Ain't Talking 'Bout Love

My pet peeve today: love.

Not the concept of love--that I like--but the word love, used too loosely.

Autism means dozens upon dozens of people moving in and out of your children's lives. OT, SLP, PT, hab . . . these service providers waltz in and out, an never-ending revolving door of service. They move away, they take new jobs, they go to graduate school. In and out, in and out. Longfellow's tide rising and falling for an eternity.

What bothers me, though, is when these service providers claim to love my children.

Of all the people who have made their way in and out, there are only two who I can say really loved my children (John and Allie). My kids weren't just a job to them; my kids were in their hearts. They didn't just disappear when the job was done; they still keep up to date on them. Allie comes by during her breaks from med school, armed with presents for the boys and immense love.

But the rest, they aren't the type to keep in touch when the job is over. They move on, and the kids are just a distant memory to them.

Which is okay. I mean, they are professionals and many of them maintain a professional distance, which actually makes some of them better at their jobs.

The people who bug me, though, are the ones who claim to love my children, when they really don't.

"I love your kids so much." "The boys are like family to me." "I love your kids with all my heart."

Which is, well, bullshit.

Love is an ever-fixed mark, Shakespeare tells us. It doesn't quit when you get called out on falsifying data, it doesn't quit when something gets annoying. Love is staying up 'til 3AM when a child can't stop stimming. Love is taking scratches and bites and bruises from a child with autism and returning those with a hug. Love perseveres through the ugliness and difficulties. Love doesn't quit when things get uncomfortable.

I'm okay with people not loving my children, though I think they deserve love. What I'm not okay with is people saying they love them when they don't. I'm not okay with people telling my children they love them when they don't. Because, well, my kids will believe it. Their autism doesn't let them see through lies; they take what they hear as truth.

You know, only to get their hearts broken when the person bails.

They deserve better than having adults who should know better break their hearts.

So don't use the word love if you don't really mean it. Certainly not with my children.

Airplane Love

It's funny how the little things can change the world for a kid, especially a kid with autism.

Nick has kept to the same obsessions for most of his life. Letters. Numbers. Street signs. Trains. Cranes. He'd build and create the most elaborate of structures, but they were always based on the same small cluster of obsessions. He'd write words on the walls with wiki sticks, write lines of numbers up to 100 with chalk, build trains and cranes and street signs with Legos and waffle blocks and Brio sets.

And then, last month, something new came into his world.

It wasn't a planned gift at all, more of a "here's some kid stuff I have lying around--do you think your kids would want it" sort of thing. But the haphazard re-gifting reshaped Nick's reality.

It was an inexpensive glider, the kind where the wings slide into a slit on the body. I gave it to Noah, thinking he'd enjoy using a rubber band to launch it . . . but Nick was drawn to it. Intensely drawn to it.

All of the sudden there was a burst of language tied to the airplane. He'd ask to go outside because that was where the plane was, and once outside he'd say "airpwane, airpwane" until I retrieved it. He couldn't figure out how to make the plane fly, so he'd bring it to me to throw. "Ready, steady, fly!" he'd say when he wanted to see it soar. Soon he added "high in the sky."

The airplane got dirty and lost its nose; it got covered in red when Nick had a nosebleed yet didn't want to relinquish his toy. Eventually the airplane died, never made to withstand the love of a five-year-old boy.

But Nick wasn't deterred. Yesterday he took his Brio blocks outside . . . and built his own airplane. Throughout the day he added detail after detail, making the plane come alive.

This morning, after Noah went off to school, Nick asked to go outside. It was one of those amazing November mornings that you get only in Arizona--the air was alive with the warmth of spring, ignoring everything the calendar had to say. Nick and I played in the sun, taking turns flying the plane. I'd run around, flying the plane throughout the yard, up and down, dip and turn, while Nick chased after me, laughing. "Airpwane fly, high in the sky!" he'd say as the plane pirouetted in the air.

Soon it was time to come inside and prepare for kindergarten. Nick brought his airplane inside with him, and when it was time to take a bath, the airplane joined him. When it was time to eat a snack, the airplane was on the table next to his plate. When it was time to go to the bus stop, the airplane came along, too.

It's probably the only Brio block airplane to ever follow a boy through an afternoon of kindergarten.

Others of us might have been deterred when our original airplane died. Having invested so much love into it, we might have lost ourselves in tears or tantrums (for there are adult versions of those). Nick inspires me: he found a new love, loved it with all his heart . . . and when he lost what he loved so much, he made his own airplane, one much more beautiful than anything anyone could have ever purchased, one so much more amazing than anyone could have imagined.

The beauty of loss--there is so much to gain from it.

This is what it's like to be loved

I came in to find Noah had settled himself into my room, a little bed of blankets spread out on the floor.

"Mommy!!" he said as he ran to hug me. It's his typical greeting for me . . . I can go outside for 45 seconds to put the trash in the dumpster and he'll greet me with the same excited "Mommy!!" that I'd hear if I'd been gone for five days.

"Are you sleeping in here?" I asked.

In the sweetest, most sheepish voice he replied, "I want to be close to you."

Who am I to argue with that?

