by Tim on December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas! We hope your holiday – in whatever way you observe this time of year – has brought peace and joy, plus a little rest and sanity, to your family.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the holiday season trying to take a thoughtful look at my life, particularly at all the good and positive things in it. I wanted to list some of them here, both for my own benefit and also to encourage others to perhaps do the same. And 25 felt like a good number given the season. So here goes. (Complete with illustrations!)
1. This year we became the Flashlight Four. Having Dale Jr. as part of our lives these past almost-eight months has opened up a whole new world of wonder for us. He and the J-Man hardly seem like they could be more different, and because of that we have two unique-in-all-the-world gifts in our lives. What could be better than that!
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by Tim on December 24, 2009
As I write this, there are a couple of hours left on Christmas Eve. I can’t believe the holiday season is drawing to an end. It’s hard to figure out where it all went.
I wrote a while back about my struggle to fill in the sentence, “All I want for Christmas is ______.” I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
I’ve realized how much my thoughts have centered on some shaky belief that if we could just get over one more hurdle or if I could just complete one more thing on my to-do list or if we could just overcome one more challenge then things would be OK. Not surprisingly, as soon as any of those one things happens, it doesn’t feel like enough – it never does – because there’s always something else to worry about to replace it. This isn’t the way to find peace. Hopefully I keep remembering that.
All I’ve been wanting for Christmas this month is the ability to make my peace with where things are – to say that for now what is right here in this moment is enough. That everything I need is right around me. That I don’t need me or the J-Man or Mary or Dale Jr. to be anyone other than who we are.
But really that’s my choice. No one has to – or can – give it to me. It’s a choice I can make every day. Simply having the day off today to hang out with the family, do a few things around the house, and otherwise take it easy and play with the kids has made me realize that all I want for Christmas is already here.
Plenty of days will still be challenging, frustrating, and exhausting. Plenty more will be exciting, joyful, and wondrous. And some of those days will be all of the above. But I hope to keep remembering that every day starts and ends the same way.
I wake up every day the father of the two most wonderful and perfect children anyone could ever hope for and married to my high school sweetheart and soulmate. And I end each day the same way. All I could ever want is right here all around me. And from there, anything is possible.
by Tim on December 4, 2009
… well, I don’t know. And that’s the issue I’m struggling with.
[If you gloss over the rest of this post, which I wouldn't blame you for doing, please consider this one point as I'm really interested to hear people's responses. How would you fill in this sentence: 'All I want for (insert your holiday of choice here) is _____." ]
I’m not talking about actual, physical, tangible, wrappable stuff. A 50-lb bag of coffee and a large, BPA-free bucket to drink it from has a certain appeal to it, as does a Barnes & Noble gift card (to buy more autism books!), but pretty much anything I could put on a list would be something I could live without. I imagine this is true for most of us.
Christmas is my favorite holiday. I do forbid Christmas music to be played anywhere near me until after Thanksgiving (we do one holiday, we do it well, and we move to the next one), but once the turkey plates are put away, I’m ready to make the yuletide gay.
The way we culturally tend to celebrate Christmas doesn’t strike me as particularly autism-friendly. We’re running around all over the place to see family or friends and going to crowded, loud, rude shopping places where everything glows, blinks, sings, moves, ho-ho-hoes, or in general attacks you wearing green tights and pointy hats. We are bombarded by a bazillion toy ads for stuff even the neurotypical children they are marketed toward don’t need but that almost always either aren’t appropriate or would hold no interest for our kids.
I think it was only last year that the J-Man showed any interest at all in unwrapping any gifts. It hasn’t been that long at all that a new toy in the house would even register on his radar within weeks of him getting it. In short, he’s never seemed to be one to much care whether he receives a gift like this or not.
We’ve tended toward buying things that would complement what he does at school and at therapy, especially for times like Christmas and birthday where others will pay for it instead of us. Various people look at us like we’re insane for having this stuff on our shopping list – like it’s the modern equivalent of a lump of coal – but this is something we’re getting used to.
Somewhere in the midst of the annual quests to find him a special something to put under the tree that he would love, he helped me figure out one of the essential truths about all this:
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by Tim on December 25, 2008
We did the usual filming-your-kid-coming-in-to-see-what’s-under-the-tree thing this morning. The J-Man clearly could not have cared less. The film is primarily about him searching for breakfast.
His plans for celebrating today were clear – go grab his toast, drag both of us over to the couch, climb in between us, and eat. When he finished his toast, he put his head on my shoulder and smiled, completely ignoring everything under the tree until he was ready to get up from the couch. It’s clear who the teacher is around here these days.
And if that’s not the perfect gift, I don’t know what is.
by Tim on December 24, 2008
As I talk to other parents who are making their final preparations for Christmas, it reminds me that in our family, we are writing our own story. J-Man seems to have little – if any – understanding of what Christmas is, why there’s a tree in our living room with white lights on it (though he digs it a lot), why people give him stuff he’s never seen before and why we ask him to pull paper off of them in the first place.
We can buy presents with him in the store with us and put them out in full view under the tree for a week and he doesn’t care one way or the other. There’s no going to tell Santa – or even us – what he wants for Christmas. There’s no searching all over the house for gifts we’ve hidden. There’s no singing along to Christmas carols. There’s no, “How many days until Christmas, Daddy?” or “Is it Christmas Eve yet, Daddy?” Tomorrow will likely be like any other day for him.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel sadness about this. And I would be lying if I said that there isn’t a part of me that wishes we could share those things together.
But one thing he’s taught us to remember is that Christmas really has little to do with any of those things. Because of him, I’ve come to finally get deep down that Christmas is about hope coming in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
I am not normally one to wax religious on this blog, but whether this story is part of your beliefs or not, I think it speaks to a fundamental desire in all of us to be able to believe that something incredible can come even from the last place you’d ever expect. Given the transformation of human history that would follow, it was not how you would have expected this child’s story to begin 2,000 years ago.
But by retelling it every year, we learn and re-learn that out of the humblest beginnings can arise something beyond anyone’s furthest imagination. We are reminded that hope and grace can bloom and thrive in places many people would never think to look, and even from places where people consciously decide that nothing of worth could possibly come.
This is why the story of Christmas means so much more to me now. Our family’s story did not begin as we expected it to, but we’ve discovered that uncertain beginnings are not permanent obstacles. They instead take us on a journey that transforms us as parents every day and brings goodness and light into our little community in the world. And who can even know where it might take us next.
The entire season of Advent is one of waiting and hoping, imagination and expectation. We discover that it’s not just for one day but that every day brings with it untold possibilities. In a little over four months, our second child will join us, and we’ll begin the next chapter of this great, unpredictable, exciting adventure we’re on. Meanwhile, we wait, with no small amount of uncertainty, but also no shortage of joy and hope.
All we know right now is that we have a little light and some rough directions and little else to go by except a driving sense of trust and belief that if we travel as far and as long as it takes to get there, we will discover things beyond our every hope.
In our Christmas story, the child stacks blocks and arranges crayons and never takes a step without two of something in his hands. The donkeys, cows, and sheep are packed away unnoticed in the corner. He swaddles himself in pillows for comfort. And then in an unexpected moment, he glances up in a temporary moment of peace as if to say, It’s time to go write a new story; go get my crayons.
So – full of wonder, fear, and expectation – that’s what we’ll do.
