This is actually a post begun last year. I came across it just now, and was shamed by the optimism. Everything I wrote here is true. It just hasn’t happened for a while. By now everyone knows Owen loves plastic and trash collecting walks….
But what about when the great outdoors just doesn’t cooperate for walking? I can’t let the winter season pass without paying tribute to one organization that helps Owen keep walking no matter what the weather brings us. Our gym.
Owen enjoying the treadmill – He seems happier at a slight incline and 1.8 mph
Owen has his own membership, and can take a guest. The manager and staff of Planet fitness in Bowie have come to know him, and to know us through him, as people tend to do. After he walks for his 20-30 minutes, rumpling a piece of plastic (the plastic is important!) he is done. I might be able to get him to sit down on a weight bench and wait for me to do my shoulder exercises. Maybe. Then we might wander a few doors up to My Organic Market to select a treat. (Artfully dodging the Tootsie Roll bucket on the Planet Fitness counter.)
I’m not sure why Owen is willing to walk like this on a treadmill for me, but I’m glad he is.
Requisite plastic horde
The biggest challenge Owen has with using the gym is…us. Neither Edward nor I like going to the gym too much. We would rather work outside even in bad weather, which means Owen stands ignored (and frozen) while we rake or prune or weed or plant. And since dogs get left out of the gym equation, we are more likely to take that walk – even though Owen isn’t into it. But as I read this old post of mine, and look at the pictures, I am reminded of how valuable this gym thing is for Owen. How good to walk along and have me or dad standing there saying bravo.
He could use some more of that these days. Owen has been grumpy and difficult lately. He seems kind of explosive. I think the problem may be that the kindly man who is Owen’s one-to-one aide at his day program is not a good match. It is hard to say why these things happen – but individuals with disabilities are individuals, with tastes. Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there.
When Owen’s aide tries taking him to the gym, it doesn’t work at all. Owen ran away and ate Tootsie Rolls, the man wrote in the communication book, twice, he said. Owen came home with a big red ring of irritated skin around his eye. Owen walks nicely for me, and his dad, and for his sitter Kathie. It seems that being directed by this kindly older gentleman just irritates Owen. It may be mutual. Everyday lately he seems to come home pricklier and pricklier. What is it, I wonder? There so many possibilities. Is he bored? Not sleeping well? Constipated? Bothered by the weird winter? Allergies? Gut hurting from more garbage food grabbed on the sly? Luckily for Owen, the supervisors of his program are already on the hunt for a new one-to-one aide. And Owen’s mom has not given up on finding some kind of employment for him – everyone is happier when they have a job they have to do.
Meanwhile, maybe we need to get back to the gym. Movement can help most things feel better.
Yeah — Owen knows how to use the Big Red Stop Button too. Nothing like being in control of your own environment. Bravo Owen.
And thanks, Planet Fitness Bowie, for YOUR support and encouragement —
The night before I was to leave I woke at 3am, three hours too early. I wondered why. And wondered. Did Owen maybe need me?
A trip down the chilly hall revealed Owen up on his elbows in bed, also wide awake. Who knows why. Who knows why I knew, why I felt the psychic call (did I?) for help. Do we do it to each other?
Three hours it was bathtime, and Owen and I were both up again. Then away I drove.
To be a caregiver — whether of an infant, or a sick child, a person with intellectual disability, or one with an aging body, or a friend in need — is to allow yourself to be connected. Plugged in. To respond to need at unreasonable times of day, without rancor. Or preferably without rancor. Simply to respond, to do what needs to be done. This is pretty great spiritual practice for an independent, impatient so-in-so like me.
For the past days I have been out of reach of my Owee radar. I am sleeping very well every night. My daughter is filling my place and her father’s place, continuing her own lessons in caregiving that began early. Owen loves to have his siblings home, particularly when they are paying attention to him. I’m sure that is why I can relax so deeply. In that sense my Owee-meter is still at work – I know he’s happy.
Freya texts me that he has been speaking in his gravelly deep voice, making remarks on a theme:
“A giant ogre!”
“Fee Fie Foe Fum”
“Cookie robots!”
Even though at home it’s cold, an ice storm in fact, and I learn they have lost electric power, I feel confident Freya has reserves of humor and creativity to manage what she is thrown. For a few days anyway…although as I write these words down, I can feel my anxiety rising…it helps to remember that Edward will get back home before me.
