I am not setting a good example. As I type this, I am still in my Wonder Woman pajamas, my hair still completely unkempt and I don’t have any make up on. It’s about ten o’clock in the morning. I’m never not dressed or made up by this time, even on a Sunday but for some reason, this morning, it works.

I am not setting a good example, though. The girls still aren’t dressed and Michael is already working on his morning nap.

I woke up this morning to Kate telling me that she had made me a piece of toast. And that I could stay in bed because she was going to make her brother, still in his crib, a piece of toast, too. So of course I jumped, almost violently, out of my bed as soon as danced her way out of my room to inspect the damage.

Then I put on a pot of really strong coffee, peed and returned to the kitchen to watch the coffee drip until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I had to interrupt it and pour a huge mug of coffee for myself. And then I ventured out the side door and let the rain falling replace the hum of my own thoughts.

Plastic.
Skin.
Fake.
Real.
Conflict.
Resolution.
Irritation.
Regret.
Shame.
Acceptance.

I went back inside, plucked Michael out of his crib, changed his wet diaper and then put him down in his play pen to play. I poured myself another cup of strong coffee and took it easy on the sugar. I grabbed the phone, checked in on the girls who were busy painting pictures of triangles and smiling faces and went back out the side door and dialed.

I woke him up.

We talked for about half an hour and when we hung up, I only felt mildly better. I didn’t feel as though my words had made enough impact. And I was still filled with the wretched feeling of regret over the way that I have to speak and behave in order for a wall to come down and in order for some truth to reach me. Sometimes I’m not sure that he realizes I’m not like that all the time.

Only with him.

It was one of those rare moments when the distance between us makes sense. We usually spend so much time cursing the 528 miles and border between us but in moments like last night and two nights ago and this morning, the literal, physical distance has significance because I’m not sure it would work the way that it does if we were facing each other. Sometimes I think that opening up and allowing the poison room to breathe can only be done with a phone in the hand and no facial expression to compete with.

I hate making him feel this way. I hate that the only way for me to pull out the negative and help him release it to make room for the positive is to force him to bring it out himself, speak when he’d prefer silence and fight against his own instinct and his own habit in order to make it happen. And I thought of a line from an Ani Difranco song….

“I can see he’s scarred from doing some hard time but I let alone what is broken cuz it isn’t mine…”

And I wish that line could be true but it isn’t because if I let it alone, took him at face value and carried on, we would have been over a long time ago. Or at the very least, we’d still be standing in January’s hotel room.

I went back inside and got Michael out of his playpen and put him in the high chair and remarked on how heavy he feels in my arms lately. He’s growing, getting longer, looking more and more like a toddler instead of a baby. And yet his skill level is nowhere near matching his physical growth. And the bigger he gets, the more apparent that fact is.

Now they’re talking about Autism.

Rock commented to me that sometimes he wishes they would just hand us a list, the way that the ER doctor did when Michael was diagnosed with a severe case of the croup. Here’s what to do, here’s what not to do. Here’s what it is, here’s what it isn’t. Call us if you have any questions.

Sometimes I wish the same thing. Only difference is that I’m still the one who has to keep plugging along, figuring out and making changes as they suggest it, while Rock can have the thought and then forget about it immediately thereafter. He can run away and leave me with the emotion, heavy enough for two.

While Michael ate his breakfast and the girls had waffles (I guess that the toast they made for themselves early this morning wasn’t filling enough, eh?), I drank a third cup of coffee and thought forward to Friday afternoon. I thought of the small Tim Horton’s in the airport and I remembered our last experience together there…the free water and maple donuts. I remembered him telling me about the baby plane and we couldn’t stop smiling. I vowed, standing at the counter, sipping the mug of coffee, to be so good to him he will forget when I have to pull. When I have to use a harsh, insistent voice instead of the calm, gentle one he’s used to.

I reminded myself that in five days, he’ll be here again and I can love it right out of him. Make him see my acceptance and love, firsthand.

And I heard Ani’s voice again, adding to her own lines,

“I can see he’s scarred from doing some hard time but I let alone what is broken cuz it isn’t mine. He strikes out at me when I am within reach and then reaches for me when I draw the line. And sometimes it seems like love is just a fancy word for compromise. You’ve gotta read between the years, you’ve gotta write between the lines. You’ve gotta try and understand the grandness of the man behind the petty crimes and let him off easy sometimes.”

And I vow to do better. Take it easy on him more often. Let him hold onto a bit more from now on. Let it be his own. Let him keep the secret.

So that he knows I love him.

And then as my own whole wheat waffle popped up from the toaster, I remembered telling him that if it would be enough, I would have a word with little significance for me tattooed on my left arm to prove to him that I’m not going anywhere. I’m in this for the long haul. I won’t give up. Just as I’m cuter than those before me, I am also, in some strange way, smarter. And I can see what they didn’t.

He refused the tattoo.

Too bad.

I’d love an excuse.

But he did offer another way to help him believe. And I refused that. Because it didn’t require any giving of myself, only taking and that makes my skin crawl with unease.

But it might be the only way. At least for now.

In the meantime, I will try to live up the above quote from the song, “Faithfully”. This is what I chant to myself while Michael finishes off a cup of yogurt and my waffles get cold as I choose caffeine over the maple syrup (and the smell reminds me that I should really start pumping again) until I remember the last line,

“I hope some day that he can bend as far as it takes to understand and risk breaking open again.”

And I change my mind.