Renewed by mountains once more, we broke ground on a spur path off the Appalachian Trail called the CVT – the Corona Virus Trail. Join us if you’re on it, too.

Today, Monday March 16, is Day 1 on a trail we’re now discovering along with the rest of the world of developmentally disabled – the Corona Virus Trail. The world has changed. So will we.

Only one day ago I saw the clouds rolling toward us and thought they’d blow away. Canceled day programs for those challenged ones like my sons, our public library closure, a media echo chamber about maintaining a 6-foot distance and no-touch hellos. Reality hit late on Sunday March 15, as we were driving home from a stunningly beautiful hike in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The email said No day program for Will and Jeff for at least a week.

Welcome to the day to day trek toward growth, sanity and greater purpose for our family – four of us living in northern MA, me MK the Mom, Paul the Dad, and our twins Will and Jeff with profound autism. In RI but with us always in our hearts is our other exceptional progeny Jenn.

Call me Arwen, but while I gulped hard knowing the adjustments, I knew the second I read that email we had it in us to turn this moment into our finest hour. I know it still.

My Day One reality stood deeply in the rock of the day before, Sunday, on Bald Peak, an outcropping on Kinsman Ridge in Easton NH. I hadn’t planned to be there, preferring to hike one of NH’s fabled Four Thousand Footers, both to push my physical abilities and earn bragging rights I somehow need to prove to myself I’m really not as old as I am. But the hubby wanted this one badly. He’d tried to hike here unsuccessfully two weeks ago when I was in Cuba with my mother, and weather headed him off. So the least I could do was to give him this one today.

The skies duly rewarded us with views straight through to Killington’s ski trails in Vermont. We struck a fast pace – 25% ahead of book time, likely from the perfect snow-packed trails but also because we hike regularly, and now that I’m post-five months since my leg break, I’m proud that I’m getting stronger. Best of all, the mind’s camera snapped images of the carpet of I’ve yet to tame – from Mts. Jim and Blue on the Asquam Ridge to the north of Mt. Moosilauke, to that badass Appalachian Trail section beneath N. and S. Kinsman, one I’d salivate to say I bagged – to the Long Trail through Vermont to Canada. I heard them whisper that I am more than just a mom with a plan – that the world entire still welcomes me and all the I am. I recorded that whisper, for the days ahead when I’d need it.

A kind couple lingering on Bald Peak’s ledges with us broke the social distance rule and offered to snap a family photo. Will and Jeff were their typically distracted but Paul and I beamed. We had just laid foot on a new trail, proven ourselves more than worthy, and had all we needed for the routes beyond – a map, a plan, and each other.

We especially needed that family photo on Day 1, the formal opening of Mom’s Super-Fun Autism Day Program. The men were confused. No bus to their usual day program. No helpers at home either. Bossy Mom telling them what to do. No stores or trips to the gym.

Instead, there was the familiar and I believe comforting routine we do when thrust into change.
I grabbed the overstuffed binder of Meyer-Johnson picto symbols cards, and riffled through three overstuffed Ziplock bags of them too. I marked the calendar with the day I thought they’d return to the day program, and thanked those wonderful parent groups on Facebook for sharing Coronavirus social stories, and a color-coded COVID-19 Autism Schedule as a fitting topo map for our new land. I picked one close to the boy’s knowing, and drew a we read the online PDF of the Coronavirus social story. We looked at the calendar, fingering March 16, today’s date, then flipping the page to April 7, when we likely will return to the day program if it heeds the Governor’s school closure date.

We scanned the day’s picture symbols like trail names on an old path we’ve trekked and smiled remembering. Showers, walk, puzzle and art time, lunch, cleanup, cooking time, snack, another walk, another cleanup time.

I didn’t tell the boys, but I’d set five goals for the journeys of our coming days – new buds on the springtime I knew could take root.

1. Wiping face accurately and independently after toothbrushing and eating – so they look appropriately handsome, not like silly ragamuffins.
2. Bedmaking independently.
3. Table-setting for meals independently and with greatly reduced prompts.
4. Rinsing dishes and placing into dishwasher after every meal. No exceptions.
5. Sandwich-making at home, independently – which is slightly different than for the bagged sandwich in the lunch box.

I framed the above photo from Bald Knob as my talisman. It was on top of the mental shelf as we ripped each Velcro’s picture symbol from the strip, through morning, to hairy late-afternoon, through my realization I can never accurately estimate the time it takes to do anything – through early evening when all of us sat on the couch watching CNN and realizing this was not an isolated day-hike into Corona-Land – that the crisis was worsening- and that we’d be lucky to return to our former lives on April 7.

Day 1 wiped me out. Tomorrow’s route on Day 2, while similar, would need every bit of the planning, the resilience to adjust to new conditions. I kept that framed photo top of mind if only to remember that there was a past that made us ready – and stunningly beautiful skies in the future beyond.