Life, Heaven or Hell?

Ok.  Face your fears and come with me on a trip through my spiritual journeys and the many, many authors that lead me here:

What if we are all actually in Hell?  Hell, as I wisely heard it defined as simply “without God.”  Couldn't Hell easily manifest as a lake a fire or crowd of shadowed torturers?  Pick your nightmare.  It doesn’t matter.  Try it.  Truly stop a moment and truly imagine all of us currently in this life caught in a Matrix sustained by our own imperfect minds busily manifesting our own realities and only glimpsing the occasional momentary escape in love or laughter, ecstasy, meditation, prayer.  

Every person we meet - every single person - either going about their lives as though God doesn’t exist or Gods are irrelevant or arguing over who’s flawed idea of God is best.  I have multiple issues with the God or gods I’ve been introduced to, so what if I’m a god?  As a mere thought experiment this works.  You saw “What Dreams May Come” right?  Millions of people here writhing around in our own bubbles with this god or that, this reality or the next, Heaven or maybe even a kind of eternal us just outside our bubbles helling, healing, teaching, judging, whatever whispering all around us.

Every “righteous” person bearing signs of our (not their) doom is actually breaking their own rules and standing next to us shoulder to shoulder in Hell - a true fellow sinner in a way Abraham, Mohammed, and Jesus explained but that I never really internalized before.  Nobody above or below, and yet everyone is or may be.  Ever see a person glow? (James Redfield, Celestine Prophesy) Other people could be demons, or angels, us, or our messages.

Stay here a second.  What if there truly is a VERY narrow path we walk to Heaven?  Or through Nirvana?  We walk it with every choice we make as we navigate through this Multiverse.  Every sin, every judgement trips us up.

- Every single thought (Eckhart Tolle) -

- every definition (Robert M. Pirsig) -

- every label - (Marth Nussbaum)

each, can actually steer us wrongly.

What if we have never even really “lived?”  All this is actually a dream (Bishop Berkeley) or we died and it is a dream now at least as many near-death-experiencers have described?  And the lower you are in the Inferno (the smarter, sweeter, most intellectually and emotionally invested you are) the harder it is to break through the illusion.  Doesn’t all that truly fit?  Couldn't it? 

I have felt like I am in Hell since the moment I seriously considered this thought.  And I've never been happier.

Doesn’t it also have the effect of casting a ethereal light on even the most totally mundane?  Doesn’t it truly make you want to embrace your enemies knowing they’re simply manifestations of either the real you or God or someone who loves you trying to wake you from your own nightmare?

Doesn’t it compel you to speak to your loves your each and every truth right away?  Doesn’t it wake you up to listen and talk almost directly to this universe/multiverse/self/god//energy/love?  - trusting your actual life (as much as you can get your regular self - your ego - out of the way) not simply waiting for synchronicity but knowing it will answer you right away if not directly than through a kind of symbolism only you can decipher?  

It’s speaking, however, in the language of our lives when we stay on the path.  Nothing here is new, and yet for me everything is.  Because as much as it’s like from here I can feel Hell - I can also see Heaven.  Can you?

My Gifted Tin Man

I can still hear the thumping of my heart and see the room kinda whiten and slow down strobe style as the words came out of her mouth.  "P-D-D N-O-S" she'd said then. (She wouldn't now).  

My little one, my perfect little 1 year old boy who had started talking at 8 months, who would entertain us with his depiction of the Tin Man's dance routine from the Wizard of Oz, who had become everything to me... Was being boxed by this psychiatrist who was crushing our souls with these letters.  His stacking of the toys was apparently an indication.  His banging of a bottle against the floor.

She didn't care that he was breastfed.  She "knew" how we were taking it and assured us that there are "programs" for children "on the autism spectrum" and that many grow up to lead very regular "almost normal" lives.  

But she didn't know how much this child meant.  She didn't know that he hadn't just been made - he'd been designed by not even two but three!  She didn't know that so many of my friends had seen his charisma and intelligence already that they based their own kids' progress on how those kids measured up to mine.

But here I was facing a nightmare I'd only ever scarcely entertained a notion of.  That morning (as every morning for the past year and a half had been) had been perfect.  The redemption (it felt like) of a less-than-happy childhood of my own.  All that hope was gone now in the time it took for a stranger to sum up my child and mouth the letters P-D-D... my heart stopped.  Everything felt gone.

