Winter Break Makes My Brain Hurt

Ahh, winter break, a break from the scholarly life and a chance to kick back a be a mom, and nothing else.

Ow, does it make my brain hurt.

Noah has been asking me questions all week, the kinds of questions that feel a lot more challenging than the ones I got thrown at me during my comprehensive exams. Because at least those questions were limited to a specific field of inquiry. Noah's questions are from all over the place.

Just today he was asking what another word for "superstition" was. It threw me off a bit. I mean, first of all, what eight-year-old child is concerned about synonyms, and why did he need a synonym for that word, anyway? And what would the synonym be?

Tonight we were driving back home from some big excitement--we drove the car through the car wash, and Noah thought it was *just* like a storm--when Noah started asking questions again.

"Mom, how old were you nineteen years ago?"

Oh, frick, I had to count. How old was I now, anyway? Take away ten, then take away nine, and . . . "Seventeen."

"Did you have a boyfriend?"

Hmm, wasn't expecting THAT one. "Yes."

"What was his name? Wayne?"

"No, honey, I didn't even know your daddy then."

"So what was his name?"

Oh, frick. How the heck do I answer this one? It was my senior year of high school and I'd sort of dated several people that year, though it was innocent enough. I began the awful task of counting back. Let's see, I'd broken up with Robert a few days before my seventeenth birthday, so he didn't count, and started dating Joe right before I broke up with Robert (I know, I know, I feel bad about the timing) . . . then I think there was Lee . . . then Joe . . . then Matt and Nicco . . . then Joe . . . then Bill.

Yeah, I wasn't at all ready to explain such teenaged-girl capriciousness to my son, so I picked my two favorites and gave my son their names.

I braced myself for the next question, fearing what he might come up with.

"Did you graduate from high school that year?"

"Yes," I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to have a question about my academic self because that's the realm where I always have the answers.

My Best Christmas Gift

It's Christmas Eve, which means I have yet to open all the packages underneath the tree. I don't know what rests in the boxes and bags, but whatever is there, it can't be better than the gift I already got.

My little boy is celebrating Christmas with me, for the first time.

Nick is almost five, but he's never really celebrated Christmas. Sure, Christmases happened around him, but he never took part in the celebrations. I'd take his hands and make him place ornaments on the tree. I'd take his hands and make him tear wrapping paper off his gifts. I tried to drag him along into the celebration rituals, but he seemed a bit oblivious to it all.

This year, though, Nick is there with us, really there. This Christmas Eve he's done so many of the things that, well, most any kid would do on Christmas.

It started with a present from Grandmother. He looked at it for a bit, and then he did something that any sneaky little kid would try to do--he started to rip it open. Silly, sneaky boy!

After the sun set we took a walk around the neighborhood to view the Christmas lights, and he looked at them in excitement. Before we came into the house, I took him to sit in front of the blinking snowflakes in our own yard. "Look," I said, "look." And he did. He looked and laughed and enjoyed.

We came into the house and I plugged in a string of lights that drape our living room wall. Nick's eyes lit up. "Look," he said, "look."

After that we brought out a cake. It's a ritual that Noah insists we keep--we have a birthday celebration for Jesus since, after all, Christmas is Jesus' birthday. We sang "Happy Birthday" and when the song ended Nick spoke some words, slowly, laboredly, as if it took a lot of thought to get them out. "Happy . . . birthday," he said.

When the birthday cake plates were finally cleared from the table, Noah decided he wanted to hang a few more Christmas ornaments. Noah pulled out five glittery silver balls and started to hang them. Nick came over and, without anyone's interference he picked up one of the balls and carefully hung it on a tree branch, then reached down to grab another and carefully hung it on a branch.

I started to cry.

The best Christmas gift isn't something that has wrapping paper or bows; it is being able to share Christmas--really share it--with both of my boys.

Sticks and Stones

Words are nothing, these tiny units of sound. Except, they are everything. They reflect and create our realities. They include and exclude people.

Some have said that disability rights is the last great civil rights battle to be waged. Over the decades we've seen women and people of color and people of a variety of sexual orientations make progress in the civil rights arena. Those gains have been reflected in the language our culture deems acceptable. In a staff meeting, it would not be acceptable to call a female colleague a bitch, or refer to an African American colleague with the n-word, or to call a gay colleague a fag. Yes, such horrible language can still be heard behind closed doors--a sign that these groups are still marginalized and that we need to continue to work for equality--but in our public personas, we know such language is not okay and so we don't use it.

I wish that we had such critical awareness of the language we use to address people with disabilities. Because I have been in staff meetings where colleagues used the word 'retards,' and no one seems to cringe the way they would have if someone had used a racialized term or a gendered term.

My sons have autism, something you certainly know if you've read this blog even once. They are not typical, and yet I do not see them as disabled. They are both incredibly abled, each in his own way. Nick is a gifted builder and mathematician. Noah is a gifted linguist and scientist. They are incredibly abled.

And yet they are different. The icon of the autism community has been the puzzle piece, as if people with autism are a bunch of puzzle pieces that need to be put back together (or fixed) in order for them to make sense. My sons aren't puzzles; they are complete and full human beings . . . the rest of the world just, far too often, fails to stop a moment to look at them and see who they truly are.

So often others focus so much on how different my sons are that they fail to see how similar they are to the rest of us--they are human beings with emotions, desires, and hurts.

Perhaps it's that difficulty of seeing the similarities between "us" and "them" that makes it okay in our culture to use disparaging language to describe people who are differently abled. I mean, "we" don't see "them" as like "us," as human, so we can't fathom that "they" would have emotions and desires and hurts. Sticks and stones can't hurt them.

It's not just college staff meetings where that language pops up. It pops up in elementary schools, too. There's a girl at Noah's school who has picked up on his differences and calls him "freak."

Think about that word. Does it shock you? Unnerve you? Maybe a little?

But not as much as if someone had called him the n-word, huh.

We still have a cultural tolerance for disparaging labels applied to people who are differently abled.

Here's the thing, though. The words hurt. Even if they are culturally acceptable, they still make my son cry. They reflect and create our realities, making a world that makes it okay to categorize others. They include and exclude people, cementing the categories of "us" and "them." They focus on what makes someone different rather than the so many things we all have in common.

We need to be conscious of our language. Disparaging language is not okay. And I'll fight to make sure that someday words like 'retard' and 'freak' will someday become as unacceptable as racial slurs.

Yay for tattling!!

Tattling is typically one of the most annoying of children's behaviors. Ugh. Who wants to hear, "Mommy, so-and-so did such-and-such!!!" over and over again?

Me, apparently.

Today Nick and Noah were in my room. Nick loves my room--he's always jumping on my bed, snuggling in my blankets, or harassing the cat who co-inhabits the room with me. Noah finds the room less thrilling . . . except for when his little brother is in there, for all big brothers like to taunt their little brothers every now and then.

I heard crying and did the mommy-sprint to the room. Noah was on the floor; Nick was on the bed, holding his hand and crying. Usually I'd ask Noah what happened, since Nick is pretty much non-verbal. But Nick came over to me, crying still. He lifted his hand up to me and said, "Noah B."

Nick's first time narcing on his brother. I love it :)