When I am with Owen, my job as his caregiver is to tune in. When away, my job is to tune out. To set down the burden of him for a while. To let go — to forget him in fact. Both things are important, in their season…each difficult. Apparently.
Owen out for dinner – four forkfuls is better than one
Many friends and relatives have been very kind in supporting of my writing endeavors. But unknown to all, it is really the woman at the cash register of my health food store who keeps me writing. When in a slump, or distracted from my writing by life’s madness, sooner or later I know I will have to face her, as I send my groceries down the conveyor belt to be rung up and bagged.
“I haven’t heard anything from you for a while,” Sherrie admonished once.
Oh the shame. Keeping to schedules has never been a strength of mine.
The next time we met over the heads of kale and vitamin bottles, I mumbled something about it being pretty hard to find anything anything positive to write about Owen lately, he’s been difficult.
“Oh but you always do,” Sherrie smiled, warm, unapologetic. Sherrie is a big fan of Owen’s adventures.
I left fortified with better things than vitamin pills.
Surely every artist must have a Sherrie. That first person whom they know in no other way but through their art, the stranger who says those bolstering words, “I just love the way you write!”
Caring for Owen is a profound experience. As the last of his siblings returned to college this week, and Edward left for the west coast for the week on business, leaving Owen and me eyeball to eyeball, I am more conscious of the sweetness that Owen brings to my life than usual. And by that I do not mean the juice he splattered all over the floors yesterday cramming oranges into his mouth as fast as he could before I got downstairs to catch him. No, I mean something a tad more lofty. It has to do with seeing, with focus. Have you noticed that spiritual teachers seem to show up, disguised as the difficult people and the painful experiences of life? Then there seem to be other people, wonderful mentors who show up to help one digest it all, and prod us to do something useful with all we have learned. Owen has had his turn at both, though he seems to prefer the first role.
But today I want to acknowledge the woman behind the cash register. Without that prodding, the writing I do might never reach the light of day. Thank you, Sherrie, for holding my feet to the fire. And yes, I will get back to work.
For days and days and days… A.A.Milne, Now We Are Six
Owen has been sending me messages. He might not have a lot of language accessible, but he has his little ways. Which is probably why I found myself reciting this poem in meaningful tones. I am hunting for the toothpaste and find it, chopped. Photos of his siblings lie in a pile of cut pieces.
A few days ago Owen wouldn’t come down for dinner when called. I had to go upstairs, into his room, where he was bending over his collection of plastics in the big rolling drawer under his bed, chopping away. After a peaceful dinner together, when he seemed finished eating, I cleared the food away, and sunk down exhausted to watch a movie. I invited him to join me. But Owen didn’t go for The Fisher King with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. While I was absorbing the bizarre plot, he stood outside the kitchen reaching across the counter eating more and more of the green beans and green peppers than any reasonable person should even want to contain. So there went tomorrow’s lunch.
“Seems a little excessive, Owen,” I said as I harumphed up from my movie. “Been on my feet this whole time,” I sulked to him, scooping what was left of supper into plastic boxes for lunch. “How many green beans can one person hold?” I asked rhetorically. There’s stress-eating, and there’s eating from loneliness, and then there’s eating to tick your mother off. To show that you can, perhaps. To assert independence
King John was not a good man,
He lived his life aloof;
Alone he thought his message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it up
Against the chimney stack–
Since Owen didn’t want to watch a movie with me, I figured it was bedtime. But once upstairs Owen didn’t want to get undressed. He didn’t want to come into his bedroom either, but stood out in the hall in an abstract attitude.
“You ignore me, I ignore you.” It couldn’t be plainer if he had written it out.
Amazing that you could spend hours, days, years even, caring for someone’s body needs and remain oblivious of his social, psychological, emotional, or spiritual needs. Shocking to recognize it – and annoying! – but yeah, it’s true. Knowing Owen as well a I do, I can still easily miss cues. I can find myself tuning him out mentally while I am busily caring for his physical needs. When I realize that a set of behaviors are a message, it’s a relief – but some part of my mind still feels manipulated, still asks “Why didn’t you just say so?”
King John was not a good man –
He wrote his message out,
And gat him to his room again
Descending by the spout.
