A Star Full of Petals
I glance up from my laptop. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the small star my sister gave me after my mother passed away. It’s made of clear plastic, and it holds flower petals from her yard. Once upon a time, before paranoia and anxiety overtook her for good, my mother grew beautiful blossoms.
A few days before she died, she asked me what I thought God looked like. Whenever I look at the star, I think of the hospital, her question.
Below me now, I hear my son Jack moving around in the basement - the space he claimed for himself when he visits from his college program.
I’m up early myself, my nervous system once again calibrating to his.
Hearing him, I think of her.
Autism.
Estrangement.
People look away when you say these words. They clear their throats. Yet I am familiar with both.
My son is diagnosed with autism.
I was estranged from my mother.
I can’t quite explain how their stories belong to one another, but they do. Maybe it’s the way they are misunderstood in the eyes of the world. Maybe the way they both reject the world altogether.
Or how deeply I wish they both could breathe, free of the binds of their minds, if only for a moment.
Jack is twenty. He lives in a program almost three hours away.
We visit him every few months. We walk down the street to get lunch at his favorite pizza place. I watch him bob and weave in front of people, cutting off new mothers pushing strollers and older men with canes.
Whenever he visits, he takes stock of everything in the house.
A different brand of waffles in the freezer, the new bin for garbage and the smaller one for recycling, standing like a green horse and pony in the garage.
Autism.
It is an unmusical a word.
And yet it often brings a great song.
Estrangement, on the other hand, has a bad consonant-to-vowel ratio. It has no flow.
In life, we long for the comeback story, the hero’s journey, the great triumph.
Dramatic reunions, cure for the common cold, families who can weather any storm.
That’s not my version.
I don’t know how to offer only the shined-up parts of my story. I have to share the banged-up pieces too.
She loved saltwater taffy, the beach at sunset, the smell of freshly cut grass.
She used to make us hot fudge sundaes when we got a good report card.
She used to rip rooms to shreds.
I want new memories. But that’s not possible.
I also want to know the future. That’s not possible either.
The stakes are high now.
This is what my heart chooses to store, even if I don’t want to see it.
The stakes are high.
He could cut off the wrong person.
He could be arrested.
He could be hurt.
My son.
I don’t know how to protect him.
In a few minutes, he’ll walk upstairs. He’ll ask me what’s for breakfast. And I will smile and follow him to the kitchen.
Here at my desk, I think of the hospital once more, where I perched on the edge of her bed, awkward and uncertain. In an uncharacteristic display of affection, she held my hand.
Sitting there, I thought of her unwrapping a piece of candy, her youngness as she stood holding the pastel colors in her hand.
I wanted to remind her of it all. The sun, the water, the sweet confection. But I didn’t know how.
I should have said what was stored beneath my ribcage. Words I knew to be true.
The air is coming.
Don’t be afraid.
Breathe with me.
Breathe with me.