The Melting World

My husband and I waited outside in the cold for 1 hour and 45 minutes to get inside the sold-out rally held today in downtown Minneapolis. Then another hour inside thawing out until he began to speak to a packed concert hall. I saw a baby probably two months old and an dude with a carved cane well into his eighties and everyone in-between from where we sat in our nosebleed seats.

The line to get in the Target Center stretched at least a mile and a half when we first got in line and then thousands more people got in line behind us. I have never seen anything like this before–people from all ages, ethnicities, shapes, and sizes; absolutely BEAUTIFUL sight for me and I realized visually, tangibly, how Barack Obama has tapped into something unique by attracting so many different folks. This was by far more moving to me than anything Barack Obama himself said–I was simply proud that Minnesotans of every creed and color were out there together in the *&*$% cold. I know I am witnessing an awakening of sorts at the grassroots level, really. I thought the anti-Iraq war protest in Detroit with some 5,000 strong in 2002 was amazing, but this—over 20,000 people! Breathtaking….

I am hopeful that Sen. Obama can inspire our country onto a path of hope and spark the common folk to all work toward positive change for all of us in society–the people need some inspiration to get rolling. Then we all need the commitment and perseverance to do the hard work and walk the hard road to get what needs to get done, finally move forward instead of backward.

His speech was uplifting: my favorite part was when he said that he believed we as a people had the energy now to start reclaiming our role in the political process and change the apathetic mindset of Americans: the child in an urban school was not somebody else’s child, but everybody’s child, the child in rural America was not somebody’s child, but everybody’s child, and the child on the reservation was not somebody’s else’s child, but everybody’s child, that our education system needed to be repaired from the families on up to the policymakers, all of us needed to get into the community to make it right for these kids.

His strength was when he spoke specifically about how to get us engaged in repairing the damage to our country, especially getting young people engaged in the community in return for tuition assistance, then I felt he was the most powerful, more than the sound bytes you see/hear in the media–he said it was us who ultimately could create the changes we needed, no lobbyist could match our collective might. I like to believe, to set aside my cynic’s sunglasses for a short day, and believe that enough Americans are ready and willing to fight to put an end to stupid insane wars, that we are ready and willing to fight instead toward a better, more hopeful future. Maybe then I won’t need to keep dreaming of a move to Canada?!

My son ‘hanging out’ at therapy with Deanna in the motor room. He looks pretty at ease.

I’m not sure why he has a sticker on the middle of his forehead, but my guess is he liked it.

photo by Koizumi/flickr

I found this quote by a young man with autism today while online, and I loved it:

“We are not born to suffer. We are born to thrive. If you live in a dry area and your garden receives little water, you plant plants which like dry soil. But when you are given a plant that likes wet soil, you don’t kill it, you water it, you spend one of your 1440 minutes each day watering that plant. Because you know, that given the right care, that little bit of effort can produce spectacular blooms. And so it should be with children like us.”

Joshua Muggleton, age 17

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“…half the confusion in the world comes
from not knowing how little we need.”

–1933, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, while living alone 7 months in Antarctica–

**************

My sister is caring for my son for the weekend. Fact: these two nights are the first time in over five years I have had the opportunity to be alone, deeply alone, for more than one day.

It feels good.

I am at that point again anyway in life where I have been taking moments of time in a day to stop and listen to what’s happening inside my mind–and I have been taking this time whenever/wherever I can find it. I have had the chance to reflect on where I am now and to consider where I might wish to go from here and toward what goals.

This returning to listen had to happen because I was feeling so numb and tired about everything I faced, life seemed a series of chores. To confess, only my son kept me feeling connected to this world.

I know I am able to focus on myself a bit because I see my son is better. He is getting good help from good people, and most importantly he lives each day filled with curiosity, joy, and energy–which is all any of us needs to flourish, to bloom our radiant orange flower.

I feel better now that I have stopped the rushing about mentally without any pause, though physically I am still often running around taking care of details and tasks (part of this behavior is habit, part is my metabolism/personality, and part of it is needed to take care of others).