Communication is just good. Any old kind. That’s the thing. And I am so glad that Owen persists stubbornly on, trying to tell me stuff when I am too tuned out to notice or listen or see what life looks like from his perspective. Dinner at home with just dad and mom is pretty dull compared to what he grew up with; dinner with only mom who is tired and plunks down in front of a boring movie is even worse. It’s really lonely to be tuned out or ignored – much worse than actually being alone, in your bedroom.
I was reminded this weekend how much Owen likes to have his tribe around him when half of the family came over for a Redskins game Sunday afternoon. Owen had been SO BUSY looking everywhere for hiding Christmas packages I think, hunting through the packets in my closet and my studio, pulling out a package of candles, throwing half of them into the trash…aaarrggghhh. I took him and the dogs for a walk to give his dad some peaceful visiting time, and when we came home there was a fire in fireplace, and family gathered around the television, roaring appropriately, and Owen became very calm.
I want some crackers,
And I want some candy.
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy.
I don’t mind oranges,
I do like nuts
And I SHOULD like a pocket knife – that really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas if you love me at all—
King John had his own dreams for Christmas (link below to read more about him), and Owen seems to share many of them. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn (if he were able to tell me) that for Owen, the biggest thing on his wish list is to be surrounded by his family — with lots of oranges, nuts and chocolates thrown in for good measure.
Not familiar? To read all of A. A. Milne’s whimsical poem about Bad King John and Father Christmas, click on this link.Continue reading →
It is early Thanksgiving morning and Owen is celebtating. He has his plastic pieces, and is sitting warm in bed between his dad and mom in a rental home in the snowy Poconos mountains. Lucky guy. Pretty cozy. Even more cozy if he would lie down, so the comforter and blankets would cover his dad’s left shoulder and his mom’s back. However, Owen cannot be convinced. He does not like going back to sleep after his customary 6am, regardless of holiday. It may be that his empty tummy rumbles right up throat-ward. Or it may be that Owen doesn’t like being prone when awake. Logical.
The three of them are pretty content with their compromise, worked out over years. Those who prefer to be horizontal on a dark cold holiday morning are grateful to be lying down. And those who dont prefer it, are resigned to be slouched forward, partially covered. Owen should be grateful to be warm between two heat-producing mammals, crackling his plastic, instead of prowling the icy hallways partially clad – but this may in fact have been his first choice, if consultd. But if he isn’t grateful, well, you cant always get what you want but if you try sometimes you might find you get what ya need.
Snap. Crack.
Crackle. Snap.
Owen is lucky enough to be a member of a very large extended family. This year he joins the tolerant Simons clan, who come together across hundreds of miles every two years celebrate this holiday and have Owen appreciate and rifle through their possessions, and love him anyway. Hopefully all Owen’s admirers are similarly blessed.
Owen’s aunts, uncles, and cousins are used to him and his ways, so when he swipes Uncle Hil’s drink bottle a universal shout of “Owen! You crapster!” will go up and that’s that. They knew him as a fussy little crapster, and as a middle sized crapster, and so the shift to plastic-obssessed young adult crapster isn’t too much of a shock. Those infant episodes, such as when Aunt Alicia startled to feel a small appreciative hand pat-patting its way around her shapely, velveteen clad posterior, have an endearing impact on a relationship otherwise strained by trying to recreate while guarding one’s ginger ale from a relative with an “I came, I saw, I conquered” approach to all plastic products.
Just last week Owen’s mom discovered a dozen eggs rolling about in the refrigerstor bin, with some once-bitten apples, the clear plastic egg crate that held them disappeared. New lows in thievery.
As this Thanksgiving unfolds, there will be much to be grateful for in Owen’s world (mashed rutabega and pecan crunch pumpkin pie!) and there will be things to avoid (even if mom bought all cardboard egg crates). This will be true across this huge and diverse nation of ours – as we come together to celebrate and try not to talk about inflamatory political subjects. Resist the plastic egg crate – or better yet don’t buy one! Do not covet your neighbor’s plastic bottle. And relax and warm yourself between the other heat-radiating mamals. You and Owen are blessed.
It’s only fair – he’s been ignoring me. He has been going to some lengths lately to let me know that:
“No, my reverberating friend, you are not the beginning and the end–” (Eliza to Professor Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady)
If I say “Let’s go for a walk,” he flattens himself against the wall. If I put out a lemon wedge for him he doesn’t touch it, but will sneak behind my back to swipe one out of the fridge. Or eat the one in my glass. I offer him a spoon of cookie batter, and he is silent. He echos “No fank you.” So there.Keep your darn cookie batter! You can’t control me with it! To some extent, Owen’s always been like that. To some extent, all my kids are. I call this an artist temperament, but you could say cussedness.
