs deep. 

So how I got here is that a whole support and validation story is happening now, and I just don't wanna.  Don't wanna participate, don't wanna engage, don't wanna do any of this stuff again. The one blessing of autism is that whole raft of people mentioned above cut loose pretty much as soon as autism became a spoken thing.  Fair weather friends and all that. 

Past is indeed prologue. 

You can do BIG things Part II

 So something happened that deserves its own air time.

Elder earned his driver's learner's permit.

It wasn't a slam dunk; this was his third attempt. The first time, I dragged him there just to see how he would do. He did the online practice test and declared himself ready the same day he earned his associates degree.  I envisioned a double win that day and was as disappointed as he was devastated he didn't pass (I hid it, reassuring him that the associates was good) (Dad meanwhile devised another carrot, because he is a genius).

So all last week elder asked me when could we go so he can test again.  Finally on Friday, I had a window, and we drove out in the afternoon. It was windy, cold, snow on ground, but dammit, he was going to do it. 

We took our number and waited. He confessed he was a nervous wreck, and that he might not pass, but I assured him he did the work, so if he took his time, he'd do fine.  The nice young woman at the counter echoed what I said and assigned elder his computer. I went back to the waiting area, and waited.

I heard him calling me. He was red-faced and waving frantically at me. I thought he failed, but he was smiling and barely containing his glee. I hastened over to him and he hugged me whispering "I passed! I passed! OMG I passed."  He was overwhelmed, tearful, and triumphant. Also, he couldn't believe it.  He didn't think it was possible. And that's what COVD has done--among other things.

He signed off, paid his fee, and now the clock starts on his on-road training. Younger is now making noises about getting his permit. The goal is licenses for both this summer. 

Game on.

It's a Snow Day

 Which means it's like Christmas morning, and even elder, who sleeps in til noon, was up at the crack of smack. 

Well, no, dawn had well past broken, it was coming on 8 am, and I slept in way late for me.  And I knew the level of groggy I was feeling was going to guarantee that both kids would be up immediately, both demanding something.

I wasn't wrong. Elder was up first, asking when I would take him to the DMV to try the permit test again....

...followed by younger, demanding pancakes.

And I hadn't even put the coffee on yet.

So I did what any other sane person would do: told younger to get his gear together to make pancakes (he knows how; he doesn't need me, but he wants me in the kitchen while he's doing the thing); elder, I ordered him off his bullshit to go get dressed and shovel the walk.

"Will you pay me?" he asked

"If I don't have to redo it, I'll think about it," I answered. "And do ours before you ask Miss Gwen to do hers. And don't embarrass either of us by doing a bad job, if you do."

He grumbled, but off he went. Younger meanwhile had pancake production under way and was doing just fine. I took a moment while the coffee was brewing to do my dry eye regimen that's been my life twice a day since March. (and it's worth pointing out that I always get distracted from doing it because of this or that momhood stuff--I'm making a point of doing all the self-care and self-maintenance I need to do, and employing them both means I get to do that)

I had to leave younger to it to tend to work stuff, and he was fine, it was fine.  Elder was out working a good hour and did a decent job on our walk and a better job on Miss Gwen's, which is fine, I would rather he do the better job for someone else, but would like even more if he put the same kind of care in everything he does.  But we're working on that.

I dunno. Just felt a weird sense of accomplishment I haven't felt in a bit. 

EDITED TO ADD:  Elder passed his driver permit test today.  Quite an accomplishment.

Epiphanies, existential angst, and other ephemera

 I had a moment this morning in front of the Christmas tree that brought me right back to my second grade desk. Damn these mindfulness moments.

So there I was, head on desk, ear pressed to the wood. The teacher is talking, but I'm not following the lesson. I'm focused on the fact that my ear pressed to the desk is not unlike pressing my ear to a seashell and hearing the ocean. If my name is being called, I'm not hearing it. I tap the desk with my fingertips, the sound reverberating through the wood.  I lift my head and notice the tapping is just that...and not the thunderous thing I just experienced with my ear to the desk.

This kind of explains my grades that year. My dad had died right before school started, and the funeral was on my first day, so I missed it. Except in my head, my dad wasn't dead--I hadn't gotten there yet, wouldn't get there for another couple years.  He was just...elsewhere. 

And then I'm back, looking up at the tree, pondering what constitutes reality, whether I am real or a figment of someone's imagination, and there I am again in that snake eating its tail moment in second grade.

I'm not sure where these thoughts and exercises are taking me. Some of the stuff coming up lately I haven't considered in years. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to gain by any of it. Perspective?

Not for nothing, things have changed. I'm in a new position with a new company learning all the things, and I am finishing up my last quarter with the nonprofit. I had a presentation that went well--better than I expected, and have had some good conversations over the last couple of days. The stuff that used to get my anxiety amped up is barely making a dent, which is kind of strange, but I'm happy for the relative peace.  The kids are all right. Gotta get elder off his carrot, but I won't do that over night. Younger asked me to watch a movie with him the other night; and since he doesn't ask me to do much with him any more, I jumped on the chance. And it was a nice evening spent with him.