Yet, it is all more pleasant for me lately because I have been consciously letting my mind step back at times and breathe, and I am able to reflect on what’s going on around me and inside me.

For me, without new ideas and dreams and goals, I would die a spiritual death–and I know that without conscious living I am a ghost in a human shell. Welcome back, self.

So the dreams have come back–I left a few windows open and that’s all it takes for a soul to resurrect. I won’t divulge my dreams…I prefer to keep them unvoiced, inside warm. I am off now to clean out my closet and donate whatever seems unnecessary.

But if you say ice cream, that’s an entirely different thang….

Not really much of a cake eater, but he was happy to blow out the candle anyway.

Trick or treat?

First pumpkins ever carved by my son’s care assistant (from Sweden by way of London and Belgium) and my son (the larger pumpkin is my son’s design).

This 45 minute round trip re-ignited my son’s slumbering passion for trains.

My son was thrilled to get this Care Bear puzzle for his birthday. He can now do up to 100 piece puzzles, often finding how the pieces go together faster than I can.

My son has begun his swimming lessons with his teacher, Todd, who is a soft-voiced and patient man who looks like an ex-footballer. Todd just ignored my son’s intermittent and nervous repetitions of “All done” which surfaced during the 30 minutes and kept encouraging my son to reach with his arms and splash and kick with his legs. I saw the glimmers of a smile when he began to kick his legs on his own while floating both on his back and on his stomach and his determined face “on three!” when leaping off the rail into his teacher’s arms.

Upon occasion my son understandably got lost in the beauty of the late afternoon sunlight dazzling against the poolside wall, but overall he seemed to be focused on the serious and hard work of being cajoled around deep water.

After he finished, a young girl, maybe age 8 or 9, who also had just finished her physical therapy session in the pool, rolled her wheelchair past us and gave my son an encouraging, “You did a good job!” Sweet girl. My hopes are that he will learn to swim and enjoy it as much as she seemed to, and also that someday he will give similar words of encouragement to a new child taking her first splashes toward becoming a swimmer.

Well, my son has officially lost his locks today at his first visit to a hair salon: the lollipops, movies, and bubble machine kept him content as the stylist lopped off his locks. We think his new look makes him look older, and it’s a lot easier to wash and dry, too. But he looks sooo different; it’s a big visual change. At least we have a lot of pictures of him with his locks, so if we miss his old style–we have it on record– and he can always grow some again. Getting ready for the new school year, just 6 days a way…

Yes, it has been awhile…I want to have time to write here, to you, my friends, but my life is so filled with work–40 hours of my life often feels washed into a stream I have no control over–and often I feel I have no time to rest my brain or soul–to be alone to dream about my dreams (to write, to make beautiful things, to read books, to draw colorful pictures, to imagine I finally have my plot of land and my wee house with a tiny woodstove and no neighbors in sight) before the other part of my day is filled with washing dishes and clothes, cooking meals, shopping for food, trying to pay bills, sweeping floors, and caring for my son–and yet–I have no complaints on the latter, since he is always a great warmth and blessing (even when he drives me crazy by heading toward every large mud puddle like a bee to a flower in the only pair of shoes that fit him). He makes me happy and makes me laugh, no matter how exhausted I might feel each day.

He has been doing well. He has reached the phase the ‘experts’ call echolalia–which is good since a year ago he was almost completely non-verbal. What this means is he now tries to repeat whatever we say, but more than this he can also produce his own phrases and request things from us–which means he is also able to go beyond mere repetition, and he is able to learn, albeit differently than how most of us learned to speak. This is a major leap since his vocabulary (which he had hidden with silence and couldn’t show us until now) is now blossoming further at an exponential rate. And he is trying so hard, on top of mastering new words, to also get his “t’s,” “k’s,” and “p’s” at the ends of words–which would actually be a challenge for anyone who hasn’t had much practice with speaking. He first had to strengthen his diaphragm by blowing short repeated bursts of air into flutes–which I think is kind of cool. Apparently this activity is like doing a ton of sit-ups, according to the speech therapist. The other day at a global goods store, he picked up a flute from India and blew on it over and over, as if he were practicing at school. Another great thing he has also begun to do is to include me in what he sees. “Lake!” he yells, and looks directly at me so he knows I am listening, and then he says again, “Lake!” or “Police car!” (which was actually a taxi, but I wasn’t going to rain on his tiny parade–“Yep, that’s a police car, buddy!”)

