Dearest Rachel –
We were boarding the shuttle to one of the remote parking areas around church yesterday afternoon (we’d decided to attend the last service, since it was the most sparsely attended; not that that’s saying much, as it was pretty crowded in there as well by the time the sermon started). The only others on there, waiting to be taken back to their car, were a mother and her young daughter, who was probably somewhere between five and seven years of age.
For whatever reason, the little girl didn’t want to sit on the seat next to her mother in the back row of the shuttle bus. She claimed that she wanted to sit where she could look out of the window, but she could have switched places with her mother to be able to do that, or just sat in the row in front of her. But instead, she scrambled to the front of the bus, and plopped herself down on the opposite side of the aisle, to boot. Anyone who hadn’t had kids would think the youngster was upset at her mother for some reason or another; certainly, her mom seemed a little chagrined at the fact that the girl had decided to sit as far away from her as was humanly possible.
For my part, I thought I recognized the behavior. “She’s like a teenager already, isn’t she?” I asked, adding a mock imitation as an explanation: “‘Mah-hahm! Go away! You’re embarrassing me!’” To the mother’s credit, she smiled at the description – and may have even chuckled ruefully – since she recognized the tone. Not from her daughter as such, but from herself, back in the day. Nearly every parent, if suitably nudged, will be reminded of how they treated their own parents, once upon a time, and realize that, while we may not believe in karma as such in Christianity, something very similar tends to befall us when we take on the roles that our predecessors held – and we used to think we could do so much better. All too often, we discover just how mistaken we are in our confidence.
At the same time, as this mother and I were relating over kids and their tendency to want their distance from their parents from time to time, Daniel voiced his objection to the over-generalization. “I don’t think I was like that with Mom…” he murmured.
And you know something? As far as I can remember – and maybe it’s the nostalgia filter at work – he may very well be right about that. Oh, when he was years younger than this little girl, he would act up in certain places – we even came to calling it “peapodding,” after the name of a Chinese restaurant downtown we were all but thrown out of for his noisy antics – but that was the behavior of an infant barely into his terrible twos, whose universe consisted of little more than himself. At that age, he wanted more attention from us than we were giving him, whereas in this case, this little girl wanted a little less from her mom, for whatever reason (to be sure, I’ve no idea if it was from being embarrassed from being seen with her mom at all, but it just sort of made sense – and the mother’s reaction seemed to confirm it, despite it seeming more like a teenager’s reaction than that of one so small).
But once he’d gotten to that point where this would be a typical dynamic between parent and child, that sort of aversion to parental contact never really materialized, especially between you and him. I don’t know if it was due to his condition, where he recognized and accepted that he was more dependent on you than a typical teenager would. Or maybe it was because you tended to act more like a kid than he did at times; your dynamic was more that of peers (or big sister and little brother) than of parent and child.
It could also have to do with the fact that you actually studied on how to deal with him, almost from day one. Along with all the Bible study books Jan and I dredged up, we also found volumes on how to raise boys, and how to deal with autistic children in particular. For all that you tended to act like a child as much as possible, when it came to handling a situation like Daniel’s, you studied up on how to manage the situation – something that would never have occurred to me to try to do. Granted, those books weren’t loaded with scribbled notes or anything, like the Bible studies or the occasional recipe books that have your handwriting all through them. They weren’t particularly dog-eared or anything like that. But you did get your hands on them, and they weren’t any harder for us to find than the studies, so they were accessible.
I’m guessing, of course, but this may have been an extension of your seeing that, since I worked in order for you to be able to be the stay-at-home mother you would rather have been (even if neither of us had initially planned on being parents in the first place), you decided to treat the role of motherhood as your job – your career – and study accordingly to do as good a job at it as you could, now that you had been signed on for the position. And while I wouldn’t expect Daniel to realize and appreciate that for what it was, maybe he somehow managed to internalize it to the point where he didn’t consider your efforts – or your presence – to be the embarrassment that so many other of his peers tended to with regard to their parents.
On the other hand, maybe it was the fact that we were more like peers than parents. Logan has more than once described us as ‘the cool parents’ for being into many of the same things that their crowd was into back in the day, such as anime. Then again, that may also be a low bar to clear in comparison. Still, it’s an interesting thought to dwell on, no?
If nothing else, it leaves him with fewer regrets (like myself) upon your departure. He doesn’t have to wish he’d treated you better when you were here; he didn’t push you away such that now that he’s gotten that wish, he’s sorry about it. Oh, he wishes you were here, much like I do, but he knows you knew he loved you – and he wasn’t embarrassed by you – all the way up to the last day.
And that’s what occurred to me, all from some short, random encounter yesterday at about this time, and I thought you might want to know about it, honey. For now, though, I’m going to get on with the rest of my day; I’d ask you to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it, all the same.
Letters to Rachel 