Internal Mirror Plane

So yesterday I accidentally started a 12-step meeting . . .

But it's not all my fault. The folks at the Peace and Justice Center were like "We've got a meeting room! You can have it for free! So! Pick a day! Monthly? Biweekly? Weekly? What? Let's go!"

I'm not sure if I'm more scared that people won't show up, or that they will.

Anybody in the ABQ area who is a survivor of sexual abuse: call me, Rachel, at 243-1295, and I will tell you more.

Look, Mom!

I just walked by the cutest non-Caleb child ever. She looks like she's about Caleb's age, and she was squatting in the dirt, having found something apparently very interesting, and was trying out all sorts of different prosidies to try to get her mother to pay attention to the mysterious Cool Thing. "Mom! Look! Mom, look! Look, Mom! Mom? Look! Mom! Look?" Awww. And meanwhile Mom's talking to a white-cowboy-hatted dude who may or may not be either Dad or Tio, not paying a whole lot of mind, and Dad/Tio's silently but intently watching the child, making faces, nodding. Awww.

Belonging Be Longing

We went to the senior center today, vanful of developmentally disabled folks and two 21-year-old women. Unloaded everybody, got several earfuls of advice from seniors sitting outside, pushed two wheelchairs in and kept Client A from eating the tasteful decorative plants, trucked into the "social area."

Where all of the eight-ish seniors seated at various tables stared at us briefly and went back to their coffee or their corny jokes. We're like teeth. Ignore us long enough and we'll go away, right? Client M realized how deadly dull it is to sit around with the same folks in a different location without even the hip-hop from the radio, started making his bored noise, which I imagine resembles sounds made by mooses in heat. Seniors turned to glare. "Come on, Client M," I said, "let's go play the piano. You want to go play the piano with me?"

Meaningful look from my coworker. "That was a look." Smile. "I'm like, Rachel, they're gonna kick us out you go do that. They don't like us here." Pause. In unison: "This is the worst outing ever."

So back to the van once Client L-- who is, I might add, 74 freaking years old, slightly older than Client C, who is 65, and Client P, who is 56, all of whom are senior freaking citizens-- finished his coffee. My coworker was not too distraught to stop by the Wendy's for a #1 combo and share her fries with me, but she wasn't interested in going back anywhere, senior center or home. "You guys want to go see the horses?"

And we did. Cranked up the radio, got the Spanish-language pop going, got cruising. Up the river road, my coworker narrating, Client M just behind us laughing, singing along, kind of.

Green on all sides, all spread out. And it was almost like my dad's dad's cornfields, was almost like my cousin's car, late at night after the wedding dance, nothing between any of us but the music, all of us thinking our deep thoughts. You breathe different out here, all that green. I want to live out somewhere like here because my son loves horses and I want to have one in my backyard like-- look!-- like that one. Nothing fancy, just a small little house and a lot of green. All that green. And a horse. That's my dream.

She's driving by these houses that look like they could fit fourteen families, and I'm saying Damn. How many people live there?, and she's saying You don't get it, Rachel. These people are rich. Which, clearly, is true, both parts of it, because I sure don't and they sure are, more than anyone should be allowed to be, I think. She's in school to be a beautician ("not just a hairstylist. I do nails and makeup and stuff too"), and she's making $7.75 an hour here and she hasn't asked her ex for child support because she's still in love with him. Probably couldn't buy her son that horse even if she did ask for it. She's not, shall we say, horse material, any more than I am. But why not? Shouldn't everybody be allowed that, a small little house and a lot of green?

Maybe.

Here I am missing Iowa, though, looking at the fallow fields, the livestock eating out of the trough of the loader/backhoe. Missing the corn and the soy and the corn, the rhythm of the planting, the lull of the road. And I'm missing the low-lying sky, the quiet sense of being all alone in the middle of the world, the center of it, like the heart of the storm. I'm missing the man and the woman who raised my father in this slowness, and I'm missing all their children, and all their children's children.

I'm missing the dark roads and the gravel and the ditches and the secrets we left by the side of the road, the ache and the tightness stirring in our shared blood, the night in the car with us as an unspoken participant. There are things we can only say, the four of us, if we think they'll disappear, if no one will remember in the morning. Things I said to them and they said to me. Things like "Are you really happy?" and "I don't know what I want" and "I had a couple back at the house, but I yell at my friends when they drive drunk. But I don't want them to die." These are our lives, the psychological equivalent of broken bones still twinging in the rain, trauma and truth all mixed up in our parents and in us. And here I am, de-skeletized, cut off from them, the body of us.

