And Then It Hit Me

I don't get out much.  I have four kids.  Sometimes getting out of the house, and being alone for a few minutes means a simple trip to the grocery store, which is exactly what I did tonight.

Summer is winding down and next week school will start.  I've enjoyed this summer probably more than any other in a long time.  Logan is finally at a point where he is learning to control his screaming, and that has been a huge relief.  We still have days that are way off...but those days are becoming fewer and fewer.

Still, after being stuck in the house all day due to a busted whatever on our van, I had to get out. I drove over to Wal Mart (there's really not much else to do at 9 pm in this town) just to buy some stuff that we were out of.  It was uneventful until I got to the checkout.  Ahead of me was a man who appeared to be in his mid to late forties.  He looked like an average guy...thick around the waist, glasses, mustache.  The woman he was with was much older than him...she looked a little tired, but otherwise very sharp and mostly focused on paying for her groceries.  As they prepared to leave the man grabbed onto the cart and looked over at the woman and said, with a slight speech impediment, "Mama?  Mama?  Is that everything?" the same way that a child might ask.

And I froze.  I'm crying as I write this because it was so simple and so sweet...the man, by all outward appearances, was just an average man...but when I heard him talk I knew that he was challenged, and there was his mother, still taking care of him so late in life...and I'm crying because the one thought that hit me, that rose above all other thoughts was this:  That's me.  That's me, and my son, in thirty years, forty years.  I will still be taking care of him, he will still be with me, wherever I go.

Some people might think this kind of revelation is idiotic...my son has autism and is a three year old trapped in a nine year old body...of course he's going to be with me.  But let me tell you.  It's one thing to know that, and tell yourself that, every day, and be aware of it.  Because of course I know it, I've known it since Logan was small, that he would always be with us, that he would probably never go out on his own and live the life his brother and sisters will.  It's one thing to know that and tell yourself that.  It's another thing...quite another thing, for someone to hold a mirror up in front of you and say, Look.  This is you, in thirty years or so.  Look.

It made it real.

And I'm not sad.  Because that woman I saw in the store wasn't broken, and she wasn't sad, she wasn't angry, or bitter.  A friend of mine once told me that expectation is really what creates the most problems for people.  People expect their lives to be a certain way; they expect certain things to happen, or they expect a person in their life to BE a certain way...and when it doesn't happen, then they get upset.  They get depressed.  Angry.  I have no expectation of a perfect life.  I let go of that a long time ago.  What I feel, after seeing that woman, and seeing her son, is affirmation.  I saw her there, and she didn't know I was watching...but I saw her in the store, late at night, with her adult, mentally-challenged son, very matter-of-factly going on with her life and paying for her groceries, walking with him out to her car with two carts full of whatever it was they got...and all I thought, was Yes.  Of course. Now and in thirty years and all the years between, yes.