Highs and Lows

He's Learned to Love the Ocean Just Like Mama_Taken by RedPortrait

Lately, I've been telling myself you are exactly where you need to be. I have been teaching this to my students but I'm having to relearn it myself.  I'm still struggling with connecting to the stillness and peace within.  Even after so many years.  My sweet boy is almost 5.  Five years and it is still so hard.

There's been lots of intensity as school started a few weeks ago- it's Lew's last year before Kindergarten.  We've had some hiccups along the way (what? you need an example? well, for instance when everyone loads into the new-to-us wheelchair lift van to head out for dinner, but the van door goes on the fritz and refuses to shut.  What to do? What to do?  You can't drive the fam to the restaurant with the car door blowing in the wind. Plan B, C, D, E and F please!) but new routines have also been found. LJ's therapies have increased and the transition with his new teachers and therapists have gone well.  I've started taking sign language class with the retired Gallaudet professor and appreciate being able to improve communication with LJ. Thank you Dr. Z!  Our builder is an Universal Design Architect and they are beginning our accessible ramp and bathroom remodel for LJ this coming Monday!  Oh yeah, I also confess I've absolutely, positively over-programmed Nate this Fall with soccer, baseball, tennis and French extracurricular activities.

All these positive events have occurred simultaneously with some painful, trigger points for me that take me down to a low place.  These points of view that sneak in despite my best efforts to change my perspective and shift my energies.  Life is all about change.  The ebb and flow will still continue.  Shouldn't I take a hint from the slow gas leak that we had- the size of the bubbles depends on the intensity of the leak?  Yet, sometimes resentment turns up like a little demon.  Resentment for how things have turned out and how many challenges LJ has had and will have to face.  To wishing that children and adults alike would stop asking me why he can't walk or pointing out the differences in the way he eats and drinks.

Then it turns to annoyance with myself that I've judged someone. Confession.  Last week I judged a perfect stranger, without knowing their story.  She had walked in just before LJ and I rolled in.  She took the only wheelchair-accessible potty.  I placed blame on that stranger for causing my toddler to have an accident while waiting for the handicapped accessible stall that thereby ruined our holiday dinner mood.  Regret.  What if I could have educated that person or somehow changed the outcome of that dinner if I had asserted myself.  What should I have said differently while the school bus was loading my son's power wheelchair into the bus and the impatient stranger-lady got out of her car to ask me what was going on?  What's going on?  Deflated the rest of that morning.

So my point of view is this- to see this process through.  To keep after it.  To practice and work towards those thoughts and activities that will best illuminate a little space, a lot of balance and some sanity amidst the chaos.  Cutting our expectations for a cure is a gift we can all give ourselves.  There is no cure for being too hot or being too cold.  The ebb and flow will go on forever.  I've been coming back to a note dear friend C wrote me early on in this journey.  Gratitude for the great character lesson you gave me and the ability to appreciate and look closely at the core…

All knowledge has use, and all you have gained from this experience.  Your heart and soul are bigger.  I know no one would choose to have growth thrust upon them this way yet you choose to turn pain into love & a depth of spirit that can strengthen the people that are privileged to get to know you.

This moment, I am on the road of life.