He set about arranging the room for sleeping. He got his Lightning McQueen nightlight and plugged it into the wall. Then he tucked me in, making sure I had all my pillows and blankets. "Here's a nice spot for your cell phone," he said, taking it from it's typical home under my pillow and setting it on a shelf right next to my bed. "Oh! And don't forget your night guard!" he exclaimed like a good parent as he brought me the case from my dentist's office. It's supposed to stop me from grinding my teeth at night . . . "supposed to" but I didn't know for sure because I'd never made it a full night with it in. I put the night guard in place and Noah shut off the light.

Even with a visit from an incredibly powerful thunderstorm, I had a soothing night's sleep with my son sleeping on the floor next to my bed, and I didn't even grind my teeth once.

When I Fell in Love

I never saw myself as a baby person. I remember when I was in my mid-twenties and my friend Beth had a baby . . . I held that thing and was completely FREAKED OUT. Beth's baby fell asleep in my arms and I didn't know what to do. "He's asleep," I said in panicked whisper, and Beth calmly replied, "It's okay; you can just keep holding him." So I did, freaked out as I was.

A couple years later I was in the bathroom at my mom's house with my cat, Nutmeg. She sat with me as I waited for the plus sign to show up on the pregnancy test. Which it did.

I instantly loved that person who I just learned was living in my womb. I remember going to the mall and buying the baby a present--a yellow rabbit beanie baby named "Grace." Although I wasn't expecting or planning to be pregnant at that point in my life, grace seemed like the best word to describe how I felt about that little person, like God had given me a gift in His grace.

Though I still didn't see myself as a baby person. Fortunately, I thought, I happened to be married to someone who *was* a baby person. He was the kind of guy who would always talk and wave to the babies in the supermarket . . . and I always tried to get him to stop because I was sure the moms would be freaked out by this stranger cooing over their baby. He was the kind of guy who cried at the tiny baby booties I bought at Target . . . I think we both figured that he'd be the one who did the bulk of the baby stuff, since that was his thing, and I'd sort of take over when the kids got older.

Of course, that's not how it happened at all.

The baby was born . . . and since he was a boy the name "Cosette Grace" didn't really fit him. But Noah did.

The first few weeks were a blur. I was recovering from both labor and a c-section, adjusting to the irrationally large hoards of laundry that such a tiny person produced . . . but then, after those first few weeks, something amazing happened. I fell in love.

I'd loved Noah ever since I'd seen that plus sign in an abstract sort of way, but it took time for me to fall into that absolute, indescribable sort of love. I think it's because I've always only been able to fall in love with people I knew well, and Noah was a stranger at first. But once I got to know him, there was this love that I never fathomed was possible.

That first summer is the summer I know I will look back most fondly on for the rest of my life. The semester didn't start until September, so I had three months of glorious time with Noah. I'd nurse him and he'd fall asleep in my arms . . . and rather than being freaked out like I was with Beth's baby, I loved ever second of him there asleep next to my beating heart. I didn't take him to his crib to sleep, but instead I sat there with him, holding him, for hours upon hours.

And I loved the tough times too. When he was sick and I rocked with him in the rocking chair in the corner of his room, I remember feeling so THANKFUL. It felt like such a gift to be able to be the one to hold him and help him when he was hurting. And when he coughed so hard from croup that he puked, I caught the puke in my hands as I held him. Yep, that's when I *really* knew I was a mom.

A few years later is when Nick came along . . . this time the baby was planned. And again I fell in love, but this time it was faster. I remember not wanting to leave the hospital because I loved the quiet time Nick and I had with each other there. To love two people, so fully . . . I never knew it was possible.

It's Mother's Day so I'm thinking about these two great loves of my life today. Is it hard being their mom sometimes? Yes, sometimes. Autism can be a bitch, and every now and then I wonder what it would be like to have a week without habilitation therapy and occupational therapy and speech therapy and IEP meetings and doctor's appointments. Oh, and those cold, calloused people who don't give my children the compassion they deserve as human beings. But would I ever, ever trade my boys for a moment? NEVER. They are the two most amazing people I've ever met. The loves of my life.

And when I focus on that love, it makes all the other decisions in life easy to make.

Saying "I love you"

Nick had slipped out of his bed, yet again, but he was being so cute that I didn't have the heart to say "night night, sweet Nick"--the words that always make him run to either his bed or mine and throw himself under the covers.

I was sitting at the dining table working . . . okay, I was harvesting some trees on Farmville, but I was going to start doing some work soon, really . . . and Nick climbed behind me in my chair as he loves to do. He leaned around and put his lips on my cheek, the trademark Nicholas pucker-free kiss, and then decided to climb up on my shoulders. I was struck by how funny a sight it must have been, Nick perched on my shoulders as I "worked" at the computer, and I momentarily thought about how I might capture the sight on my camera phone without letting Nick slip from my shoulders.

That's when he said, "Tee-cle!" My phonetic spelling *so* does not do justice to the the cuteness that is Nick saying "tickle."

"Hey, how am I supposed to tickle you when you're up there?" I jokingly asked. And then, with my right arm carefully wrapped around his leg in case he lost his balance, I reached my left arm behind me to tickle Nick's ribs.

He laughed and then said, "I wuf you."

(Okay, my eyes filled with tears again just typing that.)

Maybe he was saying 'I love you' because I say it to him all the time when I'm tickling and cuddling with him. Maybe he was repeating the words he'd heard so many times before without understanding what they stood for.

But one thing I do know: Nicholas knows what it means to love. My little boy loves me.

And tonight he said the words. They are the most beautiful three words I have ever, ever heard.