Owen crawled into bed with me sometime around midnight. I was praying and praying and praying that he would easily go back to sleep. And he did. It didn’t take me long to follow suit. Exhaustion has been part of the daily routine for me lately. Grief doesn’t help this. You are be bopping along and then it hits you like a ton of bricks. Everything reminds me of what I’ve lost and the hole in my soul is bigger than the one in my heart. My random crying upsets Owen so I breathe. He had a great morning and listened to most of my instructions as we got ready to walk to the bus stop. The only part of our morning that slowed us down was my shoe choice. He wanted me to wear my pink shoes and then my black shoes and then my brown boots. He did not want me to wear my grey shoes but those are the ones I like to wear. I told him I would wear my pink shoes tomorrow and he said, “black shoes.” Clearly, it will change again. I am working on different ways for him to understand that we don’t all wear blue pants or the correct shoes all the time. He’s ten and some days it’s still a process for me to understand that me wearing the wrong pants, turning the wrong way, touching my hair, eating a certain food, and saying the wrong words can all cause him to have meltdowns. The list goes on and on, too. And as soon as I think I understand a rule it changes or for a day or ten weeks or three years it’s fine until there it is again and me opening a drawer and leaving it open for a minute causes him to run from the other room to close it. When he was younger as soon as I could see a meltdown coming I would start rapid-firing questions at him, knowing he couldn’t answer any of them but I needed him to focus on something else. I would always start with the same question “where’s purple”. It really doesn’t even make sense but it helped to get him to move through his mind to focus on my words. Later I would sing him a made-up song and move his hands in a motion. This was all to recenter him. Now, years later I can tell when he realizes he is about to have a meltdown and will start singing “I’m a roly poly roly poly roly poly and I’m bigger than this.” When he came home from school he gave me the once over for what I was wearing and then he gave me a big hug. He talked to Siri and Alexa, having conversations with them in multiple languages. We read together, laughed ourselves silly, and he looked up numerous combinations of phrases on YouTube looking for very specific videos. “Bicycle pig mud”, he said, laughing as the video pulled up. Next came “Mozart rollercoaster” with the request of “I want more milk please” in Arabic to me. Sleep came pretty quickly after he woke numerous times right in a row. His smile warms my heart and I am thankful for how amazing he is doing. Never give up on the hope for tomorrow. Today is the stepping stone for all the amazing things to come. Smiles to all and donut daze!
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