wonder in waiting
June 26, 2014 § 2 Comments
So much life occurs in empty moments of waiting. We fill the time between beginnings with choices that provide distractions and illuminate self. I watched my children navigating the airport yesterday and marveled at the differences between each child and the memories trapped in the congested busyness of familiar spaces.
My son turned inward from the noise and movement of our surroundings. He cocooned into stillness, preserving his solitude. His sister moved into his shadow, challenging his stagnancy. Nose and forehead pressed against the glass she watched the progress of the workers on the ground. Her stillness seemed to radiate movement, waves of curiosity and attentiveness merging with the current of strangers that milled around.
At first I worried that my son had hardened against the experience of traveling. My memory of his toddler form peeking on tiptoe through the same glass, enthusiastic tones of awe for the caravan of luggage that would caterpillar between metal birds was in sharp contrast to the curve of his torso as he bent into his reading. There was silence where once he created introductions and discovered friendship in the face of other children, sorting his surroundings and filling the empty chairs around him with questions.
It wasn’t until we settled ourselves into seats aboard our plane that I realized my son had not lost his eagerness to peer through the window or chase friendships; he merely gave up a place near the window to sit on the perimeter of old experiences. He still engages his neighbor across the aisle and creates his own distractions, but he has matured into an experience of expected restraint. It isn’t that his sister’s enthusiasm exaggerates his acquiescence, but rather mirrors the gift of his experience.
My daughter learned to look through the window by looking first to her brother. The evolution of each child’s experiences making me more conscious of how I assign placement within expectations and the importance of creating windows.
main characters & supporting roles
January 29, 2013 § 5 Comments
My daughter has been home, under the weather, our normal school day routines replaced with restful inactivity. Yesterday the hours passed quietly as she slept through most of the day. Today her eyes alert and body sleepy I picked up a book title we had recently begun eager to fill the hours of the day and curious to follow our story to its end.
We met our main character, the story’s narrator and a big sister to a little brother with Autism, in the quiet darkness of bedtime. That first evening my daughter’s face registered surprise and comprehension.
Mom, her brother is like mine.
Her words were not accusatory but rather a statement of self. Through the wall of her room came my son’s voice volleying an equally firm statement:
He is nothing like me.
Main characters in their own shared story I was determined to meet my children in the middle, supporting each of them with a neutral acknowledgment that similarities allow for differences. Both children accepted this fortune cookie truth with a sense of validation.
The second night that we read from the book, my son was quiet. There were no arguments or defensive proclamations of self to distinguish himself from the young man in our story. I wondered at his silence, but resisted an urge to draw out his thoughts and emotions. Instead I let the story unfold between the wall that divided my children hoping that each child might hear one another’s voice in a shared story.
Today I allowed the quiet of our empty home to give my daughter room to speak between the lines of the main character’s story. In recent years the weight of looking after her big brother has created an awareness of imbalance between my children. On the most difficult days her needs are sometimes misplaced in the chaos of her brother’s behavior. Curled away in her art she waits for us to complete a teaching moment with her brother, a lesson that all too often she, his junior, has mastered.
This story seemed to create an exaggerated sense of normalcy for experiences that sometimes leave our daughter sensitive to the differences between her story and her friends’ experiences. Despite an unconditional love that binds each of us as family, there exists an unspoken subtext of secret wishes for simpler moments uncomplicated by needs outside our control. Even in the silence I could hear my daughter’s wish that her brother might out grow pieces of himself.
Today, without her brother listening in the dark from the other side of her bedroom wall, it was safe for my daughter to share words like embarrassed and angry without letting go of the word love. For just a moment, art imitated life, and we acknowledging our own stories as main characters with supporting roles.
hand in hand
June 27, 2011 § Leave a comment
Little things bring me infinite joy; like witnessing my children sharing a moment of friendship. My daughter slipped her hand inside her brother’s and his fingers wrapped around hers in response. A little thing. He could have let go, I would have understood, but he didn’t. I watched them together, heads bent in conversation, with a full heart. Like a child cautiously cupping a firefly, enraptured by the mystical flickering of light in the dark, I held my breath careful not to break the spell.
love and truths
May 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
My daughter is ever mindful of her big brother’s movement through the day. From the beginning, she has followed him in the shadows of his distractions, monitoring his activities and interests with love and admiration. The comfortable span of four years between them, there has been little cause for comparison, until now. More socially attune to the world around her, she has begun to lead her big brother creating a new experience between them.
It began with physical cues. Her brother lost in his own thoughts, she would redirect him with a touch on his shoulder or the small of his back, naturally guiding him into a moment. Initially she seemed to respond to this need with joy; happily stepping forward and finding a place by her brother’s side.
Recently, my daughter’s voice filled with sadness, she asked me why her brother was born different. She catalogued the spaces between them and I felt my world tilt off course with the weight of consciousness underlying her questions.
As their mother, my heart ached for the answers. I found my way through a difficult language of love as I acknowledged my daughter’s needs and my son’s truths. We are all imperfect and in the understanding we sometimes find ourselves called to place our own needs aside in an act of love. I realized late, my daughter had set aside needs and was placing them carefully in my hands. Together we are filling in the spaces between our differences and caring for one another’s needs with love and truths.
tag along
March 27, 2011 § 1 Comment
When our son was four he eagerly anticipated the arrival of his baby sister. She was a peaceful baby, a quiet companion to her big brother’s active curiosity. She would silently accompany us in arms, carrier, or stroller through the course of her brother’s day from preschool to play. Our son would marvel at the sleeping tag along, waiting for her to wake, hopeful for the day she would play.
By the time our daughter was crawling, our son’s fascination turned to frustration as train tracks and Lego creations were in danger of demolition. Efforts to play were clumsy; our daughter noisily filling the space around her big brother. She spent her wakeful moments trying to find her place beside him.
At four years old our daughter would push between the older children, blocking her brother from harm. Like a beloved stuffed animal, she followed him everywhere unaware of danger, completely content to belong. Our son, aware of a shadow, could not remember a time before the sun fell on him casting a permanent companion.
This week at our daughter’s class play, our son slipped between our daughter’s friends and wrapped his little sister in a hug. He tagged along, finding his way soundly to his sister’s side. She looked at him, marveling in a moment of belonging, and held him tightly.
scribblechic 