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| One Sunday afternoon I came out to find Logan had taken Boo for a walk in his Darth Vader mask, and breathing heavy through the voice changing mask he said, "BOO!!! I am your father...." Jackson 2010 |
Last year, at the start of 2013, Logan said to me, “So I
think I finally understand why they call it –you know- (he does parentheses in
the air) “News Years Revolution” because you are at war with yourself; you feel
this pressure to start the new year off with a bang and all that, you know, eat
right, not fight with your brothers, feed the dog every day, but of course all
you really want to do is watch Monster Quest on the ipad…so the part of you
that is saying, “Do you want your dog to die of starvation? Come on! Step it up
brother!” is at war with the part of you that is like, “Didn’t I spill some
cereal on the floor this morning, and couldn’t he just eat that? New Year’s
revolutions are so conflicting, aren’t they mom?”
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| Alex as an army dude, Spencer a Jedi knight (I believe Aniken Skywalker) and Loggy bear...his favorite Bat-a-man. 2009 |
It doesn’t surprise me that war was the metaphor Logan chose
to illustrate his angst. It does not surprise me because I live in a world
dominated by men (I don’t mean to brag…) and because it is a world dominated by
men we currently own 33 nerf guns (Spencer has a collection) 11 light sabers
(down from the 42 I’ve purchased) 8 air soft guns (thanks Russ…..) two small
machetes, (something for the boys to cut their teeth on; a training machete of
sorts, like a sippy cup only instead of a rubber valve, there’s a blade) a
samurai sword, and one LARGE machete from Guatemala (thank you Shawn Tidwell). Additionally, having three sons and four
brothers means I have never watched an episode of “My Little Pony,” but can
still sing the “Thundercats” theme song verbatim. The only girl show I indulged
in, “Anne of Green Gables” my brother’s used to refer to as, “Anne of Green Gay
Balls” “Mom!!!! Will you tell Joanie to turn off her stupid “GAY BALLS” because
the game is on and the guys wanna watch it!!!” Because I live in a world of
boys I have had to replace not one but three ceiling fans (if you are missing
the connection here you obviously live in a magical land of talking ponies and
fairy dust, a world I sometimes drool over) two light saber incidents, and one
Spencer-tying-himself-to-the-ceiling-fan-with-his-belt-so-he-could-fly-like-buzz-lightyear-incident.
Yes, I have watched Star Wars in it’s entirety 898 times (often with a young Jedi
warrior snuggle up against me…sigh…) therefore I know intimately the scene
where Luke is trying to get his X-wing unstuck from the Dagobah swamp as Yoda
looks on. Luke tries to use his mad jedi mind skills to raise the stuck vessel,
but frustrated at his lack of progress, he gives up. Yoda, ever the wise
teacher admonishes him, saying,
“Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I
say? You must unlearn what you have learned” “All right I will give it a try” Luke says half heartedly.
The Internet is filled with motivational speakers on the subject
of “Trying and Doing’ Michael Hyatt says we should:
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| Spencer after playing the entire football game in pounding freezing rain said, "My fingers are frozen, I can't bend them enough to catch the ball." Jackson 2010 |
“Eliminate the word try from your vocabulary. It is a
worthless word that accomplishes nothing. It only makes you feel better when
you fail. Decide either to do or not to do. If you don’t want to do something
fine. Don’t do it. But don’t pretend that trying is the same as doing. They
are two completely different postures. Commit 100 percent to the outcome you
want like the project manager in Apollo 13 said “Failure is not an option” play
full out. Go for the win. Don’t settle for merely trying.”
Or another favorite from the play ground of life, “Winners
do, while losers try.”