So today, I thought I would write about something else. So there. It is could be difficult, but somehow I will manage, if only to show that—
“There’ll be fruit on the tree! and a shore by the sea! There’ll be crumpets and tea without you!” (Ditto.) (So there)
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s important to me not to let Owen win. Owen can be very competitive. Unlike me. Did I mention that he is still climbing over the banister about every morning, just for the thrill of picking up a few extra plastic chunks out of his drawer of stuff? But if he isn’t climbing the kitchen gate too, and marauding in the kitchen, it’s not enough to get me out of bed in the pitch dark to prevent.
Pitch dark. Like right now, outside my studio window.
It is far too dark in the mornings lately. Readers may remember that in past seasons I have bemoaned the biannual time change. Not this year. I have been looking forward to it for about two months. I’ve been trying to alter my rising time so as to flow right into the new time without a hitch.
[I tried to get Owen to segue his time change too; naturally, he started getting up earlier. Besides, I am not talking about him.]
There is no writing time like that early morning space, when Edward and dogs and chickens are sleeping, and Other People are tubbing. Or climbing over the banister to get more toys for their baths. But as the mornings get darker I find I just can’t do it. This could be because after 53 years under the rule of Benjamin Franklin my body is habitually prepared to be assaulted by the changing of the clocks about this time of year. The pitch darkness that used to be 6am will soon be an ungodly 5 am, an hour when no one should be vertical. It’s true, it’s true, 4 am is worse – let’s not talk about it. Especially in the presence of anyone I am ignoring.
This fall I am again getting into the meat of rewriting a story, and that early morning hour is needed. Without it, I either never get to writing, or I sit down and don’t know how to stop. I lose all sense of time, caught up in an imaginary world of my own making…miss my lunch… miss my nap… Bad news. Writing from 6 to 7ish allows that special peace before then the flood of Human and Domestic Need necessarily drags me away from the imaginary to the real world. It works.
All my life I have I have been fairly lousy at managing time. And since it is just an imaginary thing anyway (as Ben Franklin’s rash action and sun dials prove), who cares? Except that everyone else in the whole world runs their lives according to this imaginary measure. Simply put, I am handicapped. One minute I am relaxed and swimming in time, and the next scampering down a vanishing sliver of pathway that becomes stepping stones over a rushing fiery river of lateness. Out of time and out of breath. Since I am now half a century old and still do not have any innate sense of time passing I do not expect to ever have one. My only hope is to create a kind of rhythm to my days, so that my rhythm tells me hey isn’t it about “time” you switched over from X to Y? It can take me a while to create a new rhythm though, the in between is not pretty.
[This is probably how some Other People operate too, but since he doesn’t exist, never mind.]
So this year, as the peaceful dim summer 6am became the grim pitch black 6am, I saw old Ben’s time change concept with new and grateful eyes. Maybe he did know a thing or two, after all. Well, I’m grateful to him.
THUMP!
What was that?? isn’t that the sliding door to the kitchen–?! Hey doggone it – what time is it??!
This October marks this blog’s two year anniversary. I’ve been writing my other blog suburbangrowing.com for about the same length of time. And in these two years of posting, one thing I’ve learned: people like to read about chickens. They’re vogue.
Odd, isn’t it.
Could it be that more important subjects could be brought to general attention via this chicken interest? TRUMP Kisses Chicken. Clinton Reveals Her Design for Better Nesting Box. Trump: A Chicken in Every Pot!! Nah. Those guys are doing fine without chickens.
But a guy like Owen might need a glamour boost.
Looking into my third year of writing for you here, I recommit to the original purpose and to the title of this blog, Embracing Chaos. The purpose was not to talk about the chaos – nor about Chaos himself – fun a it is to tell stories on Owen. The embracing part is what people really don’t get. What I didn’t get for a long time. Nice as the words sound, how do you bend gracefully, and embrace chaos? What does that mean? That’s what my life’s journey is to find out.
In many ways, I began to get the beauty of Owen and the mayhem that comes with him when I started writing about him.Funny isn’t it how you can know a thing – but then know it – then really get it. Probably you can really get itnumerous times. I’ll bet the lessons can go on that way, deeper and deeper, and on and on. Funny if after all the work we do for years to make, and create, and build, the thing for us to get might be how to give up (the illusion of) control.
