It's 5 o'clock in Nova Scotia

So I have a beer open and am enjoying it. :)

SO the boys and I were on a 3.5 mile geocaching adventure this pm.  Wow, it was a workout and a half. Even though the state is in shut down mode, the trails elder takes us to are very sparsely traveled and scenic.  Including a few pics from today's adventures. He found a presidential dollar in one of the caches and made some swaps. He's happy.

And so am I. Younger is hard at work, and we live to fight another day.

Scenes from Isolation

We're hanging in there. Getting out and hiking whenever we can, pretty much every day out geocaching and going a few miles. Also doing a lot of cooking and baking.

Online schooling also begins today. We'll see how it all goes.

Semi Feral

I'm finding this time of self isolation suits me just fine.

I'm not thrilled. I don't love it. COVD-19 is pretty fucking scary.  But we're already self-isolating, so as a collective, I think we are doing a collective exhale.

I'm listening to the boys talk between themselves, and I think this unexpected hiatus from having to figure out what is and what isn't socially appropriate, while not exactly convenient, has some unexpected silver linings.

Like not having to people.  Or keeping the peopling to a minimum.  We've been hiking in the woods and geocaching the last week or so, but now, with the new stay at home orders, we're limited.  I send them on their own around the neighborhood for walks (that "There's the mom and her retards" comment stinging all these years later) (No, I will not get over it. You don't call my kids or ANY kids retards. Ever.) I keep my sorties to the bookends of light each day to minimize my own contact with the world.

This unexpected hiatus in the everyday has given me a little time and space to reflect on my own autism journey. It wasn't all that long ago that my own gullibility led to someone claiming my work as her own, and then being gaslighted for it.  Led to decades of psychological abuse, only to have my sanity called into question. Goodbye. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

My younger guy's first job interview kind of brought me here unexpectedly. It didn't go great, but in this time of scary health crises, I'd rather him not being a conduit of this virus, either coming or going. But that aside, I had observed to hubby that the person who interviewed G was, and I quote, "a social clod."

So elder, who was on the other side of the house but has ears like a bat, materialized in the kitchen. "Mom, what do you mean social clod?  What does that mean?"

After dad and I busted his shoes for eavesdropping, we asked him what we possibly could have meant.  He shrugged, "I dunno, socially awkward, doesn't know what to say?  Makes social mistakes?"  We agreed that these things qualify, and he went back to whatever it was he was doing in another part of the house.  And I observed to hubby, "He's trying to figure out what we already know."  And in saying that, I realized that I came about all my knowledge about the social contracts in pretty much the same way--asking questions.

Except....I had a shit ton of relationships end because I violated some unspoken social rule and whatever friend had dumped me didn't have the time, patience or interest in our relationship to tell me what it was I did wrong. Or how I could have fixed it. So a lot of my knowledge came by making mistakes. Lots of them. Over decades.  The trail of carcasses stretches for miles over multiple jurisdictions.

Work, too. The same applies to work relationships and situations I had come across over my decades working (now in my 5th and counting, having been working in some way or other since age 11). I had to screw up an awful lot to learn all the things I know now.   I could probably fill a book. And maybe I should.

So even though I worry about these two and wonder if they will be okay and eventually find their way, I remind myself of everything that I needed to learn on my own, and am comforted in the fact that I am still here to guide them and coach them. And while I know they will both need to make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons, I also know that they won't be doing it alone.

They have us. And they have each other.

And that is a beautiful thing.

Outside, Looking in

This describes my whole life.

I've spent most of my life being neither this nor that.  I find it a bit of mixed blessing in that sometimes, it would be nice to be included, but most of the time, I'm just as happy not to be.

I didn't always find it thus. I've spent untold quantities of mental, physical and emotional energy raging at the machinery of social and professional circles (often with quiet demureness at the outside of the latter, but mental and emotional energy expended, nevertheless).

If I can get outside of my ego, though, it's been enormously to my advantage to be outside, gauging loyalties, strategizing my own (later, my boys') place(s) in the world. I see both boys playing the same game, studying the rules, then figuring out how to beat the world at its own game. It's hard wired into who we are.

Having the emotional struggles is something I can dispense with altogether. It's not convenient.  It gets in the way of clear thinking. And when that happens, I do exactly what I did in the fourth grade.  Stationed near the door, I would sometimes throw a pencil out of the classroom, steal out of my desk ostensibly to retrieve it, then perambulate around the school. It was a small school, a single hallway stretching down two levels of classrooms. But I would circuit up one set of steps, wander down the upstairs hallway, sometimes peering into the faculty lounge, meander down the front fire tower, then back up past the learning center and younger kids' classrooms, then slip back to my own classroom and my own desk.

I was only caught once all school year.

