"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." ~Anaïs Nin
I have said it before: I have a difficult time writing poetry about my son's autism.
I can write poetry about most anything else. I have run the poetry gamut from my love of pencils, my sheer bliss over my first cup of coffee in the morning, the stillbirth of my first daughter, the slow-crawling approach of menopause, my daughter going away to college 3,000 miles away, but to write poetry of my son's autism? I tend to stop short of the first word.
He plays with his wii behind me. He can talk for hours about wii. He carries the instruction manual and uses it in his weekly reading journal for school. He has a fog delay today, so we are celebrating by giving him some video game time before we brave the limited vision by going to a nearby park to take foggy photos. He has an artist/writer/actor/poet creative all-around mom. He can't help it. We can't help it.
"Woe!" I hear him sing-shout behind me.
No, it wasn't "Woe" it was "Whoa!" I hear his pitch match the video game music pitch. His hearing is like that and his ability to mimic is like that, a spectrum thing.
Maybe my inability to write much poetry about his spectrum issues is because I worry about it being cloaked in"Woe". I think my poetry will be grieving his spectrum-ness rather than "Wow, my son is cool."
Which he is: cool, funny, bright, unique. He teaches me so much. He feels so much. He hurts and he rejoices, so much.
Maybe it is because language skills are his weakness and as a Mom-in-love-with-words I am in denial that he and I can't cuddle up together over story books, that he doesn't particularly like fiction, that he tells me to stop singing when I sing. That there are some things I can't express to him the way I do my neurotypical girls.
I can feel the arm-hug words of Anais Nin, around me.
She was such a physical, all-consumingly passionate woman. I can feel her snuggled up next to me, head resting on my shoulder, whispering, "just try it, now."
So I begin:
The fog holds us close. School
starts later because of the fog
mask over drivers eyes. Safety,
the school people say. This means.
More time with Mom. More time
to breathe easier. More time to
simply be without performing
or working so hard to fit in.
He looks down as he walks
Knowing the ground holds surprises
Animal homes disguised as human
trash cans, intriguing rocks
and dangers.
Today becomes color cataloguing day.
Making sense of newness day.
Different than the norm day.
"Mommy" "Mommy." "Look."
"This tree is green. It is
like the hulk, this tree."
"Come close, Mommy."
He calls me.
"Look."
I look.
He is right. It does look
like the hulk. Not like a
granny smith apple or
a pine tree or camouflage
gear, but like the glowy
green that is the Hulk.
I declare another tree red.
"No." he says.
"Not red. Maroon."
He is right.
It isn't red.
It is maroon.
On the way home, we pass a school.
"Their playground is all yellow
and blue." "Only yellow and blue."
"When you were a child, did you
have a playground at your school?"
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I can see, right away, how I can edit this poem and make it stronger. I also see how declaring that may, under normal circumstances, keep me from taking my writing anywhere and may take a perfectly fine in rough draft form - call it what it is - and turn it into block-about-writing-about-my-Samuel's-life-on-the-spectrum.
I am going to post as is and edit later.
I feel the presence of Anais Nin squeeze my shoulder. Her hand covers my hand and together we press PUBLISH.
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(This post was written thanks to a prompt at The Daily Post: host of the Post a Day and a list of quotes offered via The Urban Muse.)
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follow me on twitter: @juliejordanscot
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