But chaos is not unique to parents of kids with disabilities. Everyone experiences this. Chaos. The lack of control. Isn’t this part of why people love frightening roller coaster rides? To experience total lack of control, and come out ok at the other end. Your life, in miniature, and super fast. It’s a funny way of telling yourself Despite appearances, everything will be ok.
If this blog is successful, going forward into its new year it will speak to people with all types of experiences with the uncontrollable, the tsunamis in their lives, and all kinds of learning to embrace lack of control over them. This is a blog about CHAOS, and EMBRACING. Everybody has some.
When people don’t know what else to say to be supportive, if confronted by a handicapped child and his mom or dad they may say things like, “You must be a special person to have been given this job” or “God knew you could handle this” or “I don’t know how you do it” or even “I would have left.” But these sentences exactly describe how I feel when I watch my friend Carina teaching Phys Ed to multiple combined classes of squealing primary school kids. This is how I feel when I read FaceBook posts from my niece Justine, who is far from home, pregnant, morning sick, and caring for a vivacious toddler full time. (And I even did that once!) I really don’t know how you do it. I think I would leave.
I have a dear friend who is one of my Other Mothers, (one mom is never enough) named Gray and she recently shared this thought: “The more I read Arcana Celestia [a sacred text of her faith], the more I realize I don’t know what good is.” I had no idea what she meant, so I waited. Gray explained that knowing the truth is easy compared to being able to see what, in a person’s life, at a point in time, could be called “good.” What they need, to become whole, or close to God. What events/choices, will lead to long-term happiness.
At first you think knowing good from bad is way easy – pain is bad, happy is good, right? – until you look backward and realize that some of your most aversive experiences, the most annoying jobs, the most difficult people, have taught you the most about yourself, who you do and don’t want to be. Even the painful, horrible experiences, or the terrible screw ups, can transform you. Sometimes people are transformed for the worse at first by tough things happening, but over time become enriched by processing that same old bad thing. So, were those bad experiences bad, or really in the end good? It’s a humbling reflection.
Coming back to the garden imagery, chickens and all, humans would like to think that Fairy Godmothers transform us, with pumpkins and magic. Really, it’s a lot more likely to be the manure. That chicken poo is potent stuff. At first it burns, but over time…well, that’s what soil is.
I am not a special person, even after being worked over by Owen for 23 years. I will take credit for not leaving, not climbing on that mythic bus to sunny Mexico. But I am just another trash picker with you, on a walk through the woods. Owen and other contributors to the chaos of my life will surely teach me again and again the lessons of EMBRACING my lack of control. Chaos, it turns out, may be the fairy godmother. And there is no short-cut to transformation. So I guess I’ll let the chickens peck the pumpkins.
I believe in the power of beautiful fibers. Nice clothes. For everyone, but especially for Owen. Not necessarily fancy, nor expensive. Not uncomfortable! Certainly nothing that would interfere with self-dressing. I mean clothing in soft rich colors, that brings out the best in a person’s complexion, made out of quality fibers: cotton, linen, wool, silk, bamboo.
You may think I sound like a snob. Yep, I guess you’d be right. I am. But I’m not that kind of snob! To me the label doesn’t matter, except as a guide to how a garment is made. Old, new, or second hand doesn’t matter. The crafting of a fabric and of the garment made from it is something I notice, and I think most people do subconsciously. When I am around people who dress joyfully, I feel the joy expressed by their clothing, it lifts me up. The difference between that and just putting on any old clothes is like the difference between delicious dining and Spam for dinner. It’s the difference between delight and fatigue. The women and men who take the time to dress up are an inspiration, bring a smile to my face. They are like walking artworks, and their effort an act of charity. I do not always bother to take real care in dressing myself — sometimes life says you just gotta go for the Spam. But I always appreciate people who do. Clothes are not the most important thing around. Still, snob or artisan that I am, I can tell from a distance, at a touch, wool or cotton or silk garment from one dredged out of petroleum. Petroleum, in my opinion, has no business becoming a fabric.
