Susan Senator

I have been utterly blogstipated lately. Every time I sit down to write, I find myself thinking, “Oh, you can’t say that because you always say that,” or “you can’t say that because it is too personal.” But if I stop to think, of course there are things to write about, if I just give it the time it deserves, and bleed a little bit onto the screen. The trouble is knowing how to open up just a little, and not injure myself in the process.

That is the crux of the issue for me and my sparse blogging. I don’t want to completely give myself away. I need to preserve boundaries better and not tell, tell, tell. I have had trouble lately separating what I can write about from what I need to think about.

And, there is a conservation of energy in creative pursuits as well as life. When you use energy in one medium, you are taking it from another. I have been doing a lot of thinking about what my front yard garden is going to become and what to do to make the porch more hospitable to our lifestyle. In other words, thinking outside of the (computer) box. I sit down to write and I get distracted by the way the sky is partially obscured by the fuzz of new leaves, and the flash of bellydance-cossie pink of the cherry tree that I forgot was there.

Nat, too, is so happy these days. What a blessing that is. He wakes up laughing and talking, but it is a blissful twist on what he did when he was seven and we were living a nightmare of interrupted sleep at 2 a.m. If he had only pushed that five hours ahead, the story would have ended so differently! Although I probably would have panicked over the unfamiliar words he uses or the fact that I could not tell what was so funny. I would have been unhappy no matter what, because Nat was waking up autistic.

I’m so glad I don’t feel that way anymore, and that I’ve come to know him and not be afraid of his differences. He feels it, and he responds to my comfort and he rewards me with his thousand-dollar smile (almost literally, because of the braces). I am learning compassion for my younger self; to see fresh, plump, scared Susan as almost a daughter of mine and to be glad that she has grown a bit wiser (though also a bit wizened). I am also learning protection for my current self, a thin covering of springtime growth in the summer of my life.

I think about the opening line of Ben’s very first comic, which was a drawing of a robot. The caption was, “Robot didn’t notice…” And of course, something terrible was about to happen to Robot. Truths, revelations and change unfurl suddenly, like the new leaves on my maples. It happens so regularly, however, that it can be commonplace and unremarkable — unless we take time to notice.