Life doesn’t change. We do.

Life doesn't change much, does it? When I was a kid there were bullies and safe havens, villains and heroes. There were expectations to deny, and betrayals to endure. Now that I'm halfway through it, I can't help but continually notice that it's all still exactly the same. The bullies aren't impulsive, insecure, thoughtless little boys from class anymore, as much as they are spoiled, rich, selfish presidents for me and the angry, short-sighted, ego maniacs that follow his example. 

   Life is a manifestation of the living. And we become exactly what we fear. The difference is me. Every day I get up and try to juggle everything thrown my way with as much grace as I can muster. There are lines in my sand however. I keep borders I will not allow trespassed, and I don't build walls. I declare decrees. I arm guards. I strategize. You can negotiate your way in, but it won't be easy. There will be slow and deliberate security checks. I will get you in so far there will be no escape.  You will have been worthy, or you won't get out. I'm no kid anymore. I know you. I am you. And I'll make us both think. 

   But this year has taught me how much each moment counts. Every move we make creates reality. I find I'm juggling the contents of my inbox as usual, trying to improve habits, snatching happiness as I find it, and working toward creating more when I can; but the universe tosses in an old bully now and then, and I'm forced to defend myself. The trick, I think that I've come to own this year, is to not fear being as slow and deliberate about my own steps as I need to be. I pay precise attention to myself, my insecurities, my selfishness, my ego; and I try (I don't always succeed because I am fierce) but I try, to keep them in check.  The truth, I am learning, is that they are the real enemies, and by "them" I really mean me. And that has made all the difference. Because there are no real borders. There never were.  It's all real, but manifested; awesome and terrible. It's life. And I have kids. I made children - very deliberately.  I chose it for them, and I'm devoted to defending that decision. 

   But what a magical ride it really is underneath I've come to find. It's as fantastical as every fairy tale I read them. And as dire.

Why we need each other

Kody comes barging into the garage with an obvious urgency. “What’s the matter?” I ask.

“Mom!  Niky taught me a very valuable lesson.  He taught me that if nobody’s there to hear it it didn’t happen!"

(Me, laughing now) "Wow.  It took me a lot of years and a degree in philosophy to learn that lesson.  How did Niky just do it?“

“We were playing and I made a character do something?  Only nobody else was there so they didn’t believe it happened.“

“And what do you believe the implications of that thought are Takoda?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what are the positives and negatives?  How does it make you feel?”

“It makes me feel crazy...  We don’t always know if other people are telling the truth even."

“Welcome to this universe.”  We both pause a moment.  “If ya think about it, all it does is prove how much we need each other.  You learn how to be trustworthy and trust other people, and in the end we're all in this together.”  He goes to leave. (I don’t think happily).  “Kody, feel free you come to me anytime with these philosophical crises.  I live here.”

“Ok.  Thanks Mom.”

Back in my Hammock

Tonight I moved my hammock back to my front lawn.

Doesn’t seem like much to most but that’s just where it wound up last year I think and I’m happy to have it back now where it belongs.  I’d brought it to my backyard back in March even though it was one of my favorite winding-down type places to hang out and just watch my little dead end street at night.  I was afraid back then (back in March).  So afraid I had different shoes I’d wear whether I was in the front or the back of my house.  I lost my temper far more often in my front yard than in the back.  I relaxed only in the places I knew no stranger was likely to tread.  It’s a scary place I need not explain to anyone I know, and I know it’s likely to return.  Perhaps in September, or October.  Maybe Christmas.  Hopefully not next March.

But right now?  Right now is beautiful for me.  Last night I woke up at 4 am or so, came outside and noticed every planet was visible (every planet as far as Saturn anyway).  There wasn’t a cloud or a breath of wind.  Just bright moonglow, quiet, twinkling stars and blazingly orange, yellow, and blue planets.  Today we drove all over looking for a beach we felt safe to swim at.  After a few hours and through a bunch of anxieties, we finally gave up and wound up home, blowing up floaties we hope to use in our new pool a couple weeks from now, and playing around in our little baby pool just to cool off.  It was an awesome afternoon with my favorite people on Earth, and tonight all I can do is count my many blessings.  Numbers are down in New York (as opposed to many other places I know) and I can tell you we know here that those numbers don’t mean anything is over.  But it does feel like we can suddenly stop a moment, and take a breather.  It’s relatively safe for me to drag my little hammock out front and hang out watching my street and listening to the kids riding dirt bikes somewhere on roads in the distance.  Tonight I’m watching clouds hurry by, listening to the wind through my Maple Tree, following Lightening Bugs and watching jet planes drop into Republic Airport.  I can do that now and still listen to Kody laughing loudly at the TV inside as he shares his favorite show with Ema and Niky.  They’re so happy home, and I am too.  Sure I literally dream now of a time when I can hug my friends and not feel I’ve risked my family.  And of places I could travel to and we can all experience.  But I know those times will come.  And they will be sweeter than they ever have been before.  I know because I’m so happy to be back in my hammock right now.  And that happiness is palpable.

We are all Each Other’s Angels and Demons

There is no real rest in life.  There’s a path, but how many of us are really ever on it for and extended amount of time?  It’s narrow and tenuous.  Hopefully, it’s forgiving.

   What follows is that you need a fundamental understanding in order to endure.  You need to know your truth.  So many of us don’t.  Or have lost our way.  It’s easy to know when you’ve lost your way.  You feel sad.  Or angry.  Hurt.  Diseased.  You need help.  You feel guilty.  Lonely.  Out of control.  Scared.  

   None of these are bad and we all feel them.  Judging them in yourself or in others is hypocritical.  These are moments we really need to stop acting.  Withdraw and breathe.  Count.  Talk it through with someone close.  Get back into a present moment.  Find the now.

   It won’t solve the problems.  It will stop you from making them worse.  If you’re not in control, or coming from a “good place” you shouldn’t drive.  And you do drive.  You drive the course of your life.

   The universe speaks to us though.  We know this.  If you don’t, access the now a little harder.  You’re life isn’t yours as you are now to create, but it is yours to observe and respond to.  Do that long enough and you’ll see.  Feeling negative?  Pay attention to the negative you put out there.  Your thoughts, words, actions.  Feeling alone?  Whose hand have you held with unconditional love and acceptance recently?  Feeling angry?  Who have you angered?  Whose anger have you sullied?  This is where you can pull on the truths of the greats: Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, etc.  They heard the universe.  They listened.  But many many others have too.  We are all each other’s angels and demons.  Whether we are ultimately in Heaven, or Hell, some computer program, or the cell of some child’s bubble.  If you stop and listen, love and really know and feel how much we don’t know, you’ll stop judging.  Stop playing god, and be one.

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!