Life Notes

         Last night my family and I gathered at a restaurant with my wife’s brother and wife to celebrate my father in laws 72nd birthday. We have gatherings such as this several times each year to celebrate holidays and birthdays and once or twice just to enjoy each others company. 

We sat at the table discussing all sorts of topics, some serious but not too heavy , mostly joyful and humorous stories and anecdotes from our lives.

 My father in law sat at the head of the table, being the patriarch of the family. My wife sat to his left at one side of the table with our son by her side. On the other side of the table , to his right, sat my daughter then myself. My brother in law and his wife joined us after we had already been seated. He sat next to my son with his wife to my right at the opposite end of the table from my father in law. 

    The restaurant was a warm feeling, dimly lit, seafood place with brown wood paneling on the walls. The waitress attending our table, which was situated in the center of the dinning area, approached and took our orders. Our conversations continued until the food arrived. We began to eat, sharing tastes off each others plates and comparing dishes as we always do. 

After we had all eaten  the conversation turned away from the food and back to our lives. My daughter scooted closer to me and laid her head on my shoulder. She is 18 years old, attends a nearby college where she also lives at a dormitory during the week then returns home for the weekend. She takes her education very serious which shows in her grades. She is at the age where more of life’s experiences come to her from outside of the home her mother and I have provided for her than from within. I want for her to continue the path into adulthood that she has long been on, to have all of the experiences that make life such a wonderful thing. 

This is a bitter sweet time for a father, for selfish reasons. I want her to have all that life has to offer , and to have it without a necessary dependence on anyone, including me but i still want to be with her and as much a part of her life as I have always been. I still want to feel the pure and honest love I felt when she was a little girl resting in my arms with her head on my shoulder ,sleeping in the secure peace of knowing her Daddy was there to protect her. 

    As she lay her head on my shoulder at the dinner table last night , for what felt like a moment of joy suspended in time, I had that same feeling  that I’d felt when she was a little girl asleep in my arms. The warmth of that moment assured me that even as she continues on her path to adulthood and no matter the distance between us, we both know I will always be her Daddy and will protect her with all that I am until my heart has beat it’s last beat or it’s her time to protect me.

For Pooh

LOVE IS NEVER AN OBLIGATION 

    Because if you feel obligated to try and love someone, it won’t be love that you are feeling. It will be something else.

My wife woke up this morning for the 1st time  to a world without her father. My children awoke to a world without the loving and doting grandfather  they have always known. My father in law escaped the confines of this earth yesterday. I’m sure to a place of joy and enlightenment that suits a man as giving as I always knew him to be.

He was many things during his time here but loving father and grandfather , I think , reveal the truest manifestation of his soul.

Always giving to his family , never with questions but only gestures of love and support.

He accepted me into his family from the 1st time we met. I always felt a kinship to him as we both had lived lives with moments of indiscretion, but had both come to a place where family and the dedication of ourselves to that family was paramount in our lives.

Today I awoke to a world with one less friend and mentor. A man that taught me that regardless of any actions from my past my true value can only be measured by the love and support I give to my family. The value of what he gave to me can’t be measured . The value of a man accepting me into his family and giving me the same love and kindness he gave to them.

RIP Ricky

I love you

Homework 

As I sit here now ,listening to my wife try and help my son with his math homework. I realize he is so much like me. He doesn’t understand the idea behind the words of her instructions. She gets frustrated ,as most people would, when he doesn’t seem to comprehend in what must be a normal neurotypical timeframe.   To be continued …….

So it’s been a couple of weeks since I started this post.

My son has gotten a poor mark in math on his progress report that is sent out mid way through each grading period.

My son is smart, very smart actually. When presented with a challenge and left to his own devises to find a solution he always does. That solution is likely unique but it’s an applicable solution all the same.

Just like me he struggles with comprehending others ideas. He is about to turn 13 years old. This age was very hard for me because of my struggles with comprehension. I did not understand the world around me. I could not understand social rules or ques. 