I know it’s not easy for him to learn how to speak–I read somewhere that a child with autism has the same challenge of a grown person trying to learn a second language for the first time–it takes tremendous amounts of focus, effort, and daily repetition until the mouth utters its words with smoothness. I actually think it takes my son even more effort to learn [and this is coming from an adult (me) who has been trying to half-heartedly learn a language (Japanese) for over 17 years that has no connection to her native language], since he must contend additionally with his acute sensitivities to sounds/visual stimuli and also a tendency to slip into a place where the outside world often can’t readily reach. Yet he works hard, much harder than I ever have.

He now can ask for some of the things he wants: pizza, banana, curry, candy, movie, park, ice cream, help, swing; a year ago none of this was possible for him–so I can say my little man has showed me that I was wise to be hopeful that, with support, he could learn a lot. I see daily how hard he tries and how much he can learn. He has so much intelligence inside him–I can see it so clearly (I say this with a mother’s pride–believe me–but it is no lie either), and yet even witnessing his hard work–I am still taken off guard sometimes with what he can do.

For instance, I accidentally (how horrible!) locked my keys in the car after I had finished snapping my son in his carseat while we were about to head home from our Saturday breakfast spot. Luckily a couple with a young boy of their own heading our way helped me out by calling AAA for emergency help on their cell phone. I crouched by my son’s car window with my hand on the glass and his was held up on the other side, a smaller star than mine, and I felt like bursting into tears. “How long did they say it would take? Should I just call the police? Kick the driver’s window in?”

I tried to smile and to talk to my son calmly–but inside I felt awful about him being trapped in a car with the windows up. ‘You’re lucky it’s not hot yet,’ the angel-mother said, clearly feeling my pain–whereas her husband did not seem so concerned–he seemed to want to leave and get his breakfast. The little boy peered in the window at my son, and my son peered back. I thought to myself, “Can only a fellow mother feel the pure horror of this moment?”

And after about ten endless minutes of waiting, of crouching by his window, my son just leaned over and rolled his window down.

How stupid I was! I hadn’t even considered asking him to do this–I simply didn’t think he would understand me. I simply didn’t think of him as a possible agent to the solution.

The husband called AAA and canceled the service, and went off to his breakfast–and I sheepishly thanked them all for their effort to help us. I climbed into the driver’s seat and cried tears of relief.

My son taught me a very important lesson that day. In one fell swoop, my son taught me by his simple action: “Mom, I did this for you because you seemed to need my help. And many things I have yet to learn will amaze you even more. I can fly with these wings of mine–which may be the sort of wings that no one else really understands–but I plan to reach many beautiful places on my own terms, in my own time, on my own migration. Never underestimate me!”

I have been catching up with an old friend via email who actually located me via google, and she just sent this photograph of me, probably dating from 1993 or 1994, when I lived in Chiba. I look so thin and young– is that really me?

