When I first had my children — particularly Nat, because he is my firstborn — I was very weighted down with a new sensation. This feeling was not necessarily good or bad, it was just very, very encompassing. I used to look at Nat and feel something catch in my throat, twinge behind my eyes, and I didn’t know what it was. Why did I feel something akin to tears when I looked at my darling baby? Sometimes I say it was the autism I was sensing. Sometimes I say it was post partem depression. My own inablity to love, that’s another one I came up with sometimes — self-hating jackass that I can be.<\/p>\n
Today I was thinking that it was just new parenthood, the axe cut that separates the childless from the childful. Once you have a child in your life, you change. You have to. Suddenly you have to think of them. No matter how shitty you feel, let’s say you just gave birth, you just pushed a watermelon out of your body. Or you had it sliced out of you. Or you just went all the way to China to bring this small person into your home. The absence is now full; you have to make space physically as well as emotionally, and stretching space is not an easy thing. Not only are you expanding to encompass this new life; you are also now required to be ever vigilant.<\/p>\n
Last night after the party, Ben was tired beyond tired — that hypnotic, almost-drugged sleep you fall into on a long car ride home. The thing is, so was I. We both staggered upstairs and all I wanted to do was rip off my boots and fall into bed. But then Ben said, “Hey what’s that?” There was something on his bedsheet, looked like from when he’d had a bloody nose. Without answering I just dove down and stripped off the bed — who cared what it was, it had to be gotten rid of. I had to wake up, swallow down my immense discomfort, flex exhausted muscles, and remake his bed. Of course I did! It was my child, needing help. Just do it, Susan; the quicker the better.<\/p>\n
It’s the perpetual consciousness that is a part of you eternally, once a kid is in your life. So here’s what I think: when the child has a disability — and autism is the one that for some reason comes to mind — the consciousness cuts a level deeper. The severity of the cut is directly proportional to that child’s need for help.<\/p>\n
This is why I wrote my second book, because this is often on my mind. With such searing consciousness, how can one let go sometimes and just live? How can we have a life of our own? How do we find some balance? Last night I had some of that, because we chose not to bring Nat to the party. Of course, there was a different cut, because I missed him and felt guilty that he was not there. But I did enjoy myself — a lot. Until I had to change that sheet.<\/p>\n