I picked up a card the other day at small store in the Old Town section of Lansing, Michigan. The card states it is a tree free greeting implying only recyclables have been used in its creation. Such a thing is a plus.
What really caught my attention was that the exterior envelop contained the following inscription:
THERE ARE STILL A FEW REMNANTS OF MAGIC LEFT IN THIS WORLD
What a great thing to say. What a hopeful thing to say.
Do I believe in wizards wielding wands, crones stirring despicable ingredients and hope against hope kids turning time back magic? No. Do I believe in a twinkle in the eye do a good random deed magic? Ubetcha. Do I believe in the magic of a word well spoken? Yes, yes I do.
The magic left is this world is a combination of the passion and good that is within our hearts; it is manifested in the good we act on. A kind word, a hopeful (hope-filled?) note or an act that is for the betterment of the world no matter how small and unseen; these are all magic.
Dig out that remnant of magic within yourself. Act with magic before the sun sets.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
A New Tweak
Blogger has come up with a new tweak. If you want to follow by e-mail and just get updates when I post I gather you just type an e-mail address in and viola, when I post you get it. Given my sporadic posting this might be a better way to go to really see what I am saying. The gadget is to the right side of the blog.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Day 2 Max and Trauma
April 22, 2011
My grand vision for this blog currently is to finish my stories of the beach and reviewing the components of On Caring by year’s end. With my having taken on the role of school board member in a community with a large multi-million dollar budget deficit my time at the computer will be sparse. At least the time I spend at the computer for my own purposes will be rare. Thus while it is my vision, it may not come to be.
I will however note here things in passing that catch my attention. On Tuesday of this week the episode of Parenthood on NBC dealt with a teen being involved in a drunk/drugged driving accident. After the wreck she was taken to hospital. The family gathered together at hospital to await word. I have been at a number of these gatherings being part of a large extended family. (Someday I will talk about the pot luck at the funeral home during one of my family funerals, it is both one of the saddest and most wonderful memories of what family means for me.)
While the Braverman television family awaited word from the surgery on the prodigal teen Amber, Max the child with ASD lost it. He had a complete raging meltdown in the waiting room. Max to the untrained eye, that is someone who doesn't live with Asperger's on a day to day basis, became irrational. The story developed that he had been promised pancakes as a motivator for him to go and wait at the hospital. When the hospital stayed exceeded what he could tolerate he lashed out in a logical but clearly inappropriate manner. Max even implied that whether his cousin Amber died or not should not stop his trip for pancakes because he and his father were not doctors and their presence was therefore of no aid or relevance. Strictly and clinically speaking this was true. Obviously this was viewed as hurtful by all the non-ASD folks in the room.
The character of Adam who in the story is Max’s father struggled with this and with many other issues during the hour. There came a point however when he tried to explain to Max what the gathering in the waiting room had really meant and tried to explain empathy. My eyes filled with tears. The disconnect between what I define as empathy and what my oldest son Primus understands as caring for others was once as wide a gulf as depicted on that show. Eventually Max asks his Dad if he is mad at Max for having Aspergers. I misted up again. I have lived this argument in my own head many, many times.
Time has changed my son. He seems to have reached a point where he has created scripted responses to emotional situations to try and work his way through them. He has learned patience and he has learned to remove himself from situations where he might get caught up by miscues in reading others' emotions. The hope is that the television series will deal with Max’s approach to living in a world of neurotypicals who sail the world by the constellations of emotions.
I guess what I am trying to say is that in the moment when Max asked his Dad “Are you mad at me because I have Aspergers?” I felt the barb wire pull tight around my heart. You try and try to reframe constantly and knowingly work with the situation and with the aspects of who your child is. Still there is always the fear that you are reacting to the condition and not the person. More importantly there has always been the fear that my actions no matter how well intended somehow might be perceived by my son to mean I somehow think less of him because he has Aspergers. This is something that is as far from the truth as it could be. My life and feelings are painted broadly and his are much more nuanced and exacting. I hope we always find ways to bridge our two worlds. I think more than anything that is what Adam is seeking in Parenthood.
My grand vision for this blog currently is to finish my stories of the beach and reviewing the components of On Caring by year’s end. With my having taken on the role of school board member in a community with a large multi-million dollar budget deficit my time at the computer will be sparse. At least the time I spend at the computer for my own purposes will be rare. Thus while it is my vision, it may not come to be.
