At least there’s dinner.

Day 2 brought gifts, yet reality. The gifts are named V. and N., two amazing caregivers who willingly want to continue working here with Will and Jeff, and even increased their hours. Gifts like the hubby’s employer releasing him from office-duty and enabling him to work at home for the duration. Like my understanding clients.

Gifts like the boys’ love of anything food-related, which will carry us through the reality of this time, which hit full-force on Day 2. Gifts like a daily need to create something new for a meal, and realizing its symbolism.

I don’t know an ostensibly fine Day 2 put me into a funk by 5 pm. I should have been over the top grateful. I have caregivers, they showed up on time with beaming smiles, gave me blissful time to work in quiet, and readily embraced the new trails. We filmed a new video model of sandwich making to assist in independence building. They heard and marched alongside us with my five ADL goals for the men. They went above and beyond, as always. When I mentioned that one of the day’s cleanup options could be sorting magazine piles in the living room, it became a 90-min task that I watched the boys smile as if it was a trip to the donut store. Marie Kondo couldn’t have decluttered my living room any better – nor made the cleaner-uppers happy to do it.

Yet I was swamped by Facebook posts of all everyone else was doing, considering, and had to push away my usual hurt that they boys aren’t spelling, or reading, or proactively using words to say what they want. I wondered if other moms are better at warding off the daily deaths that come with accepting your kids’ disability at their level, and worrying if it was something you did or didn’t do that pegged their place on the autism spectrum – which is never where you want it to be.

I was distracted all day, despite the kind helper’s men-care help. I accomplished only one of the two work tasks I’d needed, albeit a hard one but I struggled to focus. I watched swells of “Masshole stay home” threads on hiking forums as well-intentioned New Hampshire hikers said those of us driving to the trails in the Whites from MA weren’t social-distancing if we stopped at a highway restroom and brought our potential germs north. If we stepped less than six-feet away from our fellow hikers on the trail. God forbid if we walked inside a take-out joint to grab and go the nightly meal. – The thought of no hiking for weeks on end bummed me out more than COVID-19 “redrum” hour that emerged on Day 2. Almost like clockwork, around 4 pm Will did his daily disrobe – a sure sign he’s off-kilter – running buck-naked upstairs in a mortal sin of a behavior that manifests when life is off- and that he kept in check on Day 1 by at least disrobing in his room.

True confession: TwinMom is not perfect. I yell when I’m mad. I get grumpy when clouds ruin my view. On Day 2 I spent a grouchy 30-min crabbing at the hubby about how I never get time for me, to write, I missed yoga, dinner interfered with the online exercise classes I’ve been eyeing.

But then there was dinner. Creative-time, if only with spinach and potatoes. Even if they’d prefer to stim, I can elicit participation from the boys in peeling potatoes and carrots, trimming green beans, and anything related to two of the most wonderful words in their vocabulary: chocolate chips. I wasted 45 minutes making a six-part grid of St. Patrick’s Day dessert choices, and let the boys select. Green beer and cute green outfits got omitted this year, but we had a fine feast of making do with three half-spent bags of different kinds of chocolate chips, improvising when we ran out of peppermint extract, improvising around the lack of the one key chocolate chip required for the recipe, and burning the first batch.

Dinner fed a deeper pang.

It was less than fun watching Will struggle to self-start free time activities, and overdo his iPad. To watch Jeff’s stealth misbehavior and know I have to spend more time helping him rediscover old passions too. To realize the many things I wasn’t getting done and no matter how efficient I think I am, there’s still more personal decluttering I need to do.

Yet for a second night in a row Will and Jeff both readily took me up on the request to get a book and bring it in bed with me for family nighttime reading. Yes we still read preschool sing-songy picture books. We’ll probably never outgrow sharks and trains and nursery rhymes. But something very powerful was happening, and I made an important vow for Day 3 – a vow that I knew could carry me through.