   It wasn't though.  

   Amy and I were no strangers to autism.  Amy was already a special education teacher in a District 75 12:1:1 classroom, and I had subbed at a school with her for a time before college.  I'd also taught at a day habilitation for adults.  I knew what autism looked like.  I was a teacher and I knew.

(I didn't really.)

   But I learned!

I watched in awe of my wife as she tailored 5Xs 30 Speech,  3Xs 30 OT, 3Xs 30 PT on top of 30 hours a week ABA.  Letters and numbers entirely new acronyms bounced off the walls of my mind all the time without my comprehending any of them.  Before he was 2 my boy worked more hours a day than I did!  We were bombarded with strangers in our house who became our new best friends.  We pushed away all old as we learned they were all too happy to go.  At first (meaning days after his diagnosis) he got worse.  Suddenly he was stimming!  Maybe it was only just then that we noticed?  We couldn't get him to sit still for a picture.  We realized we hadn't in a really long time.  And we were hyper aware of this new thing (to me) called "joint attention" he so blatantly lacked.  I went back to school and got my sped license.  

I would love to make this long story short.  But it was years of a kind of agonizing tension on all our routines, our values, our relationship (80% fail under this stress), our hopes, dreams and quite honestly and in many different ways, our very souls.  

But things got better.  I learned that autism is a spectrum.  I learned how much we are all only just learning.  I learned that autism can be a kind of trajectory.  A child doesn't make eye contact easily.  That child misses social cues.  Others misinterpret and avoid the child.  This in turn hurts the child's opportunities to learn from those others.  Early Intervention teachers then swoop in and supplement as much as they possibly can while the child goes through this.  They work together as a team to help the child, teach the parents, and indeed help the parents teach the child.  I felt like I was being cared for by angels when I hadn't the strength to even care for myself, let alone my boy, my broken hearted wife, or our newborn.

   In time, he caught up.  He got into a NEST program at school.  He fought through the despair of realizing he wasn't like everybody else.  He learned to sort through his emotions and behaviors.  He reads and writes on grade level.  He performs in talent shows.  With certain supports, he makes friends.  Those supports are less and less as he matures.  

   The other day I received news that he and his little brother made the Gifted and Talented program.  Both scored over 90% on a test administered to the best and the brightest.  And next month he plays the Tin Man in his second play, a part he's been mentally practicing for years.  It won't be hard for him however.  This guy knows how to act like he doesn't have what he needs inside.  But he does!  He's awesome and has always been a born entertainer.

   Never lose heart.  

Interview with my son about not having a dad.

Interviewing Actor/Comedian Extraordinaire, Kody!

Do you feel any different having two moms?

Yeah - one of a kind.
Do any of the kids at school care?
No.  When I was a kid I thought you were a dad, Mom.  

Yeah I know.  I wasn't too happy about that I remember.

But you weren't a dad.  

What do you think would be different about me if I was a dad as opposed to my being a mom?

You wouldn't be as loving
...and you would pick your nose like me because all men pick their noses.  I heard that from the movie Frozen.

Ah Disney.  How you corrupt our young!

The World is Missing an Obernburg

When I was a kid my granny had a house upstate NY just outside of this tiny little one-intersection town called Obernburg.  It cost nothing as it had been passed down from generation to generation in my pop-pops family, and it was in a town with a population so small the "school" was literally a loft in the church with maybe 4-5 farmer's kids and all mixed up grades.  I mean, this was Little House in the Prairie time.

   It was only a summer home for us that my uncle Robert would occasionally visit in the winter to hunt.  We'd open every Memorial Day weekend and close every Columbus Day in the fall.  But every summer vacation, every weekend in between almost, someone was always visiting and for whoever it was it became a fairly annual tradition. 

   I wouldn't say we were a very rich family, but I remember being at least comfortable for a while.  There weren't too many modern conveniences there (if you don't count the running water and electric oven).  You had to climb a long hill and follow a long dirt road to get there.  The things that stood out was that there was a giant Lilac bush right outside my granny's bedroom windows (always blooming opening weekend), a wood burning stove and separate fireplace that was the only source of heat for the two hemispheres in the house, several small bedrooms (it was almost littered with them), two pits on the hill, one for barbarque and one for garbage, and great big front porch lined with mismatched rocking chairs.

