Wade-ing In

So this sucky summer. So sucky. So very, very sucky.

And still.

Every day comes, and like it or not, I get out of bed. To mayhem, to bedlam, to Daddy's-been-wrangling-this-crap-for-going-on-three-hours-already, but what's a girl to do?

I wade in.

Reluctantly, sometimes tearfully, often fearfully, but nothing to do but go through. Through this sucky, sucky summer. Patch the pool. Change the diapers. Break up the fights. Lose the keys. Lose the autistic kid (okay, only once, and he was in bed asleep, so there)

And I am not much in the morning. Not much at all. I used to sleep, oh, years ago, but time and worry, dearth of morphine receptors and a Rasputin-esque resistance to sleep aids has stripped me of good sleep. So I am not much in the morning until well into the afternoon.

Very often, there isn't much to see. Much worth looking at, more like it. My boys, all mine, all very me, are Coke, Milk, and Orange Juice. Separately, they are fantastic. Together, rather difficult to swallow. And OH, Autism wears us down every minute of every day. My poor sons, paying individual prices for what autism rains down. My poor marriage, my poor husband, paying in time and touch, nurture and need. My soul, sold, in it's tattered entirety for better or worse, but for a therapy that is working as provided from a brilliant, good, honest person with lots of letters after his name who took another hourly fee cut that I wasn't supposed to know about. Everything is HARDER. Everything is RISKIER. This is mostly, almost exclusively the case.

But.
Everything is not what it seems. (total caveat: sometimes) I've said it before--that which we take for granted in our typical kids, typical lives, those moments, those achievements, those brief lights, they are elevated to Andrew Lloyd Weber-like miracles. Joys. (e.g., "he used an abstract pronoun just now! did you hear it? I heard it! He made a request and used an abstract pronoun and he totally gets the concept!"
And that was just yesterday.

Today, my husband admitted that yes, he'd made the right choice for our marriage, but that the outcome sucked. Seems his mother (and don't get me started) doesn't think there's much to be done for my glorious face-of-God-son, so she's not interested in helping out with the 32k in therapy costs. The less than 8% my husband told her we needed. She "might need a new water heater next year."

Oh.

Like I said, don't get me started. She will have to explain all this to Jesus at some point, and so I must be satisfied with that for now.

So you see, Wade, my friend, my fourth grade friend, I am witness to mostly extremes, I think. My marriage, a great worry for a bit, will be fine, and oh, I am so very grateful for the gift that is my husband and his love, but I am incensed, horrified, pained, grieved, and supremely pissed off that his mother, any mother, any human, could play a part to deny my son's future because the possibility of a faulty water heater next year. I know that she is very broken and that my husband is very lucky to have salvaged himself, and I know that this is not how the story will end for my most red-headed son, so I tell you that these are simply the extremes, the normals that come with those lessons I apparently missed in high school.

And forgiveness? what do I know of that? I know that it comes in many, many forms and that not one of them involve forgetting. Guess I'll have to wait for it, because I am so not feeling it now, but I know that this thing we call forgiveness, our way, not God's, is for our benefit. I will be better for having learned to do it. When I learn and choose to do it. I'll choose. Makes me feel superior.

Autism? I hate it. Hate it. But it has made me stronger. Tougher, even. Essex Girls not tough enough, eh? Try Essex Girls who have sweet redheaded boys who have autism. Tough Bitches, we are. But true to what is necessary and what is sweet and what is bullshit.
And we don't mix them up. Ever.

Wading in, whining always, wanting out, all just a part of Havoc and Shine.

Thank you for every time you listen.
xhxhL