When following instructions I always found myself trying to figure out what the person giving the instructions was thinking. How they were getting from “A” to “B” in their mind. I was looking for a trail to follow because I recognized my cognitive style was different from others. My way of thinking was always in opposition to the way most others around me processed information. As a result I was always searching for what an individual I was interacting with was thinking. I would try to match their ideas so that my difference wouldn’t be noticed. This was the beggining of “masking” my autism. Always denying who I was at a very basic level because others reaction to who I was left me feeling very negatively about myself. Imagine ALWAYS having to hide what you thought , knowing if you expressed yourself you would receive ridicule or worse reactions from those who would label anything different as deficient. 

This was a repeating process throughout my life, always leaving me to feel like there was something wrong with me. I felt I was defecient in some way because of my differences from most people.

I’ve struggled with the thought of having my son assessed for autism because of the fear that being labeled autistic (if he is) would present barricades for him to overcome for the rest of his life. 

With the realization that he does share many of my traits I feel confident that having him assessed would be the right thing to do. The thought of him constantly questioning himself and dealing with the anxiety and pain that come from the self loathing that process creates has become a greater concern for me than him being labeled autistic. 

For him to know that he is not less than anyone else is what’s important.

He is a brilliant, creative and an artistic person that finds wonder in life. His gifts should be celebrated and he should never be made to question himself because he feels different.

I love my son so very much, I love both my children so very much.

I want to be there with him for the rest of his life to help guide him through his struggles, but I won’t be. So I must do whatever I can now to set him on a path of self awareness and appreciation that it has taken me a lifetime to find.

I remember when the entirety of him could fit from my palm to my elbow. When I look at him now, a young man that’s almost eye level stands before me. I want to guide that young man . I want to teach him to recognize his tremendous value. I want to share with him all the lessons I’ve learned in life, including the ones he’s taught me.

For Booty

Never let anyone define who you are. You are a wonderful , brilliant person who is cable of the greatest of achievements and you have the most complete ability to love.

Marriage 

Marriage for me has been a life changer/saver .

Before I met my wife life was very much different for me. I was always struggling with the everyday things that so many people seemingly take for granted.

Since diagnosis I understand the “why” of it all but the realization of how autism manifests itself in my everyday life is still coming into focus for me.

I am in need of substantial assistance to have a normal life and be a productive member of society. I’m not in need of help with my basic care needs , I can solve complex problems on my own without any assistance.

My struggles come with regulating my emotions , all of them. Before I met my wife my emotions would overwhelm me. Being autistic and having no real frame of reference for what was a normal emotional response I would let any emotion go until it had run its full course. I never knew when to put more effort into curbing any negative emotions.

Through a patience that is truely beyond my understanding, my wife has helped me to learn when I should put the required effort towards regulating emotions and when it’s ok to let them be as they are.

I don’t think this is very much different from how other men I know interact with their wives. It may be a different process for nuerotypical men than it is for me but it appears to be just the same. 

It’s easy to say I love my wife , because I do , but it feels like so much more than that to me.

There’s a place where I go in my mind when I’m feeling stressed or unregulated. It’s a real place that I’ve been on many occasions. I’m at the beach. Reclined in a chair under a tent.

The warm breeze blows off the water over my body making me feel as if I’m under a weighted blanket. My children are playing or reading a book. My wife is in a chair next to me. I have no anxiety about he world around me at that time. My world is right there. A little patch of sand on a beach that maybe crowded but I’m able to ignore everything beyond my world. I feel content with joy and appreciation in my heart. The appreciation is of a wife that has given me my world and assured me that her love is constant.

As the breeze wraps me in it’s warm embrace so does her essence, assuring me that all is right in my world.

With my wife is the only time in my life I’ve known this feeling, this is an emotion I will never try to reign in .

Dear, I love you so much . I am so grateful for you and all of the life we have shared. I need you in a very substantial way , not because I’m autistic but because of how truly wonderful you are. 

I use to think of love as a noun to describe my feelings for someone. I thought that because I loved someone there was no more action to be taken because that is how I would feel forever. 

I’ve learned that love must be two things, a noun like i described but also a verb.

Love is a living breathing thing and action must be taken to keep it alive and healthy. You have taught me this through your action of always loving me.