"Won't you cuddle with me, mom?"  he asked this literally every night until some point in middle school. And I did, because he's the baby and because I wanted to hang onto that as long as I could. I read Ungifted and Moby Dick to him--those were the last bedtime stories, and I stretched out Moby Dick, because I knew that was The End.

Ah.

Part of my presentation today talked about planning for the future. The moderator talked about the constant planning, the next thing, the next thing, and I stopped her: "Be sure you stop and savor the accomplishments," I reminded them. "You get wrapped up in the next goal, and the next goal, and while it's all gotta get done, give yourself a moment to savor what you did."

"And thank your village," the moderator put in.

"Always," I agreed. "You get together to talk about what's wrong, you need to get together and celebrate what went right. Because that's everyone's win."

We all need to take a moment. Or as many as we need. 

Photograph

 Today's writing prompt popped up unbidden in my head earlier today. Just a visual--no sound other than the echoes in my head.  There exists a picture somewhere of me, age 12, wearing a sports uniform, hair wild, red-faced, tear-stained. There's a male, back to camera, standing over me, arm raised. The setting is my mother's kitchen.  I'm cornered, literally no way out. 

One of my sisters took the picture. I saw the flash of her instamatic camera go off, and even though I was already in a rather disastrous state, apparently there was still room to bottom out. I remember screaming at her, and she and my brother laughing at me. I don't remember what happened next, but apparently I got out of that alive. 

I saw that picture exactly once before it disappeared. And I remember thinking that I felt exactly like that, how I looked, in that moment. 

It's probably one of the only extant pieces of evidence that what happened, happened. Maybe that's why it vanished. 

I hadn't thought of that moment in decades, which is why I'm surprised it came up while I was doing a mindfulness exercise, of all things. Then again, the level to which I've been exorcising all the demons guaranteed that moment would surface, eventually.

What happened?  Nothing that hadn't happened hundreds of times before, except that somebody caught it on film that time. No one enjoyed pushing my buttons like he did, and it took me decades to bring my reactions down to a point where he didn't have that power over me, anymore. 

Oddly, about 30 years or so after that particular moment, we were gathered, and he tried to do it again.  I can't even remember what he said, it was just a carefully calibrated comment to make me snap. 

I was able to recognize it for what it was, and responded coolly. Again, don't remember what was said, just that my response was not the one intended.  He told me then to calm down.  I put my head to one side and informed him I was calm. He told me to calm down again. I laughed and walked away, shaking my head. 

By that point there was a lot of water under that particular bridge, and I had more important shit to deal with. 

Running parallel with this line of memory was a breakup. Actually, two of them--but the voices are as one, telling me that I am only looking for an excuse to break up with them. And both times I shrugged and said I didn't need one, but I was, nevertheless, breaking up with them. 

I'm conflating stuff again--not sure what one thing has to do with the other. Except that maybe, the stuff that went before made it possible for other abuse to happen....that I deserved whatever I got.

It is connected.  Fortunately, I was able to break the cycle. 

Meanwhile, elder is coming in here holding forth about all the ways his rights as an elevator enthusiast have been violated over the years by various school administrators.  Both of us licking our wounds in the relative quiet.  I am trying to stifle the urge to tell him to do something more useful, since I'm pretty much doing the same thing he's doing, except I'm a lot quieter about it.

In the present time, he's stuck. I don't know how to unstick him. 

I've been going through more things and cleaning out in between; have another box and contractor bag ready to go. Hoping to get another bag or two together before dropping elder off at work. 

Maybe also another box or two.

Amended to add:  I sat with this a little while today. Probably the most resonant thing in all this is that my sanity was always the thing called into question. I've been called some variant of crazy more times I think than my given name has ever been used. I'm having a quiet laugh over the people who have told me that they hope I get the help I need. Ironic. I am recovering from PTSD and who caused it has no apologies but a boatload of allegations of how I continue to aggrieve.  Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an actual thing, and I am getting the help I need to recover from being a target of abuse. 

It's 1/1/22

 Yay, now we're well into a new era of roaring 20s. I don't know yet how they stack up against the previous century, but I sense I am not alone in this.....

Did a little more driving/thinking today, still trying to figure out what I'm missing or looking for. Lots of birds today (woodpeckers were the bird du jour), but it's worth noting that elder is looking up and pointing out raptors to me in our travels. 

Don't know what I am shooting for here, other than getting both kids to just PAY ATTENTION to all the things. I see the raptor thing as an important step.

And not for nothing, there was a peregrine falcon at eye level with me the other day.  He was sitting in the tree, trying to blend, and didn't like me reaching for my phone and flew off. 

I want to believe things will get better. The world is in a very weird place.