The school is closed now, as is the parish. I hear about my younger guy sometimes circuiting his much bigger school, comfortable in his own skin (and hair).  I see my older guy, recently disappointed in his own pursuits, trying to figure out his own way forward.

They have me to lean on. And I have them.

And together, we are inside. Looking out.

New Horizons

The best part of getting older is the realization that nothing is forever.

I used to worry a lot more about things that don't matter much in the grand scheme.  And I still tend to get anxious about small things. But distractability works heavily in my favor for the most part, since there is always stuff that needs to get done, phone calls that need to get made, and general stuff that comes from living the life on the edge of the spectrum.

Lately people tell me more than they think they are telling me--it's not the how much, but the what.  For example, elder's teacher all but came out and told me he's not hireable. He's certainly employable, but that whole autistic thing is going to get in the hiring way.

I know that. I knew that. I think back to the young lady I wanted to hire 22 years ago and how my boss at the time negated my hire.  The young lady who came in her place was a different kind of lovely (I called her Little Flower, because she was), but the other one, who was shy, had a limp, was certainly on the spectrum, haunts me because I wanted to give her a chance.

And likely my sons will find themselves in the same bind.

And here's the other thing;  I was not overwhelmed by the students chosen to rep at the open house yesterday. I wondered why Nic wasn't selected. Did he opt out?  He says so. I wonder if he talked himself out of wanting to partake. After all, is a young man on the spectrum what they want to represent them?  Well mannered or no, he's still not "normal" even though people hasten to assure me normal is not all that.

Normal gets you in the front door. I passed for normal my whole life, and I know that owning my own disability won't do me any favors because we're not living in that world.

Plus I'm old(er). That definitely doesn't help.

I need to devote my energies to helping my guys find their places in this world.  No one else is going to help.

Francesca

As I drove home from dropping elder off at one of his jobs, a half remembered dream from decades ago popped into my head and brought tears to my eyes.

In it was a little girl in a red velvet dress and her dad's big serious sad eyes. She was beautiful.

She was also deformed.

And when I awoke from that dream, I knew her name.

Francesca.

The child I lost.

Lifetimes ago, her dad and I lived on Long Island. He was a grad student, and I was working a dead-end job for the salary and the paltry benefits (but it didn't matter because eventually I was going to stay home and raise a family anyway--ha. I did eventually raise a family, but that's not how it played out. But I get ahead of this story.) One evening at dinner, I abruptly pushed away my plate.

He looked askance at me across the table. I said that the salad suddenly turned my stomach. Shrugged.  He asked if I could be pregnant. I laughed.  I was on the pill, I said.  We cleaned up dinner, and that was the end of that conversation.

Sometime later, weeks, sitting in my dead end chair at the dead end job, I doubled over in pain. Menstrual cramps times a hundred or so.  I didn't keep track of my periods in those days, as they were more or less regular and I didn't think much about anything healthwise, other than I could use to lose a few pounds (I laugh to think that now). I headed for the ladies, and hunkered down in a stall, waiting for something.

I waited. Daydreamed through the cramps. Listened to others come and go in the restroom. Eventually figured that I might be missed.  The pain eventually subsided. I casually glanced into the bowl.  Froze.  Stole another glance.  Then got down on my knees and peered into the bowl.

In it, was something pink and vaguely shrimp-like.  I stared, the reality of what I was seeing pummeling me. But I couldn't feel anything in that moment outside of shock--for the moment.

I'm not sure how long I knelt there. People coming and going, maybe remarking at the knees and heels out at the back of the stall.  I had a phone call to make, and looking back, I don't even think I had the wherewithal to find a quiet space to do it, this being before portable cell phones.

I don't remember the conversation, only sitting at the desk, the cubicle wall providing negligible privacy, and tucking all this away in a box in the back of my mind after.  As if she never existed.

The dream came later.

And the grieving came only after the birth of elder, when the magnitude of her loss really made itself clear. We'd already moved twice since then, but she came with us.

And after our third move, I heard elder laughing and chatting in the bright sunlight of the office on a winter's day.  He spoke, almost 100% of the time, in perfectly articulated yet completely scripted sentences.

But he was alone.  I was in another room. His brother was not yet born. And the conversation went on, audible, but not articulate to my ears a few rooms over.

Hey, N-, who are you talking to?

Raised voice:  My sister!  (and the quiet conversation continued)

It took me a couple beats to figure it out.

We have quite a few angels and household saints looking after us.  St. Francesca of Hauppauge is one of them.

The Rowing Endeth

So a few things happened this weekend that brought unexpected and welcome resolution.

Suffice it to say, stuff that usually remains buried and unspoken came out. Finally.

The greatest gift this holiday season has already been unwrapped in the form of a peace I have never known until now.

And now I know what it feels like.

This is the standard against everything else will be measured. 

Wishing you all an equal peace this season.