So what do people deserve? What do people need?

L-rd G-d, I wish I knew.

Awww.

So today Client X (male, non-verbal) was chilling on the floor. Client Y (male) got tired of playing football with me and Mr. Schwarzenegger and some other folks, so he went to go sit in the recliner. Five minutes later:

Client Z (female): Rachel, look at Client X! Look at Client Y!
(X is all over Y's lap, leaning up on him and giggling)
Client Z: X is flirting with Y! He's flirting with him, huh!
Client Y, also giggling: Yeah!

So I went and made X scoot himself over a little and get off Y, but the most interesting thing: This was no big deal to anyone. Z thought it was cute. Y thought it was funny and was all petting X's head. X clearly was enjoying himself. No "ewww!". Not just no attempt to categorize X's actions in some other way, but actually an interpretation based on a homosexual scenario. Not a tire iron in sight. Happy homo moment, yo, and it wasn't even explicitly homo.

Neon Deion and the guys

I hear such a variety of laughs, these days. Can't walk, can't see, can't add, can't read, can laugh. And do, like gasping for air, like scream, like hiccup.

I see such a variety of forms, these days. Arms bent over, hands turned around and over, tiny bodies, thick ones, skinny legs and all a man's strength (what's left of it) in a single arm, fingers like tree branches, stiff and moving, skeletal on the football but still throwing. He must've played in high school, in the time he calls "before."

And the others, walking a maybe-future rather than a past. I used to wonder "what if we just let them die once they were born?" and still do, sometimes. What if nothing that couldn't feed itself would survive? I could put down the maroon spoon, eat my own lunch before 2:30. It'd be tidier, this world, less inconvenient. Mess of changing and feeding and trying to amuse or to teach all gone. And what does it mean, the changing and feeding and all? To them, to us? We take care of our own, humans do, but would it make us bad if we didn't? Is a choiceless life and so strictly limited really that much different from being dead? If humans really love all our babies, want them to live regardless of what their living means, what does it mean to love? What does it mean to be human? They're beautiful, of course, as are all created things by definition, but is that really meaningful enough to justify the extraordinary measures?

If we let them die, I wouldn't be asking these questions.

Take it oblique, talk about the higher-fuctioning ones: the skills, the talking, the trust, teaching me ASL, going to the bathroom on their own, repeating "Game time!" five times through crooked teeth until I finally understand. Telling me jokes, telling me secrets, telling the time with hands moving like those of the clock. "3 o'clock, huh?" Sweeping, sure, mopping. Doing the dishes. Consolation of teaching, of a chance to learn something big, maybe not quick, but learn it. Reading. Crossword puzzles. History. All this human stuff. Is that it? Language? Awareness? Is that what makes a person?

Still everywhere the limits. He can go to the bathroom by himself, but we've been working on reading three years and nothing. She's good at wiping tables, but she doesn't talk or sign or anything. He knows the alphabet, but his balance and his weakness keep him from walking. But. But. But.

And this is where the answer comes like monsoon season, quick and scary and new-making: That's why, that's what, that's how. Limitations. Holiness. The two are tied. Not that developmentally disabled folks are the innocent and pure and uniformly spiritually-elevated individuals some "typical" people like to think of. But remember "My power is made perfect in weakness"? There. The key is the opposite of the stereotype. We're all the same, faults and flaws and fantasticness. If G-d can express His goodness-in-creation in laughs that creak like doors opening, in legs stiff and skinny as rebar, in languageless voice, then who am I to think that my weakness is anything other than His and a part of Him? My limits are my holiness. They're where I grow. And where I grow is where I am like G-d in my own life, creating. Imitation? Greatest form of flattery. Greatest form of praise. Tikkun is worship.

So why don't we let them die, the ones who couldn't suck yet, whose lungs were too young for surfactant, whose chromosomes are extra or less? Our guts won't let us, but why? Because in this greatest weakness is the greatest call for strength, and the greatest potential for wholeness. This weakness heals the strong and makes them grow. "I'm not eating until he eats. I could easily just let him die, and maybe be better off myself for it, but instead I'm putting him first." When this weakness is made strong, one way or another, when someone learns to say yes or no, gets out of his wheelchair into a walker, even learns to eat food without choking, the creation continues as this person grows. And being part of another's growth, aiding in that growth, is the primary function of any relationship. How much more meaningful it is to help when the growth is impossible without us, is impossible without our creativity or inconvenience or fight.

And so I'm back to the beginning, maybe too easily but sure enough for now, back to appreciation of creation and desire to emulate the one, the good good G-d.

Chazak chazak v'nithazeik.