Mother/Son Vacation

I said that we would just check it out, just take a quick look because by the time we had checked into the hotel and settled into our room, it was late afternoon and much too chilly to swim.  It was even colder than the weather report predicted and I had only brought thin sweatshirts for each of us.  But Josh kept saying, "Wanna go home" so I needed to put some more motivators on the table.  I wanted him to be ok with this quick little mother/son trip that I had brought him on.  So instead of going straight to the car to go get some dinner, we made a brief little side trip to just go look at the outdoor pool and hot tub area.

We rounded the corner and I used my key card to get us into the tiny fenced in area where the pool and little hot tub was. Josh took a good look around and, as he took it in, his visage completely changed, as if he was being greeted by a long lost friend.  The silly-sweet smile that oozed across his face said, "I know what this is! This is something I like!"

When I told him that he could dip a toe into the hot tub, he flung off his Crocs off and plopped his foot into the bathtub-like water.  I could tell by his body language that we weren't going to go straight to dinner.  

"Wanna go in?" It was half question and half declaration.  This kid wanted to go in the hot tub, cold windy weather be damned.  He walked right in with his shorts and underwear on.  I barely had time to take off his shirt and sweatshirt.  Josh spent the next hour enjoying the hot tub.  As he usually does when he's happy, he swing his arms around, sang little bits of songs, and exclaimed words which he made up like "Wash-weh!" and "stuck-tidit".

Well, this is why I decided to take three days and two nights away with Josh.  This week is Josh's spring break but not his sisters'.  Since I am on sabbatical, I somehow came up with the idea of having a mother/son getaway somewhere with a pool.  I chose Salinas because I have been wanting to visit the National Steinbeck Museum which is there and it would be easy to find a decently priced hotel where Josh could swim and enjoy water.

On our second day here we partook in the free breakfast and made our way to the Steinbeck Museum.  I had some amount of trepidation knowing that there was a wide spectrum of ways that this could turn out spanning from massive meltdown to going pretty ok.  After all these years, I know that taking Josh out to public places is always a risk but it's a risk that I am willing to take now and then.  Yes, there is always the chance that he will be walking along and suddenly decide to take a pee into a bush or suddenly get upset but I don't want Josh to live in his room all the time when he's not at school.  And I don't want to feel like I can never do anything interesting just because I have Josh in my life.  

The visit to the museum turned out to be surprisingly successful.  Josh spent a good part of the time by himself in a small, fenced in outdoor area within the museum with his headphones, Ipod and his Magnadoodle.  I would take in one or two exhibits and then walk back to check in on him.  He was fine the whole time, sometimes taking a few moments to walk in circles and feel the breeze on his face.  For the last 30 minutes, I made Josh walk through the exhibit room with me which he was less than thrilled about but was willing to do.  

After lunch Josh and I went down to the pool area where Josh elected to go into the big pool this time and I need to tell you that Josh was happy THE WHOLE TIME!  As parents, our children's joy catalyses our own joy.  It's not the only thing that we want for them but when our kids are filled with happiness and contentment, it touches a deep, central part of our hearts.  We want our kids to be able to enjoy the gifts that life (and we) give to them.  We want them to be happy.  

I find myself wondering if God feels this way about us.  I wonder if God, as a heavenly parent, wants me to enjoy my life, the world, and each moment as much as Josh does.  Does it give God joy when I savor some part of my day or a beautiful piece of writing or a perfect Korean meal? Does my smile make God smile? Is my laughter music to God's ears?  If so, I am going to try to let myself enjoy the things that I enjoy more.  I think of how freely and unselfconsciously Josh enjoys the pool and I will try to be like him.  I hope that my joy, and my grateful enjoyment of God's good gifts to me, is as pleasing to God as Josh's joy is to me.  

For nearly 4 hours I breathed in my son's sweet joy.  He swam around, jumped up and down, flapped his arms, floated on his back and stood quietly in the water with his eyes closed and face to the sky.  Every time I asked him if we should go back up to our hotel room he vehemently declared, "No!"  Finally I had to bribe him to come out with a piece of chocolate that I found in my purse.  We made our way upstairs to discover that Josh thought that the bathtub in our room was just the coolest.  He took a bath for another hour and half.  

Morning Clapping

I have a seventeen year old son who wakes up happy on most mornings.  How's THAT for counting your blessings?  This is not to say that he's happy all the time.  When he's unhappy, you'll know it because he feels free to cry, yell and throw things.  But the kid loves to be alive most mornings.