   It wasn't any one of these particulars that lent this place it's magic.  I've since been to many one-intersection towns, and barbaqued on several different barbaque pits.  I've even come to envy some of the more modern conveniences of other people's homes in the country.  None of that was what made this place special.

   There was no just "stopping by" as it was hours away from really ...anything.  And there was no TV, so when you were up you were engaging.  Each swarm of people who came had their own charm and each bring back such unique little memories I won't share here because I can't.  They are a part now of the very fabric of me.  

   Years later, as my granny retired she had to make a choice of whether to keep Obernburg, or sell it and continue her "real" life in the city.  In the end she thought she chose to be close to family.

   It's ironic though as for me it seems that was the end of family.  No more long weekends working together to complete the chores of opening the blankets, taking the rock off the chimneys, or mowing and weed whacking the tremendous lawns.  No more revolving doors of company.  No more late nights playing board games at the table, rocking with the old folks on the porch, or lying out under the stars up on the hill.  No more long uninterrupted chats.  No more swarms of people looking into each other's eyes or side by side watching whatever.  No more real sharing.  No more clear memories.  No more laughter.

   But whenever I catch a scent of Lilac, or cedar and moth balls, I'm back.  Clear summer skies, long afternoons, and stars so close and plentiful you could almost literally taste them.  The world needs a little Obernburg again.  I'm not sure what is wrong with all of us, but that I know now for sure.

Parent Teacher Night

Parent Teacher Night is becoming so special for me.  Don't get me wrong.  I love being part of a two parent household and I don't know what I'd do without my wife.  But she's an elementary school teacher, and I'm a middle school teacher.  In NYC's DOE that translates a rare responsibility solely mine (at least for the next 5 or so years.)

   It wasn't always so easy.  I remember coming home crying.  "He's hitting his peers" I was told about my oldest when he was in Kindergarden.  They wanted to send him away to some special school.
   "I don't understand why he's hitting anybody!" I exclaim in frustration to my South Bronxian coworkers the next day.  We never hit him a day in his whole life!"
   "Ah well there's your problem!"  I was told almost in unison.

   But Kody has always been different.  When he was 18 months our worse fears were confirmed as my wife and I heard the dreaded word "autism" through white hot pounding flashes and in slow agonizing motion.  As special educators we knew the initals "PDDNOS" and the prognosis: different.  At least, we thought we did.  But there was one thing we didn't know: Kody.

   This child is my Superman.  There is no challenge he cannot leap over in a single bound.  I have had a front row seat to a human being saddled with the most pervasive, debilitating, overwhelming challenges at the most vulnerable time of his life, and been floored with his focus, and stamina, endurance, and sheer power of love and will!  One week it's his speech.  Next week?  It's licked.  Another week it's joint attention.  Next week "Look!" This goes on and on until I internally know they just needed to stick it out.  He'll stop hitting, I knew.  Just as soon as we make it clear to him it's a priority.  He'll conquer this too.

   And he did.

   And now our youngest is in Kindergarten.  He beams as he finally gets to strut through his older brother's halls, long hair flowing behind him.  Niky's teacher blushes as she describes escorts to the bus with Niky as a paparazzi leveled event!  His report card is all 3s and 4s, he's ahead in art, drama, gym, every teacher looks shocked when they describe his levels, and the words "smart" "genius" and "rockstar" become synonymous with his first name.

   I'm proud, don't get me wrong.  Niky is another force that was meant to be.  It took us 4 years to make Kody.  It took us one month to make Niky.  Thank God I'm a lesbian, because Niky's donor was the first sperm to enter this body in 20 years.  I was terrified of having a baby my whole life, had one moment of desire to make Kody a sibling, and vowed that would be the last try for a while moments after insemination.  But I didn't need to worry about another try.  That was it!  Niky had his window and he bounded through.

   And it's been that way ever since.  With Kody we dreamed of a good report card, and he worked and worked on every single obstacle of the thousands that stood in between.  One at a time.  Each in succession.  One foot in front of the other.

   Then Niky hands one to us, and just as he does Kody wins the "Get-Your-Seatbelt-On-First Challenge for the last chocolate Munchkin.  And despite Niky's tears I don't even need to look as Kody breaks it in half and offers Niky his choice.  Niky chooses the bigger half.  And I beam.  I could not love either of these kids more.  I wish everybody had my perspective.