I don’t remember why I posed with these young women or where. I find it strange how this old photograph can’t help trigger any memory of the moment. Somewhere in my brain there must be a recollection of it…somewhere…but I am not able to ‘be’ there again. In fact, I feel too wound up today–too much caffeine before noon and too much change underfoot–and the wicked combination makes me teeter and unable to breathe. Oh, help me breathe. Off to Ta’i Chi to empty my body of fight/flight, emptyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

photo by keiko fukue 2007

The recipe to life isn’t complex. A few basic
ingredients: clean water, food, shelter, and hugs,
blended with generous dollops of humor,
compassion for the downtrodden, respect for all life.
Cultivate the seedlings of self-love with care.
Sprinkle yourself with red pepper upon a dark occasion,
and pour on the pure maple syrup when sour.
I suggest fresh-cut ginger or lemon zest
whenever the doldrums hit. Shut your eyes
and hum a made-up tune if Mom or Dad or
Teacher belittles you or, later on in life,
look up the habits of hermit crabs on the Internet
if your boss dismisses you with the flick of a wrist.
The most important thing to experience–after a purple
faced, swearing woman tries to gun you and your son
down with her white SUV as you cross the street–besides
rainfall and its lush aftermath of saturated green is the lifting
of your face up to the sun with your son in your arms.
Keep your eyes closed to see the red orange flare
of your soul, be thankful you live to love.

A milestone has been reached.

My son said his first three-word sentence last evening, and he said it with such pleasure. My heart blossomed into a giant sunflower–and he is my sun:

He shouted, “Lion says Raaawr!”

How many of us can claim a first sentence of such power?

Which leads me to a fable about one of my favorite poets:

Burhaneddin, the teacher of the mystic Persian poet Rumi, felt
that he had fulfilled his responsibility toward his disciple,
and he wanted to live out the rest of his years in seclusion.

Burhaneddin told Rumi:

“You are now ready, my son. You have no equal
in any of the branches of learning.

You have become a lion of knowledge.

I am such a lion myself and we are not both needed here
and that is why I want to go.

Furthermore, a great friend will come to you,
and you will be each other’s mirror.
He will lead you to the innermost parts of the spiritual world,
just as you will lead him. Each of you will complete the other,
and you will be the greatest friends in the entire world.”

So, let me say that it is a good day to celebrate the waking lion inside us all!

“Trying to own water makes no more sense than trying to own love –it is the flow that matters.”
-Sarah Ruth Vangelden,
Yes! Magazine (Winter 2004)

On May Day my family all packed up and headed to see the big May Day celebration at Powderhorn park. About 30,000 people celebrate in the park every year—and I admit I was hesitant to go—since I despise crowds, but my friends assured me this was no typical crowd—people at this event are very calm, happy, and free-spirited. They were right—I didn’t feel claustrophobic at all and the crowd was relaxed and friendly–no pushing or cranky parents allowed.

The below excerpt is taken from the In The Heart of The Beast Puppet Theatre Website, the organization responsible for organizing this very cool May Day events each year at Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis. It is written by my friend Masa, who also happened to get ordained as a minister just so he could act as the official for my and my husband’s marriage ceremony. One day I want to get the notes he used at the wedding—very cool thoughts on a new moon, etc.

Masa wrote:
“I Was Born in Japan, near Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The Park sits in the heart of the city of Hiroshima, a delta through which six rivers run to the sea. As a kid, the park was an ideal playground, with large grassy expanses, full of pigeons to chase. But at night, when I looked at the dark river, I imagined it filled with floating bodies.
As you might know, Hiroshima was the site of the very first atomic bomb attack, on August 6, 1945. The Park marks the epicenter of the explosion. Two rivers border either side.
The bomb turned the city into an inferno. The people’s bodies were on fire. They ran desperately to the rivers, crying, “Give me water, GIVE ME WATER.”
Every year since, precisely at 8.15 a.m. each August 6, the
whole city halts for one minute. All you hear is cicadas
singing, birds chirping and bells tolling to appease the
spirits of the dead.
In the evening ceremony, people float paper lanterns down the Motoyasu River to guide the spirits of the dead back to the other world. Sometimes, a lantern gets stuck near the riverbank, as if the spirit is trying to cling to this world as long as it can.
Participants write messages on the lanterns, such as:
“Mother, I am now a grandmother”
“I will never fight in war”
“Please do not produce any more nuclear weapons”
The colored lanterns drifting serenely through the Park towards the sea is, to me, an indescribably poignant, beautiful sight — and a powerful testament to the voices of people for peace.”
-Masanari Kawahara, Mayday Artist

HAPPY MAY DAY, EVERYONE!