I do my best to put Owen into nice looking clothes. Again, I don’t mean formal or dressy ones, and function is key. Owen needs elastic waist pants, and he can’t do button up shirts. But that doesn’t mean he has to spend the rest of his life in grey sweat pants either. You get treated better, out there in the big world, when your colors harmonize and your fibers are nice. You look like someone cares, and there’s power in that. You know how Harry Potter was protected from an infant death by the power of his mother’s love? Well. There you go. We muggle mothers may not know magic spells, but we do what we can.
My husband for some reason lacks these sensitivities to color and fiber. When Edward helps Owen get dressed it might be in colors that clash, or are shapeless, or have some leftover food on them. Hard to take. Usually I don’t try to take it – I change Owen’s clothes. And luckily Edward laughs.
Owen has his own ideas about good clothing and the lack of it. The lack of all clothing may be his most preferred mode – although thankfully he is not one prone to public stripping. Most days he is resigned to his clothes. But Owen does not share my fondness for collared shirts.
I think it’s the placket down the front, with the buttons and button holes in it, that irritates him. Some of them are itchy. He’d prefer a T-shirt. Even a t-shirt is not safe from peril though when Owen is unhappy, or life is boring or frustrating. He bites them, chewing holes, sometimes (shudder) ripping. He can’t express himself easily in words, so if the air conditioning is too cold or the music too loud on his van, if he’s thirsty or he’s hot, if he is feeling grumpy to be prevented from snatching some bottle he particularly likes, that defenseless, irritating shirt is right there on his chest and takes the brunt of unexpressed emotions. Like Rudyard Kipling’s rhinoceros, Owen rumples, bites, chews that outer annoying layer, til he looks nothing like he did when his mama sent him forth.
Once upon a time Owen had a great collection of richly colored knit shirts with collars. They slowly developed a smattering of small holes, as if moths had been busy. Edward is more sensitive than I to these holes in the fronts of Owen’s shirts. He may not notice color and shape, but he does notice holes. While I was still stubbornly refusing to jettison what in every other way was a really nice shirt, he was shaking his head at me – honey, pitch. Oh no! Throw out shirts? What a crime!! Perfectly good, but for 15-20 holes of varying sizes! It felt like letting Owen win, in the negative sense. I absolutely favor Owen winning in any positive sense. But isn’t one of the basic rules of life don’t eat the quality fibers?!!
I was embarrassed to think I had been buying new shirts all those years for Owen to destroy. I began to shop thrift shops for richly colored collared shirts. But when he came off the van this summer wearing a formerly sharp-looking dark navy and white pin stripe LandsEnd shirt ripped across from placket to shoulder seam, that was it. My last straw. I culled all the chewed and bitten shirts from his closet, from the corners of laundry shelves, and from my dusty sewing basket. I stared darkly at the huge mound of lovely colors that had been Owen’s clothes, trying to prepare my mind to throw them in the trash. Talk about building sandcastles in a storm! What could be done about such staggering wastefulness?…
Then inspiration struck. Taking up scissors, I cut one chewed shirt round and round diagonally, into a long strip. I kept going, right up through those holes, to the collar. Then I cut up another shirt. Combining those rich colored fabric strips into pleasing threesomes, I then began to braid them.
Ha ha! Who’s won now? I thought with great satisfaction. I began to sew them into a spiral, round and round making a larger and larger circle of colorful braids from shirts. It helped the progression of the rug that I was sick with a horrible ear infection for about three weeks. I had to sit still, so I sewed–
(Above: Owen and I spending a peaceful summer afternoon, sick in bed)
There is certainly no shortage of raw material. When I get it done, those shirts will become a rug for Owen’s floor. It’s true that Owen could still get the last laugh, if he pees on it. (Bronwyn says she’s betting on Owen.) Still, I have not been bested in the fight for beauty – those shirts, like so many phoenixes, will rise again! It is immensely satisfying. And rugs can be washed.
Our niece Amara is studying art therapy and counseling at Southwestern College, in New Mexico right now. In her program she is learning to help people use artwork to heal from trauma. Chatting with her by cell phone this summer, and texting photos of the colorful shirt rug in progress, I realized that I was living proof of the effectiveness of her program. When rage and frustration can be channeled into something else, something new, it fills a void – it gives us hope. It satisfies a longing. Maybe it gives some control, or the illusion thereof.
Things are always breaking, always falling apart. Chewed shirts continue to arrive in my laundry stream, and determinations have to be made: “How chewed is too chewed to wear?” The creative process may be less an activity than a mindset, a transformative way of seeing.