For example, today is Saturday and, as we did not have anything going on in the morning, I slept in past our usual early morning family wake up time.  The first thing that I hear is the sound of jubilant clapping.  Joshua is drawing some of his favorite things on his magnadoodle toy (such as hairdryers and showerheads), putting the magnetic pen down and then clapping.  He can do this for hours.

Eventually he comes out to the kitchen and starts rummaging around for something to eat.  Without supervision his greatest interest, of course, is to find cookies.  Josh's sisters have been on a baking kick for quite a while now so he knows that they often hide containers full of baked goodies in various places in the kitchen, ostensibly to keep him from finding and eating them.  But, though he may have intellectual disability, he's not stupid so he can usually find any hidden sweets or baked goods.  Given further unsupervised time, he will eat the whole thing, leaving prodigious amounts of crumbs on the floor for our dog to clean up.

Alex even put a "baby proofing" clip on one cabinet in an attempt to keep Josh from accessing it but he figured out how to work it pretty quickly.  Finally, we ended up having to buy a plastic "lock box" to keep chips and granola bars in so that we could have some secure location in the kitchen.  Josh has not figured out how to open this yet but the problem is that the rest of us often forget to lock it up so Josh knows to check it first when he's hankering for a chocolate chip breakfast bar.

Hearing Josh in the kitchen is what finally got me out of bed.  I offered to make him some toast and he grinned broadly.

"Want butter on it," he said.

Josh also really enjoys what we call "frozen yogurt".  This is the leftovers of homemade fruit smoothies frozen into ice cube trays.  He won't eat it in liquid form but once frozen, he loves it.  He treats each cube like a little delectable piece of luxury, nibbling first on the edges then taking slightly larger bites, smiling as he does.

The house is really quiet this morning as Josh's sisters are away on a youth retreat.  I am listening to my son making happy noises while eating his breakfast.  Every once in a while, he will take a break from his voracious eating and express his joy through a few seconds of vigorous clapping.  I know that he might just be seeking sensory input.  But sometimes I imagine that Josh is giving thanks to God in his own way for his life.  And in my mind, I see God smiling back, very pleased at His son.

Echolalia from God?

Echolalia is the "meaningless repetition of another person's spoken words as a symptom of psychiatric or developmental disorder".  Josh has been exhibiting echolalia since he began to learn how to talk.  We've spend a tremendous amount of time trying to teach Josh to respond to questions with an appropriate simple answer rather than by repeating the question.  For many years, if you asked him, "Do you want toast?"  He would always respond by saying, "Do you want toast?" right back at you.  With help from autism therapists, we learned to not give him what he wanted until he replied with a more appropriate response such as "Yes".  

Even after many, many years of training and intentional assistance, when Josh is tired or when he does not know what you are talking about, he will simply reply to a question with a repetition of a question.  A query such as "How was your day?" will likely solicit the response "How was your day?" because Josh does not know how to answer a question like that.

Sometimes when Josh is alone, I will hear him repeating things just because he wants to or maybe he likes the sound of a particular word or phrase.  Last month, he was in his room listening to the radio with his headphones on.  The quiet of our house was suddenly punctuated with Josh loudly and happily exclaiming "This year, give the gift of beauty!". Another day, I heard him say, "The season of shopping and shipping!" with a follow up of lots of clapping.

Recently, Josh was having his breakfast, while I listened to NPR on the radio and cleaned the kitchen.  As usual, Josh echoed some of the phrases that he heard on the newscast.  I don't know if this is just my imagination but it was strange to notice the specific phrases that he chose to echo.  

During a newscast about the besieged city of Aleppo in Syria, Josh repeated phrases like:

"Many wounded people trapped."

and 

"Children are dying."

and 

"What do they have to hope in?"

It felt like some sort of emotional editor or a a personal prayer highlighter of the news for me.  I was in the mode of semi-listening to the news while putting dishes away while planning the rest of day.  But after the third or fourth seemingly meaningful verbal statement by a kid who cannot understand the news, I began to wonder if it was possible for God to speak to me through echolalia.  

I stopped with the dishes, took a seat and waited for a minute.  Wondering if I should pray for Syria, interact with Josh or turn off the radio, I just sat with the moment of pause.  Josh also entered into the moment of pause.  It was a rich, five-second moment of shared attention; plump with wondering and waiting.  I felt like God had my attention for the first time all day.  Then my son stood up and did a little dance of waving his arms and head back and forth.  Then he went back to his room and shut the door like, "My work here is done."

Does God ever get your attention in surprising, unexpected ways?