{"id":1698,"date":"2010-08-11T07:59:26","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T11:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=1698"},"modified":"2019-07-24T18:37:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T22:37:15","slug":"lets-start-packing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/lets-start-packing\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Start Packing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi, we’ve been waiting all our lives for the Messiah<\/em>. Wouldn’t now be a good time for Him to come<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Rabbi: We’ll have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile<\/em>, let’s<\/em> start packing.<\/em><\/p>\n

–from Fiddler on the Roof<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I guess all families, all people really, must live with the unresolved.\u00a0 I feel like sometimes I go around with the anxiety of the unresolved as if it were physical; I feel it right in my stomach.\u00a0 It happens a lot when I think about Nat, and also Max and Ben, but maybe moreso with Nat.\u00a0 Especially now that he’s not here for most of the week, and so a lot about Nat has to be taken on faith.\u00a0 I’m not so good at having faith.<\/p>\n

Sitting here on my living room couch, with creamy sunlight splashed across the frayed armchair nearby, I thought about the things that I had to get done in the rest of the week.\u00a0 Any peace that the softness of the scene could have given just shattered as I realized that the number one thing going on is Nat going to camp on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Why do we do this to ourselves every year?\u00a0 This is the third time we are sending Nat away to this camp in Colorado, and it is always an anxiety-producing proposition for us, and by us I mean me, Ned, and Nat.\u00a0 Even if all the details were squared away, such as the packing of sunblock and sturdy shoes for hiking, (and by the way, they’re not), this trip is one big nightmare of worry. Thankfully, we are going to get the gear honey<\/a> website to ship last minute items directly to the camp and so, that’s a relief. We send him on a plane with a teacher who knows him well.\u00a0 She has to get him through airport security, a plane ride, a plane change,\u00a0 into a rental car from Paris<\/a> and across a mountainous highway to the camp.\u00a0 And then there’s camp itself.\u00a0 Extreme sports camp!!!\u00a0 She’s never been there and actually this is a new location for the camp, so neither has Nat.\u00a0 Same set-up though, of one-to-one counselors during the day, and the teacher with Nat during the night.<\/p>\n

I am not going to go into all the details here because that will only make my stomach feel worse.\u00a0 The thing in my head right now, that forced me to open up and start writing is just that sinister undertow of Unresolved, pulling beneath the surface.\u00a0 What do I mean by “unresolved?”\u00a0 I mean all the stuff I have no answers to, never a definitive, tablets-from-God certainty.\u00a0 Is he alright?\u00a0 Is he going to be alright?\u00a0 What does alright look like when you are fairly severely disabled?\u00a0 From Day One, we all wish for a manual that will tell us these things.\u00a0 We read book after book, and google autism until we’re googly-eyed.<\/p>\n

We all want to know:\u00a0 am I doing the right thing?\u00a0 How about this?\u00a0 How about now?\u00a0 What if I stop, because I’m so tired?\u00a0 Why did we commit to this path?<\/p>\n

What have I forgotten?<\/p>\n

Why do we have to be human and flawed, and so we just end up having to hope for the best?\u00a0 What if we never get the best, but only the so-so?\u00a0 Maybe it’s just that the thing about my life is that I’m doomed to uncertainty, and that happier days are ones where I’m more certain.\u00a0 But I don’t think I’ll ever be Sure.\u00a0 And so I’m sending him on this trip, feeling like it will probably be okay, probably great, but dammit, I just won’t know until he’s back.\u00a0 Meanwhile, he has to keep leaping faith, because I fly by the seat of my pants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi, we’ve been waiting all our lives for the Messiah. Wouldn’t now be a good time for Him to come? Rabbi: We’ll have to wait for him someplace else. Meanwhile, let’s start packing. –from Fiddler on the Roof I guess all families, all people really, must live with the unresolved.\u00a0 I feel like sometimes I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-ro","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5447,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/5447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}