In the Stillness

At peace in the quiet of a snowy day

Things have gotten crazy once again.  Every day, the activity in our house ramps up until 8pm.  Its a steady beat, like a primordial drum calling the children to be louder, louder, run faster, faster, until we separate them for baths and jammies and stories, and they finally settle down for sleep.  I get caught up in the busyness.  Sometimes I am running with them, dancing and throwing or shouting at them to keep it down, how's a person supposed to think?!  But whenever I need a break, whenever it has become too much, and whenever Chris is there to handle the clamoring hoard, I go look for James.  Because no matter how many kids are here, how much noise is being made, my sweet boy has usually found a quiet corner for himself.  I join him there, in the stillness, and he helps me quiet my raging insides.  It is usually soft, with blankets or sleeping bags or pillows hiding a hard surface, and dark, with shades down and lights off and a nice dark blanket pulled overhead like a cocoon.  There is no music, no chanting monks, no TV or video games or laugh track.  Sometimes he will arrange his body so that he can lay his ear against my stomach.  I think about what he is hearing, the gurgles and splashes of fluids following that downward course we learned about when the Magic School Bus went inside Arnold.  Sometimes he wants me to read to him.  And so we look together at the stories about starfighters and pigeons and Lego cities.  Sometimes, when the mood is just right and the day has been successful and I've quieted enough to really listen, we have a conversation.  A real, honest-to-goodness chat, with the whole back and forth, question and answer thing that other people seem to come by so easily, but for him I know is the hardest thing he will ever do.  They are never long, our voices are always hushed, and an errant child storming in will inevitably bring about its end.  But I cherish our time together in his quiet space.  He finds and protects it with all the tricks in his bag.  And I wonder at this ability he has, to be so still, this meditative silence that I could never achieve even back when there was no one else around and no big answers to find, no matter how hard I tried to shut it all out and just be.

Finding a quiet place at the park to throw stones 

He's always been this way, from the moment he was pulled into this loud, hectic world.  I just never knew why.  Why he would fuss in the house, with the tv on or people over, and when we stepped outside, into the void of a summer night or winter afternoon, he became still and peaceful.  We've always been fortunate enough to live on quiet streets, with a decent distance between our house and the neighbors, so that the only sounds we hear are the birds in the trees or the occasional plane flying overhead.  We've spent so much time sitting on our front stoop, laying on a blanket in the yard.  I slow my breathing, taking deep pulls and filling my lungs, and then slowly exhaling.  Sometimes outside isn't a haven of silence, and I remember so well the Christmas we were at my parents' house, opening gifts and laughing with my sister and her husband, and James, almost three years old, took refuge in the curve of the sectional couch.  He covered himself with a blanket, and when we peeked in at him, saw that he had gathered balled-up wrapping paper to give a sound-proof layer to his hideaway.  It all began to make sense once we learned about sensory processing, overstimulation, why the times when many of us are happiest, surrounded by our friends or loved ones and talking and making quite a big noise send him into a tailspin.  And so this is another aspect of special needs parenting which we have continued to get better at as the years progress: we give our son what he needs.  We attune, we learn, we listen and he tells us how to make these times better, how to get through the holidays or the afternoon or the church service together.  I realize that I've gotten more comfortable in this role, more confident that I can give him what he needs, that we can experience life as a family and not hide out all day.  If it takes noise-muffling headphones or a thick quilt or a walk around the block, I will make it happen.  This is the gift that autism has given us, the opportunity to be still.  Too many times we focus on the difficulties, the challenges, but truly TRULY I feel blessed to have a child who needs and creates this stillness for us all, and I am happy to join him in it, to practice more being and less doing.