Worthy

Watercolor paper, finger paint, brushes, big crayons and a couple of photos, chocolate cake from a local snack house, a hundred kisses and numerous thoughts fill this Father's Day.

When we decide to have children, what are our motivations? To extend our family's lineage? To ensure the longevity of our family's name? To live out our dreams, the ones we never had a chance to fulfill? To chart a different life from the ones we had? To make right what is not? To prove something to someone? Or to manifest the ultimate definition of love? To birth joy? To be happy? To seek truth? To forge meaning and purpose in our lives?

Garret is now 12 years old. Morgan is 9. I am turning 37 this year. If there is anything I have learned in over a decade of loving our boys and embracing their truth, it is that parenting hits you hard in the gut. You realize it is never about you, never was, never will be.  It is never about you living your unfulfilled dreams. It is never about you rebelling against the dictates of anybody. It is never about you proving anything to anyone. 

Parenting is always, always about them, our children. Parenting is a gift from the Universe to us that we may hold in the palms of our hands joy, not joy. Feel pain, desperation, struggle. Taste triumph. Experience healing. Feel love. Be love. Be blessed by grace, manifest grace. 

Parenting, whether we are fathers, mothers or caregivers, is a gift from the Universe to us so we may know what it truly is to behold the miracle of life.  

Happy Father's Day to the Papa of my boys. As you always say, "To be worthy of them." Yes, indeed to always be worthy of them.  

The Roles We Play

We lay in bed. Garret on my right, Morgan on my left. The room is dark. A curtain is drawn. A ray of light from the slats of bamboo seep through. Morgan laughs, murmurs. Garret hums, sings. I am quiet, lost in my own thoughts. 

"When we talk, she looks at me and she listens, " the mother said. She was talking about her little girl.  Her child will be in preschool this June.

"That's great!" I said. "Let's try to lengthen those 'talk times' you have with your child." I explained to her how she need not read a story from a book to spend time with her. She needed only to engage her child in conversation about whatever she wants to talk about. Take what happened in her day, for example. Just 30 minutes a day, I told her. Just try it for a week, I  continued to encourage her. 

My day job consists of talking to parents of neuro-typical or "normal" children, telling them to spend time with their child. My task, one of many is  to "remind" them of what needs to be done to further their child's growth in school. But really, when I think about it, I see myself simply as a parent having a dialogue with other parents.

The irony of my life does not elude me, I always say. Then again, the irony of my life becomes the role I play, the calling I have been born to heed to in this life.

And while I acknowledge this, at night when I come home and see my boys,  when we lay in bed, Garret on my right, Morgan on my left, and the room is dark, when a ray of light from the slats of bamboo seep through, when Morgan murmurs and laugh, when Garret sings and hums and I am quiet, lost in my own thoughts, there is a tug in my heart. And I allow myself to feel the tug, the hurt. What hurt? The hurt that I have to tell parents what they have. The hurt that I don't get to decide for them. The hurt that I only get to show them what they do have. The hurt that no matter what gift I know I have been blessed with in the persons of my two boys who have autism, I still long to have what they have, the gift of conversation with my boys.

They said, over time, it gets better. Or that I get better with this living with autism. Maybe, maybe not. One thing is true though, I have been called to bespeak a role. A role just like any other parent in this world-- Love. Love is the calling I have been born to heed to.  And what clearer form of love than to converse, to give attention and to be present. 

"Everything changed the day I figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in m life." -Brian Andreas

Speak

So much of how we speak are
Eyes, ears
Lips, nose
Cheek

Hands, fingers
Arms
Belly, knees
Legs, feet

Toes
Water hoses and hoses of it
Paper strips
Pink things
Sighs, cries, laughter

Lined-up legos
Creased brows
Hums, drums
Falsettoes

Holding
Squeezing
Gentle, tender
Light, quiet
Joyous shrieks
Snores, breaths
Face tilts
Teddy bears
Deep sleep.

So much of how we speak,

So much of how we love,
No words,

Just these.

"But we loved with a love that was more than love." - Edgar Allan Poe