Tomorrow my twin guys W. and J. will turn age 20.\u00a0\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not sure I’m ready for this, physically and karma-wise.\u00a0\u00a0Yeah I don’t have the gifts bought or wrapped but that’s in the plans.\u00a0 The bigger issue is the\u00a0journey beyond and the\u00a0ticking clock toward adult services and life outside the known schooling world.\u00a0 As we all know.<\/p>\n
Certainly\u00a0my guys\u00a0don’t know the significance of turning the page on a decade.\u00a0 They barely can count beyond 12.\u00a0 And their ability to accurately select 4 forks for dinner also varies.\u00a0\u00a0 Yesterday being Friday, I baked special cupcakes for school so I know they know it’s coming.\u00a0 And we’ve been talking up our usual birthday routine of allowing them to pick the restaurant of choice for the big day.\u00a0 It’s a precious ritual.\u00a0 We print 3 pages of photos of about a half dozen favorite eateries, and spend days refining the choice.\u00a0 Then, at the last minute, every years for the past 6 or 7 years, the fingers move swiftly to – the Chinese buffet.\u00a0 Where they’ll pig out like fiends, and we’ll laugh and capture smiles rarely seen even on a favorite mountain top.<\/p>\n
I thought I’d feel more sad than I do at these birthdays.\u00a0\u00a0 I actually was going to start the last paragraph saying “Sadly my guys don’t know the significance…” but stopped because deep down I don’t feel this gut-wrenching sadness.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 True, I’ll go to my grave feeling like I could have done one more thing to fix them, and I can’t count the number of times I apologize to my spouse for being a bad mother when limitations of being human, needing to work, or whatever restrict me from doing 120% of everything personally for the boys.
\nWould I wish autism on anyone?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But my guys are such genuinely pure and wonderful spirits that it’s hard to feel dejected, at least for long.<\/p>\n
Last night was\u00a0a rare night out with the ladies, and although I barely let myself schedule\u00a0it in my usual\u00a0too-work-focused personal priorities list, it was a gift.\u00a0 Wine, honest talk about funerals and divorces but about honoring what they teach, and\u00a0moving on from them, made me feel loved and respected for who I am.\u00a0\u00a0 The even bigger gift was on the bean bag chair in the basement when I opened the door from the garage.\u00a0 J., grinning ear to ear,\u00a0 comfy by himself in the quiet of a sensory room, after having just helped his dad in a late-night errand run to work.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile W. was laser-focused on his favorite computer puzzle play and although not sporting a grin, he looked like I felt when I’m writing or baking bread – immersed.<\/p>\n
My guys have joy, even with autism.\u00a0\u00a0 They have brought me to such a better place, and I to them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now they sleep, but I’m reaching out my hand spiritually today as I have\u00a0the honor of guiding\u00a0them from one decade to the next.\u00a0 We will share it, revel in it, and use our love from it to change the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tomorrow my twin guys W. and J. will turn age 20.\u00a0\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m not sure I’m ready for this, physically and karma-wise.\u00a0\u00a0Yeah I don’t have the gifts bought or wrapped but that’s in the plans.\u00a0 The bigger issue is the\u00a0journey beyond and the\u00a0ticking clock toward adult services and life outside the known schooling world.\u00a0 As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twinmommeetsautism.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}