The rug of braided shirts, born of Owen’s frustrations, and his mother’s frustrations, and the deaths of innumerable shirts, is a symbol in my life for the remarkable way that life goes on being created, too, right along with destruction, and joy goes on being created, every day, out of the shards of whatever is left.
Summer car trip
Hmmm. Maybe I’ll keep that shirt rug for a morning meditation mat.
End of summer. August crackles into September. The burnt, weedy lawns and tired, browning woods of Maryland get a reprieve while the September 1st rain falls gently over everything today.
What a summer it has been! Full of rich and varied experiences, some colorful, some painful, some just satisfying — like fruits ripening in the garden (those the chickens don’t get), as the dry and dusty summer finishes off. Sweet in the mouth, sweeter still in the remembering.
And how glad I am to return to my old schedule! And to grab onto it, to save me from being swept away in the flurry of moving out as Owen’s brother and sisters return to their schools, colleges, dormitories, and apartments. We love them, but increasingly The Return of Loved Ones means chaos as much as delightful family time. It’s always temporary. And temporary is hard. Goodbye is hard. Being second-best is hard.
I must be getting old and rigid.
Owen celebrated his 23rd birthday this August with previously undreamed of feats of athletic prowess. Maybe he was inspired by the Olympic Games. The solid wooden gate that his dad and I had built into the stairs early this summer only confounded him for about four weeks before I discovered him on the other side of it early one morning, arms laden with plastic. The idea of course was to keep our early riser safe and upstairs and out of the refridge in the wee small hours of morning. It is oak, very solid and beautiful, and carpenter Michael Kaub put hours of careful thought into its design. Mr Kaub tried to anticipate how Owen might try to defy the gate, and built it to withstand that assault.
Owen however does not operate by assault. (Unless it’s the plastics community speaking – and they have a point.) He is not a ruffian. He schmoozes. He prowls. He persists. He snatches. And, apparently, he climbs.
So, there was Owen, naked and laden with plastic. Being exasperated I said, “Ok, Owen, climb back up.” And, with great grace and very little hesitation, he grasped the banister, stepped up high onto the ledge outside of the banister, clung, balanced, swung his leg over the banister, still laden with plastic, and (ouch) there he was, somewhat like Pooh bear escaping to the branch with his five pots of honey, somewhat less furry.
Drat.
Not easily to be bested, Owen’s father took the walking staff collection, summering on our front porch, and lashed those poles to the first three palings of the ascending staircase above the gate. That upgrade (?) bought us another week of peace.
And then one morning, there was Owen, outside the gate…
So, Edward re-lashed those poles, higher up the banister! (There! Ha!!) Well. That might have lasted a night before Jack Be Nimble risked life and limb in a continuing bid for freedom.
And this is where it stops, because much as I like to encourage athletic activity in all my family, and much as I am impressed with the determination and stubbornness of my “low-tone” son (!), the result in case of error on his part could be very painful. Anyway, the whole failed point of that gate was to contain the guy.
Kathie, Owen’s regular sitter, a mother and grandmother and experienced caregiver, wondered about how likely it was that Owe might try to go down the outside of the entire staircase as we began to build. Yep – she called it.
Now I would love to post for you Owen-appreciators footage from the video I captured of my son going up the down staircase and over the handrail at 7am. But since he was naked at the time, it hardly seems fair to him. The Internet is a questionable place. You will just have to imagine his Gollum-like form, stretched out in the half-light.
So, as Owen sometimes says, “Now what?” Where do we go from here? We could try locating the new gate to the top of the stairs – but remember Kathie’s concern – would he go right over at the top?? The best results I have ever had managing Owen’s meanderings have been with distraction methods. The awful pots of schlock to the right of the front stairs, for instance, hold Owen’s cache of stuff and draw his attention from front or back yard. Like a library he borrows and returns items, sometimes expanding the collection. This is my best insurance against him bolting out of the yard to forage elsewhere. It is not foolproof – but it can buy you time.
And so, for the moment I will put a drink and nice bowl of fruit or veggies, or lemons (did I tell you how much Owen loves lemons?) on the table outside his room – or I will set a new bottle to chop and the blunt nosed scissors beside the drawer full of plastic schlock under his bed. This will make the effort of going over the banister much less appealing. Maybe 30 minutes less appealing… thirty minutes between 5:30 and 6am is worth it.
Embracing Chaos 