I will however note here things in passing that catch my attention. On Tuesday of this week the episode of Parenthood on NBC dealt with a teen being involved in a drunk/drugged driving accident. After the wreck she was taken to hospital. The family gathered together at hospital to await word. I have been at a number of these gatherings being part of a large extended family. (Someday I will talk about the pot luck at the funeral home during one of my family funerals, it is both one of the saddest and most wonderful memories of what family means for me.)
While the Braverman television family awaited word from the surgery on the prodigal teen Amber, Max the child with ASD lost it. He had a complete raging meltdown in the waiting room. Max to the untrained eye, that is someone who doesn't live with Asperger's on a day to day basis, became irrational. The story developed that he had been promised pancakes as a motivator for him to go and wait at the hospital. When the hospital stayed exceeded what he could tolerate he lashed out in a logical but clearly inappropriate manner. Max even implied that whether his cousin Amber died or not should not stop his trip for pancakes because he and his father were not doctors and their presence was therefore of no aid or relevance. Strictly and clinically speaking this was true. Obviously this was viewed as hurtful by all the non-ASD folks in the room.
The character of Adam who in the story is Max’s father struggled with this and with many other issues during the hour. There came a point however when he tried to explain to Max what the gathering in the waiting room had really meant and tried to explain empathy. My eyes filled with tears. The disconnect between what I define as empathy and what my oldest son Primus understands as caring for others was once as wide a gulf as depicted on that show. Eventually Max asks his Dad if he is mad at Max for having Aspergers. I misted up again. I have lived this argument in my own head many, many times.
Time has changed my son. He seems to have reached a point where he has created scripted responses to emotional situations to try and work his way through them. He has learned patience and he has learned to remove himself from situations where he might get caught up by miscues in reading others' emotions. The hope is that the television series will deal with Max’s approach to living in a world of neurotypicals who sail the world by the constellations of emotions.
I guess what I am trying to say is that in the moment when Max asked his Dad “Are you mad at me because I have Aspergers?” I felt the barb wire pull tight around my heart. You try and try to reframe constantly and knowingly work with the situation and with the aspects of who your child is. Still there is always the fear that you are reacting to the condition and not the person. More importantly there has always been the fear that my actions no matter how well intended somehow might be perceived by my son to mean I somehow think less of him because he has Aspergers. This is something that is as far from the truth as it could be. My life and feelings are painted broadly and his are much more nuanced and exacting. I hope we always find ways to bridge our two worlds. I think more than anything that is what Adam is seeking in Parenthood.
Day 1
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Yesterday I turned 55 years of age. I was born in a time when the apex of technology was a large rectangular TV screen that got three channels and a party line telephone. I now have a cellular phone that streams video and can search the internet. When I was a kid I wandered the fields behind my house and played army often recreating what I had seen on Combat or some other battle show that had been on television the night before. Now my kids play video games until their thumbs are ungodly strong and their bellies match the guys at Moe’s bar.
The surface of the world has changed but the world itself has not. It remains a rock in space with life forms tentatively clinging to its surface. I am a part of this rock and it is part of a larger series of rocks and together with more rocks and gases this existence spreads far beyond the imaginings of even the brightest of my fellows here. My being is while not for naught, it is damn close to naught in any real sense of the immensity of creation.
In aging I am challenged with the question of meaning in my life. What I can tell you is that I feel best when I have acted selflessly. Really. Such acts don’t happen often. My goal for this year is to make those acts just a little larger part of my life. This is day 1 of my year of being 55. My hope is to make this year matter.
Yesterday I turned 55 years of age. I was born in a time when the apex of technology was a large rectangular TV screen that got three channels and a party line telephone. I now have a cellular phone that streams video and can search the internet. When I was a kid I wandered the fields behind my house and played army often recreating what I had seen on Combat or some other battle show that had been on television the night before. Now my kids play video games until their thumbs are ungodly strong and their bellies match the guys at Moe’s bar.
The surface of the world has changed but the world itself has not. It remains a rock in space with life forms tentatively clinging to its surface. I am a part of this rock and it is part of a larger series of rocks and together with more rocks and gases this existence spreads far beyond the imaginings of even the brightest of my fellows here. My being is while not for naught, it is damn close to naught in any real sense of the immensity of creation.
In aging I am challenged with the question of meaning in my life. What I can tell you is that I feel best when I have acted selflessly. Really. Such acts don’t happen often. My goal for this year is to make those acts just a little larger part of my life. This is day 1 of my year of being 55. My hope is to make this year matter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)