I’ve got to be honest, I struggle with this concept; that
the word “try” should be eliminated from our vocabulary. I struggle because
unlike my boys with their black and white thinking (or maybe because of my boys
and their black and white thinking) I see life tinted in hues of color. I see
the world in smoky possibilities, hazy with wafting layers of gray; a 1950’s television
sunrise. I don’t see life linearly, measured in absolutes, I see the soft pink
of yearning for more, the blue of try again, and the hot lemon yellow of so
close. To me life sliced by a mandolin, diced into bite size chunks of
achievement or failure, just splits apart the cake before all the ingredients
are added, the cake baked, and the frosting spread. If you only took a bite of
flour, baking soda and cocoa, you would choke on the pasty concoction and deem
it unfit for consumption. Similarly, achievement most be taken horizontally,
big picture, as a whole. Michael Hyatt, would say, “You make the basket or you
don’t: black or white.” But what did Michael Jordan say? “I’ve missed more than
9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted
to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over
again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
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| Logan at the Special Olympics, rocking it like a rock star! 5 gold metals! January 2010 |
Try is a verb. It shows action. Trying to me, is a gap
filler, it’s the link that bridges the chasm of space between the desire to do
something and the actual fulfillment of that goal. Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about when
you are hit up to sale Amway, and you tell your enthusiastic friend, “I will try to look at the pamphlet” knowing
full well you’re going to throw it out in the first trash can you see. Or,
saying to yourself between bites, “I will try
not to eat the entire chocolate cake,” on day 26 of your cycle, your nose growing like Pinocchio even while you voice the
thought, because you know you aren’t
going to try… you fully plan on pressing the last precious crumbs to the bottom
of your fork, and licking the frosting off the corners of the pan.
I’m talking about the times when you make sincere and
intense effort. When you take Tony Robbins message to heart, when you channel
Yoda, when you paint yourself in camo and tatoo “be all you can be” on your soul
and fail anyway; the khaki smudges wiped off in wide swaths on the Kleenexes crumpled
wet with your tears.
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| So clean and neat before the game...Spencer...I may swoon! Jackson 2010 |
Life is filled with unfulfilled dreams, broken promises and disappointments.
For me parenting, especially parenting autistic children, is filled with moment
after moment of “playing full out” only to look at the score board and realize
I haven’t even made it to the first down and that the game was called a long
time ago. In a world of quantitative feedback, in a world of A + B = C,
parenting a child where I know A + B = X (and can’t remember enough 8th
grade algebra to even come up with a good enough mathematical equation to find
X) means I am a LOUSY jedi master. I’m not even a padawon. There is no midi-chlorain
in my blood. I can say all that I want that there
is no try, announce, “Ok Alex, we
are going to sit through this fire alarm and conquer this fear!” I can put on my
game face, wrap my wrists in white tape, heavily grease the undersides of my
eyes, I can be ready to play but despite
my desire for achievement; the red hot thirst to do, the only thing that will happen is do not. I can say each morning, “You will tie your shoes by
yourself today. We are doing this.” But
I know his fine motor skills are as rusty as the tin man stuck in a garden of
self imposed paralysis when Dorothy first finds him in Oz.
Do or Do not! There is
no try.
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| The first "Golden" metal awarded to Loggy Bear! Jackson 2010 |
To me, the danger with this thinking pattern (and believe
me, I know) is that defeat has a way of tripping you up. It has a way of whispering,
‘Why are you putting on your jersey? Don’t you know the odds are 5,000,000 to
one against you winning? Don’t you know the other players don’t want you on
their team? Not to mention you washed your football pants with a red sock and
now they are pink, the color of shame?” Being at war with yourself, as Logan put
it, is the predictable fall out when the “Do not” outcome is (ding ding ding!!!)
a consistent winner. It is my New Years
revolution to be kinder to myself for the times that despite my best efforts to
do, I do not. I have resolved to wave a white flag more often, to
surrender to defeat, to recognize there are some things I cannot change; and be okay anyway. I am hoping to make
peace with the part of me that yearns to obliterate obstacles, that wants to
tackle life and hold it thrashing until it cries uncle, but to accept patience
instead, to learn to breath out; to recognize some things are worth waiting
for, to understand the spirit endures.
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| Loggy Bear accepting the gold! He said, "the podium is a little wobbly, and how do you think they would they feel if their gold medalist athlete broke his foot when he fell?" |
To me, trying when
all you want to do is quit is the bravest thing there is. When I watch Alex
awkwardly fumble with his laces, loop the rabbit ears with arthritic effort,
bend those rigid fingers and try to push the noodles laces through the noose;
and fail to execute the task, time and time again. When I watch him instead
tuck the strings into the sides of his shoes so he doesn’t have to ask an adult
for help; a coping mechanism he developed all on his own to keep him from
tripping. When I watch him go out the door to face another day of do not anyway, I want to cheer, I want
to pound my feet on the bleachers, I want to stand up and start the wave, I
want to feel the vibration of the stadium echo in my soul, and remember how it
feels to see someone both accept and ignore defeat; to leave it whimpering in
the corner.
