Having a bloggable moment, and I'm hoping to find sanity and maybe even a sense of humor by the end of this post, because right now I'm a miserable bitch and out of my mind nuts, trying to recover from a combination of rage and remorse befitting a death-row inmate. I can only go up from here, or let's hope.
It came in two phases, and phase one wasn't so bad. Calvin and I were upstairs together, me putting away clean laundry, Cal puttering around with his trains. But by and by he wandered into the master bath and assumed the stance I know so well. He had to see a man about a horse if you know what I'm saying. And while his business still happens in a diaper, there's stuff he'd rather do behind closed doors. Of course I respect that (who wouldn't), so when he did his usual thing of shoving me gently enough out the bathroom door and closing it behind him, I said, ok, I give you five to ten minutes and then I'm coming in.
Because if you know anything about kids with autism, you know they display certain, let's just say tendencies when it comes to their sensory needs, and that can mean a terrible outcome when it comes to the contents of a diaper. Enough said. Really.
And another thing you know if you know anything about kids with autism is that many of them have bowel problems, from one end of the spectrum to the other--going all the time in torrents, going hardly ever until it's like passing the Hope Diamond. That's more than enough detail on that front, but I will tell you that Cal is on the Hope Diamond end of things, so I don't like to mess with him too much when he assumes the position. I think you're getting the picture that it's a tenuous balancing act.
Well, you know how balancing acts go, sometimes your way, sometimes not. Today was pretty much a not. Five to ten minutes was too long, and when I walked through the door I found my little Picasso making an intricate design on the stone tile floor from his Pampers pallette using two of my make-up applicators and my poor husband's toothbrush. An impressive everloving mess if ever I saw one.
But, dear readers, you would have been shocked and proud at the calm that came over me. I became Carol Brady, Donna Reed, and June frickin Cleaver rolled into one.
Oh baby boy, it's ok, we'll clean this all up, here we go, into the tub, I know you're a little cold, let's turn up the heat and get the warm water really going here, yes I know you want the toothbrush back but it's yucky, so sorry, I know, it's just not fair, Mommy's got you, little guy...
And on and on like that, I was so sweet I hope I didn't give him cavities, but that was really my vibe. Went with the flow, cleaned up the kid, cleaned up the floor, load of laundry going, all's well that ends well.
Yeah, you know I'm so not done.
And neither was the boy. And the part that really makes me want to just run screaming through the streets until the medics come to get me is that I KNEW IT. Again, I'll spare too much detail, but when you're cleaning them up sometimes you can tell by the state of things down there that there's more to come. I knew to be on the alert for round two, I knew it. Maybe it's a deep-seated psychological mechanism of self-sabotage for writing material. I don't know, I just do not know.
It was less than a half-hour before one of Cal's teachers was due to arrive. He was sparkling clean, merrily merrily merrily merrily chugging his trains along his awesome toy train table. There's my laptop across the room full of work to be done. I say to myself, self, why not get started, just do some easy stuff, print out those documents, double-spaced for editing, quick little task that you can do and still keep an eye on things round here.
I know, you're trying to figure out if that lingering naivete is endearing, or if it makes you want to slap me upside the head.
But here's the deal, people, the work has got to get done, and time (and time-management for that matter) never seem to be on my side. Here I am with a freelance gig in front of me, an opportunity to actually work for money that's appeared like an oasis in a desert of haven't-been-hired-to-do-squat. Sometimes that means steal a minute here, five minutes there...
So I'm sifting through files on the computer, I'm formatting text so that it's nice and readable, I print out a few documents, nice and easy...and then I saw it. In a microsecond, out of the corner of my eye. I saw the hand coming out of the diaper, saw it schmearing across the awesome train table, saw that his clothes and his fingernails were already beyond salvaging, just ten goddamn minutes out of the bathtub. And then, of course, the additional microsecond it took me to cross the room was another eternity where the damage just about quadrupled. It's amazing. He must use quantum mechanics.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. And shame on me is right. Because now the lovely combination Donna Reed, Mrs. Brady, and June Cleaver were in freefall, probably in a group suicide pact, and all that was left was...well whatever it was, it wasn't pretty. So enraged, so frustrated. So ridiculously angry at this child of mine, who does what he does and is what he is, and is perfect by the way (prejudiced though I may be, if you've met him you know it's true). And for what? For messing up my already Everloving Mess?
