Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Somebody Blinked

You know the pictures--grown-ups posed, children stilled, cameras click...

"Cheeeeeeeeeese!"
Hurray! That Haley's Comet Family Moment When Everyone Shines exists for all time and for all to see. Facebook it. Email it. Make prints for the Christmas card. This is concrete proof that you-and possibly,(but not likely, let's not kid ourselves) your siblings are just really quite fine.

Oh, but Hell--look again, a little closer. Maybe it's someone on the end. Maybe someone in the back. But Somebody blinked!

Ruins the whole shot. And, of course, there's no second chance because those people, in that moment, will never shine quite like that again. Parents will age. Marriages will falter. Children will sulk. Schedules will conflict. Grudges will sprout.

Sheesh. Family, right?
But maybe next year we could all... right?

See, I was part of a picture like that when we were on vacation this summer. So cool. All of us. My husband's extended family. People I haven't seen since, geez, our wedding, maybe. We had a vacation cookout and we told funny stories, and the kids were lunatics and then we took this picture by the pool. Everyone looks happily wind-tousled and sunburnt, the kids made goofy faces and I knelt behind Fuzzy (how else to keep him still?) and smiled, and waited for the six timers on the six cameras to go off.


But it was in that new and happy moment that I realized that my family would never have such a thing. We missed out big. There will never be that picture.

Somebody Blinked.

My family, my parents, my brother and sister and their spouses, the cousins, my kids, extra friend-along kids--I know now that I won't ever smile and wait for that flash. Not because I don't show up on film (although that's always my first excuse when I see a camera), but because, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, we lost our chance.
That smiling wind-tousled-by-the-pool moment passed by my family, as casually as salty breezes do, drifting past us to some other family, by some other pool,on some other vacation. And probably this family, this other vacation family, didn't have to research the number of doors, the depth of the pool, and where the fence ended for their autistic kid. And this other family probably didn't have to worry about Grandma stealing candy from Harris Teeter, or grabbing food off the grandkids' plates during dinner. This family, this let's-set-aside-our-differences-for-the-week-and-relax family, I'll bet they took lots of pictures.
I know I would. But then,that's because I know what we've lost in the last few years.
How it has changed us, hardened us, made us look away.
My dad tells me that mom is losing language entirely now. Agnosia. Part of the Pick's Disease Package. My mother, once so very quick-witted and gracious, is fading with the tangled fury of a late-summer rip-tide. There are no lifeguards and swimming parallel won't help at all, this I know.

My sister is silent in a different way. Her blind fury at me (and for what? how many goddamn times can I ask? you know I've asked at least that many times and then some) has silenced her and thus, she cannot, will not explain.
Gone.
And my brother, the only one who can and/or will make words into sense, had some thing, some infection, and almost died in the ICU not too long ago. . I didn't know. And I almost lost him. That suddenly. In the blink of an eye.


But there was this one time, tho, we planned to rent a beach house together, all of us.
A lifetime ago. Big Boy was not yet big at all. Fuzzy and LRHF were strictly conceptual in nature. My mother had only just begun to be a tiny bit lost, and my siblings seemed well and happy and tolerant, if nothing else.
But really? not so much. Because, you see, it was at that time that my brother, my gentle, true, bear of a big brother, broke a bit, took his loaded gun and prepared to end his life. Now,he did not. He managed to make the right phone call and get the right care. But it sure did put an end to the vacation plans. And it was the first sign, I think, that we would never, ever be that vacation family with the pool picture. The rest came so steadily, gradually, stealthfully. We learned our family secrets and learned that knowing them was almost, but not quite, as bad as hiding them. We became wary and careful with each other. Finally, we simply stopped. Stopped family-ing. No kidding.

So simple. One good picture, right?

What could go wrong? So quickly, so precisely, so mercilessly?
I surely didn't see what was coming.

I must have blinked.








Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Monday, June 7, 2010

500 Miles...Lord, I'm 500 Miles Away from Home

That's strictly an estimate regarding mileage and (handily enough) one of my favorite songs.

Vacation. Of sorts. 13 hour drive to unknown place with lots of glass doors, sand, and notoriously rip-current-y ocean, several days of arguing (I mean discussing) with spouse who should monitor LRHF (did I mention the private pool? and hot tub? and lampshades with glass beads on them?) and then the 13 hour drive back home to...the week-old catbox.

(Jealous yet?)

And no, of course, we could never afford this luxury. We're staying with family, very gracious family (which means not from my side), and we're all learning Very Important Lessons about vacationing with a special needs child. Am sure family is perplexed--am sure they assumed we, parents of special needs child, knew what we were doing, had taken some class in this, but this is our first vacation since before we had Big Boy, so we're um...no help at all regarding the special needs thing. No idea. Nada. Nothing. Yeah, he might make a break for it. Yeah, he could take out all 8 flat screen tvs...

(oooh, you might want to hide that. And that. Oh, and that.Just to be on the safe side, you understand...)

Then again, he might not do any of that stuff. LRHF could be totally cool. He's mercurial like that. Autism is mercurial like that. And of course, mercurial is not conducive to relaxation or fostering happy family memories.

So here we are.

Our very, very first family vacation. Maiden voyage of sorts. You know me, I never go. I stay behind to refinish floors and paint rooms and watch entire box sets of Dr. Who. And yet, here I am on vacation. With us. Part of us.

Scared of us.

And yet there is this one image that brings me and keeps me here in this fancy-ass glass-doored unknown. At some point on this day, my LRHF will see the ocean. And he will see the sand. And he will see where the two meet. And I do think, I really believe that this will be so very glorious to him that he will birdie dance himself into levitation.

So, as with so much, I am weak and scared of what I do not know. But, equally with so much, my son, my LRHF will be better than me. He will be unbridled glee and unabated wonder.

(of course, then we'll have to chase him and possibly call in professionals to lasso him right and proper, but then again, maybe not. We just don't know.)
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)