To me trying is equated with faith, it’s intertwined with
hope, it’s recognizing that excellence must be pursued, must not be given up
on. Faith is what propelled Peter out of the boat, to stand on the broken
waves, unscathed, while fear, faiths evil twin, is what pushed Peter down, left
him sputtering and crying out, “Lord save me.”
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| Alex waiting in line for the ski lift with his instructor, Jackson 2009 |
Being at war with yourself, as Logan put it, (indulging in
fear, is how I would put it) is the worst thing you can do. I prefer to think battles
are won incrementally. The great coach Vince Lombardi said, “Truth is knowing
your character is shaped by your everyday choices.” And “Winning is not everything,
but making the effort to win is.” I’ve
learned the good you do persists and carries on, is heard in the echos. I know
effort is seen, remembered and recovered. Incremental progress is still progress
and all setbacks (despite everything and everyone who tells you otherwise) are
temporary.
I equate trying
with bravery. To me, trying (especially after you’ve experienced a carpet pull,
especially after you’ve looked heartache in the eye and loved again anyway) means
you are willing to expose your fragile heart, be vulnerable again, risk another
carpet pull. Some time ago, Alex was selected to compete in the Special Olympics. There was some discussion as to if he qualified because his IQ was so high. But then they saw his awkward attempts at balancing and decided to let him compete after all. I remember driving to his first race, the desire to speed because I was late was tempered with the need to be cautious since the roads were covered in a thick sheet of ice. Life felt heavy; the weight of duress clung like sluggish iron in my veins. Winter mornings of scrounging for missing gloves and haphazardly throwing wet boots into the dryer to predictably clunk like a metronome while I urged the boys to eat their cereal faster, had worn me out. Doctor appointments, IEP meetings, redirection, occupational therapy, speech therapy, juggling work schedules, car repairs, the to do list seemed like the never done list and ran at a break neck speed through my brain while I carefully navigated my way to Pinedale.
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| Alex on the way up the mountain Jackson Hole Ski Resort, February 2009 |
I had never been to a Special Olympics before, and I
confess, a part of me was processing what exactly it felt like to have a child
in the Special Olympics. I trudged through the snow, wishing I’d brought better
boots, wishing I’d worn my snow pants, wishing I was ever prepared for the
elements. The first event I came upon, was for beginning skiers. Parents and
volunteers lined up to form a human barricade on either side of the ten yard,
leveled run. Slowly, hesitantly, I watched the first skier slide into place.
The coach pushed the stop watch, “Go!” He shouted. I couldn’t tell if she even
moved. Awkwardly, after a few moments of looking around, she pushed one ski
forward, then teetered and fell down, snow caught in the crevice of her neck. Someone
helped her stand back up, steadied her, then she pushed the other foot forward,
and fell down again. She got up, wiped the snow from her cheek, and pushed the
other foot forward, and so it went, an agonizing pattern, her moving one foot,
falling down, getting up, moving the other foot… the whole time she worked,
fell to her knees, shook the powder from her goggles, tried to regain balance,
refocused on the finish line… the stop watch kept ticking, the spectators
cheered wildly, until finally, finally!
With a smile that split me wide open, she crossed the finish line and I burst
into tears. I cried and not the sweet, dab at the sides of your eyes cry, I
bawled. I swiped at my face with the back of my sleeves, wiped my nose on my
glove, and was still heaving with emotion when Alex gingerly approached from a
ski run he’d just finished. “What’s the matter mom?’ He asked, “She didn’t give
up.” I said, swiping at my eyes again. “Oh.” Alex responded, “Can you help me
take my boots off? The buckles are kind of tricky.”
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| Alex at the clinic...toboggan ride down the mountain...torn MCL. Try again in 6 months.... 2009 |
Yoda, you are our favorite
Jedi master. We have more green light sabers than any other color, but…
Try, there is.
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| Jedi's like sugar cookies...duh! Spencer, Colter Elementary, October 2009 |
