9. Simple Dreams in Complex Times

Today I took J to therapy.  He goes to therapy the next town over, in the middle of an affluent neighborhood.  The town has two sets of roads, one for cars and one for golf carts.  Roads where teenagers and stay-at-home-mom's take to do all their errands and socializing without having to go over 35 miles per hour or drive through traffic on the main highways.  It makes for a great maze of walkways for Tiny and me while J does his therapy.

My stroller has an auxiliary port, so I plug in my phone, turn on Pandora, and listen to music while walking down the path.  We pass a couple of golf carts, but mostly it's quiet.  Even Tiny stays quiet as he looks around at the sky and trees.  It's far enough away from any main roads to be very quiet, just a few leaves rustling, squirrels jumping from tree branch to tree branch, and the water from the stream moving quickly south.  Just as my music turns from Silversun Pickups to Pentatonix, my phone mysteriously shut off.  I had 50% battery and my phone isn't known for being quirky, but I can't get it to turn back on.  So it leaves me without any noise and nothing to sing to.  I like listening to music on walks like this because it allows me time where I don't have to think about anything.

We get to the end of this small bridge-like walkway and I stop.  There is such simple complexity to nature and I take a moment to appreciate it.  Looking at the woods makes me think of simpler times, not just in my life, but in the lifetimes before, when things weren't so overwhelmed by being on time, driving to here and there, planning and scheduling and looking at calendars, working to make money to pay bills and watching it all get spent away.  The times when people didn't have bank accounts, when they traded goods and there was cohesion in towns and communities.  A barn burned and everyone helped to raise it back up. 

Our lives get so focused on so many outside forces that we can't allow ourselves the time to look at the simple complexities in life.  I spend so much time trying to help J conform to a normalcy that he is not fully capable of and forget to appreciate his idiosyncrasies.

I read a lot of dystopian society books, futuristic where our futures are bleak.  What's appealing for me in a lot of them, our society reverts back to a simpler time, simple like these woods.  In these literary futures, we work the land, we contribute our strengths to the whole.  My husband and I watch The Walking Dead, and as complicated as surviving an apocalypse is, their time is simpler as well.  When the survivors had their community, they worked together - they had jobs hunting, growing food, teaching, cooking.  Contribution to a greater good, a larger whole.  In the latest episode, one of the characters killed another one because this girl was so far outside the social norm that she posed a legitimate danger to them.  That world is black-and-white.

The world we live in is full of various shades of gray, so where does that place someone like J?  How do I help him figure out where he belongs in a society that doesn't fully accept those who are different?  How will he figure out how to contribute, how to appropriately give and take?  And more importantly, if what he decides he wants to do for a job is so far out of his reach, who will be the one to tell him no?

Today, if you asked J what he wants to be, he will tell you a veterinarian.  And why?  Because he loves animals.  Today, he would be unable to put an animal to sleep.  Today, he would be unable to talk to an owner, tell them the truth, and be civil and kind enough in his tone for them to come back to see him with their pets.  He has trouble enough connecting with others and working in a group.  He doesn't realize it now, but it's not just about the animals, it's about their owners, and his co-workers, and a workplace cohesiveness that, today, he would be unable to achieve.  Of course, this is today; I have no idea what the future will bring.  What I do know is that I have the unique job to help gear him towards something that he can do.  

I believe in pushing him, testing his limits, and finding out exactly what he is capable of.  He has ASD, but that doesn't limit everything, yet it does limit some things.  As he grows older, we'll be able to watch him and see what he may end up being capable of, the contributions he will be able to make, so now we just smile and tell him being a vet is a great job, a job that takes a person with a special kind of heart to do.  When he's ready to enter college and graduate school (assuming we're able to get him that far), do we allow him to choose a path that we know he will struggle with or one he just will not be able to do?  Do we cheer him on and help him fly?  Or do we bring him back to the ground and tell him to choose something else, tell him he cannot do what he wants to do?  Would I be the bad guy for watching him fail, or the bad guy for not even allowing him to the chance to try?

I can liken this down to something smaller.  A few weeks ago, J asked me to help him learn how to play basketball.  I played when I was younger, and I know how to dribble and shoot.  I know the rules.  We played in the cul-de-sac in front of our house.  He was pretty terrible.  He is uncoordinated and clumsy, but we both had fun.  We've practiced a few times and I've helped him to refocus him.  He doesn't have to be the best dribbler or shooter, those are not his strong suits and he knows that.  We worked on picks, passing, and blocking.  Those are easier moves, ones he can actually do.  He'll never be good enough to be on a school basketball team, but if he wanted to try out, would I tell him no?  Or let the coach tell him no?  I could be the bad guy and save him the heartbreak and humiliation, or I could allow the coach be the bad guy for not having him make the cut.  Except if the coach says no, I would still feel like the bad guy for allowing him to go out there completely unable to play.  It's a concept I struggle with on many different levels because it's so multifaceted.

All parents play the game of when-my-son-grows-up-he's-going-to-be-a... a anything.  We play these games and insert jobs and careers that will earn our children enough money to take care of us in our old age, because don't we deserve it after raising them?  After at least two decades of birthing them, feeding them, clothing, sheltering, teaching them?  Of loving them, watching them, worrying and hoping and dreaming?  That game isn't so much fun when you realize that your son can't be a anything.  A something, a few particular things, but the world is not at his feet.  

Perhaps his uniqueness could find a happy place in a black and white world.  Perhaps he could hone and contribute the few gifts he is good at, and contribute them significantly.  Unfortunately, in our world of gray lines, there isn't a place for him.  Yet.  

Helping him pursue a dream that I am not sure is attainable is a premature thought since he is only nine years old now, but it's also a recurring one.  For now, I'll walk back to the building where J has his therapy and enter back into the real world.  I'll leave the woods and my thoughts for next week when I'll come back to the peace and complex simplicity again.

Images are from the Southern Conservation Trust.