Here’s a pic of Masa and Elizabeth in the afterglow of May Day celebrations.

(University of Minnesota Arboretum in autumn, 2006, photo by me)

This poem is a prayer for space and solitude and I have built it
word by word, star by star, leaf by leaf, and snowflakes
times thirty three. It stands here like a red brick house
constructed with sturdy hands and baked in the oven
of sun and wind. It took time to settle. A fire crackles
and nearby cat and god, entwined, now sleep.
Four windows provide what I need: a birch, a maple,
a weeping willow, and a cottonwood, respectively.
Today its walls muffle car horns, tire squeals, silence
flags flapping greed, and no one knocks, dressed
in vinegar or bile, on the door. In simple words, I’m free.

This poem reminds me that breathing in & out, or out & in,
is not quite what caged gerbils racing round on wheels do,
nor is a life best patterned after others—who tie themselves
to desks with electrical cords—doing this & that, that & this,
and, then again, this & that, frantically never reflecting
whether it’s necessary to be poster children
for chronic stress and certain coronary disease.

Today I climb inside myself, brush away cobwebs and sweep
dust bunnies out my mouth. Let these tasks erase from me
all deaf & blind labor. Time to refuse more dreams of me
in muddied jeans scribbling binary code compulsively
into the flesh of infinite fallen, rotting trees.

I am not expecting this poem to be strong enough
to be the savior of my tomorrow nor will it disclose
the mystery of the disappearing honey bees. Nor do
words alone hold in their possession a golden key
to release the overworked & underpaid from ending up
six feet under the cleats of ugly-spirit folk in red & blue
plaid slacks who drink gin on the final 9th tee.

This poem, at most, blooms briefly as a lilac bush in Babbitt
or emits a spice as faint as a tiny orchid on the hillside of Kauai.
Here I can cherish the smallest hint of beauty
(of which those, so ill, seek to trap, to stab, & categorize).
I built a hut of A-B-C & onto to Z to restore an ability to love
myself, my life, and to acknowledge my neighbors
who suffer near me. There is a polar bear at Como Zoo.
His grief is written across a blue sky with repetitive somersaults
and mad splash. Today I am cradling his bloodied head
against my chest, whispering him our dream, a kiss
of sleep, of reverberating tundra and expansive sea.

Last Saturday our small family dedicated ourselves to trains, trains, and then more trains. We first headed to Bandana Square, which back in my childhood had been quite the fancy shopping mall (inside restored train yard buildings), but today the area has dwindled down to a hotel, empty warehouse space, and, most pertinently, the Twin City Model Railroad Museum.

Our son was thrilled to be amongst other Thomas the Train fans pushing trains over bridges and tunnels at the play tables, but he also spent a good amount of time racing around to explore the expansive model train set, which replicates the Twin Cities glory days of the 30’s-50’s in train transportation.

I think our son enjoyed most the tiny button he could press to get the Northern Pacific train to kick into another journey through the 3000 square feet space.

***
An aside: My mother just told me a story of her trip through Cree country in Canada, where Cree people would stand in small groups near the tracks, even at night, and the trains would stop to pick them up. The stopping to pick up folks in Indian country also happened when my grandfather was a child in the Blackduck/Bemidji area, where Anishinaabe people would flag down trains for rides through their tribal lands.
***

After the model museum, we decided to head to the Jackson Street Roundhouse, built in 1907, where trains were brought for servicing. The buildings had that smell of tar from the railroad ties, and above you see the little man very intently taking his first ride inside a diesel engine, a Northern Pacific 105, 1200 horsepower Diesel Switcher. Sigh, perhaps you can sense that I am beginning to turn into a train fan myself; yet, let it be known that my husband succumbed even earlier to our son’s passion for the train.