I don't even know what came out of my mouth, but I know the tone of it, some of it spoken, some of it just vibrating and crackling in loud thought, but all of it venomous and rancorous and ugly:
I can't believe this, how can it be happening, only minutes out of the tub are you SERIOUS, why, why, why!!!! How can you do this to me????? Does anybody wonder why this place is a disgusting cesspool of filth and I can't get anything done, I mean WHO can succeed at THIS?!?!? Who masters THIS?!?!? March march march to the bathroom, soap and water, nail brush, rougher than necessary, march march march, another diaper, another set of clean clothes. Lay him down on ANOTHER clean towel to do this all again, again, again, again, your teacher will be here in ten minutes, I have work to do, I have deadlines, I need to make money, can't you see that if I don't get this work done we'll have to give you and your sister to Brangelina to raise while your parents eke out their pitiful existence in a tent city for chrissakes?
Nice, right? And it was worse than that, I cleaned up the language so as not to alienate some of you forever. Mother of the year, here I come. Take away my June Cleaver/Carol Brady/Donna Reed loving cup once and for all and strip me of all accoutrement, I deserve it.
But in the midst of my half-aloud/half-silent tirade from hell, something happened that stopped me dead. He looked at me. You should have seen the way he looked at me.
Wait a second, what the hell is this? He never seems to even notice my moods gone all wrong, it's usually like I'm not even there. Grace's barometer can sense it from a neighboring state when I plummet, but Cal never notices, seems blissfully unaware of any passing storms, just goes on with whatever's on his agenda, like burrowing his head into my belly button or arranging all his train cars in lines along invisible meridians in our house. Right? So why's he looking at me like that?
Like what?
His bottom lip quivered, his eyes filled up, his whole mouth pulled into that shape that can only mean one thing, that his heart's been broken. He's never done that before, not in response to someone's mood, someone's affect...no that's not true, not never, but not since before...before it all went away somewhere, when was it? Eighteen months old? Right around the time Mike noticed with some concern that he seemed "sad" somehow, and my mother wanted to know why he doesn't speak, and some of my friends gently prodded about when I might be thinking about calling that Early Intervention number? Some time between when he laughed easily and often at Gracie in the carseat next to him, or chased her on all fours around the playroom, and then didn't seem to notice her any longer? Between when he'd follow us around the room with his eyes and then stopped bothering? I swear, he hasn't reacted like that emotionally since...since before.
So what's this, then? A good sign? Emerging because I've managed to cause such sadness to a three-year-old innocent, my own child, that even his autism can't keep it off his face?
(I know, sometimes it just isn't funny, is it?)
But does it mean something else? Does it mean that the autism is shrinking? Is there a shift taking place? And it took my abhorrent behavior, showing the maternal softness of Lady Macbeth, to bring it to light?
I don't know. All I know is he looked at me, and I came to myself. I lifted him off the towel, cradled his shirtless, diapered, hunk of soft preschooler body into mine, and apologized from my heart into his soft, soft hair. Then I thanked any and all invisible listeners that might be hovering around for the honor and privilege of being this exquisite boy's mother, and promised to never ever make him have to look at me that way again. Let it be a wicked, dried-up fourth-grade teacher that does that to him, like it was for me, but not the one he's recently learned to call Mommy, clear as a bell.
And I assured him that going forward he can feel free to take a dump wherever and however and with whatever frequency he wants, I'm up for the job.
But that maybe we could switch to fingerpaints when it comes to the artistic expression end of things. Just a suggestion, that's all.
Amen.
