Through Fire

In the very early 1980s I rode to Boise with my younger brother and father. Dad had a blue pick up truck that we would fill with any can on the side of the road.  There was a certain start and stop quality to the trip.  I was along for the ride.  Dad wanted to take Alex, but he needed time to work in Boise.  I came as childcare.  Also. Adventure.

There were potholes, chuckholes in Dad’s parlance, in Red Desert, Wyoming.  No seatbelts.  Alex hit the top of the truck and knocked the shifter out of whack.  We made it to the migratory bird refuge near the great Salt Lake.  Start and stop there too.  Pheasants cross the road randomly. Alex and Dad were birders.  I was a teenager.  If I had had a smart phone back then I would have been the worst possible teen. As it was, I was as limited a person as I possibly could be.  We saw ruddy ducks and phalaropes and coots.  I was dying inside.

We got near Idaho and there was a brush fire that crossed the highway.  I held Alex in my lap as we drove through the fire.  A couple on a motorcycle in front of us worried me.  The woman was in a tube top and no helmet.  Driving through the fire we couldn’t even see them in front of us.  Visibility was so bad. I was frightened. Dad was calm.

We spent our time in Boise uneventfully.  I think there was a fair we attended and I played my recorder and Dad worked and Alex and I just hung out.  We stayed at a house of some random journalist Dad worked with.  I remember too little.

I remember the fire.  We were frightened.  Dad was calm.

In late 2006 or early 2007 Will and Charles and I visited the North Park Nature Center in Chicago. We went there often.  It was the closest nature we could get to. Charles could handle it even when he was most frightened of the world. I didn’t expect the controlled burn would be completely unannounced.  But it was.  We got there as usual and went into the woods, but within a very short time I just realized we were surrounded by flame and smoke.  I did the only thing I could think to do.  I picked up Will, I grabbed Charles’ hand and we just ran. I stayed as calm as humanly possible in the moment.

There have been times when life experiences felt like walking through fire.  But there is nothing really comparable to ACTUALLY walking through fire. 

The boys were so little then, but they remember it.  Both of them have written about it for school projects.  Alex was so little on that trip to Boise, but he remembers too.  And I remember thinking about how Dad must have felt inside driving through that fire.  The way I felt in the nature center.  All the power of that fire and as a parent we have to sometimes just hike a kid up under your arm and run.

Credible Threat

On Mother's day seven years ago, the threat was credible enough that I called the cops and had the guns taken away.

The threat wasn't against me or my kids, but inwardly driven. 

The past couple of days there has been a credible threat that kept all students on the front range at home.  I understand credible threats, having experienced my own.

My feeling is that you do have to respond appropriately to credible threats and I'm glad the school districts did what they did.  I wonder about the woman from Florida who apparently was running naked through the woods with a gun and ended up dying by her own hand.  I wonder if she has never heard of ticks, because I don't know many people who would run through Colorado forests in the spring without some kind of clothing on. Guns may be okay protection, but not against a tick burrowing into your skin.

I wonder about that woman because it seems to me the end was inevitable.  She may have been threatening outwardly, but the display and the publicity suggest to me she wanted the notoriety as much as anything.  She got it and she got what she probably wanted, an end with a splash.

I'm not impressed.

I have seen some incredibly cogent and eloquent posts on social media about the most recent incident, and it reminds me of things I have written in the past...and that I feel I can't now.  I am so done with all of it.  Guns/no guns/deaths/threats I don't even know how to respond anymore.  It's such a circus and a horror.

Children raised in this period have maybe two choices, start running through the forests naked, or start fighting back, as the Parkland kids did last year.  I am firmly on the side of the young people from Parkland and elsewhere, because my own limits seem to have been reached.

Repetition

I have just been writing out a play-by-play for running my household.  I am going to a conference next week and family will watch the kids. 

I was just so bored by the time I finished writing it out.  SO much to do and remember everyday, but it is always the same stuff.  Does anyone wonder why I occasionally look past my exit on the way to work and wonder what would happen if I just kept going west, instead of turning?

Routine is all well and good.  In an autism family, it's necessary.  But the thought of stepping away from my routine for just a few days makes me feel oh so very happy.  I have been trying to vary our routine.  I have planned hikes and outings and vacations for the summer.  The planning is fine.  The day to day is still there. 

I don't know how to make the day to day better.  Well...kind of I do. Piano lessons and swimming and helped me.  I feel like I need to make more effort to change things up...but that takes effort.  Routine is easy, just stifling.

Springtime will bring a much needed break in routine.  It is time to garden and be outside.  Bonfire season is coming, if it isn't so windy this year.  I am looking forward to not planning, but just doing the things that are not routine.  I'm looking forward to the end of the school year, which brings a much loved change in the morning routine. I'm looking forward to running in the cool summer mornings. 

The conference will be helpful.  I hope to recharge my professional and personal batteries by time away from the usual.  I hope to come home recharged in all ways.   You can't run away from yourself, but you can run yourself away.  At least for a little while.