We’ll get lost until we’re found
Darlin’ here we go
Feel the blood
Rushing through my veins
Got some brand new wings
No we won’t go back
Last week was the school swim carnival. It’s optional for kids Little Brother’s age, and due to a misunderstanding about race lengths, he opted to stay at school rather than attempt 50 metres alongside about half his classmates. The Kid, however, was required to be there with everyone else his age, and he went into it without any plans to swim, other than the promise I’d made that when his age events were over (and, therefore, his required spectating commitments over as well), we’d leave to collect LB from school then circle back to the swim centre and have our own little carnival at the indoor pool there.
Fate (grace) intervened. The lashing of rain we’d been promised was only a flash flood that lasted long enough to cut off all roads into the centre, which I only mention because it meant more work for me in terms of parking/walking (award, please). When I arrived to the throng of students, TK spotted me immediately and we proceeded to hang out.
Then one of his teachers mentioned that there was a 25-metre “fun swim” he might be interested in. He looked at me, then considered it for a half-second before rejecting the proposal. “But what if…” I said, and watched his brain through his eyes as he entertained the notion.
Still a no. But then some friends encouraged it: one said he’d cheer from the sidelines, another said he’d share a lane and swim beside him. For my part, I suggested then cajoled then urged then demanded, because I could see he needed that extra push, and I could also see a few minutes into the future at the self-pride and confidence he’d feel after giving it a go. Finally, we all convinced him, but not without his protests that “he always has to do this sort of thing” (he hasn’t swum at a carnival in two years) and his eloquent articulation of having “two different feelings at once about it: excitement and nervousness.”
It was time to get in the pool, and he balked. His friends and I all begged. We promised. We bribed. Then I remembered that I was unwittingly prepared (just like Queen Esther) for just this moment, wearing my swimsuit under my clothes for our later, planned swim. But plans had changed, and like a middle-aged version of Superman with a visible C-section belly-flesh shelf visible through my one-piece, I whipped off my outerwear and jumped in beside TK, and we made it to the end of the pool, together. Together with a bunch of other people swimming, walking, and cheering alongside us.
It was horrific, and wonderful, which means it was a moment full of grace: space enough for all the feelings. Before that C-section scar was forged in my skin, I imagined I’d be the mom cheering from the sidelines at various athletic events. Instead, I’m the one who jumps in. Looking to the world like a helicopter mom, the idea I’d always shunned, but knowing I’m more of a submarine: trying (and failing, usually) to be discreet while slipping silently through waters both clear and murky alongside my kid. Not having planned to get into the water, but dressed for it regardless. The joke–and grace–on me.
And now, in the middle of the school day, I’m sitting beside LB, whom I picked up early because he was suffering from a “headache,” and he reads a book beside me, pointing to the word “color” and telling me that’s the American version. We speak a different language in this house–the language of neurodiversity–and also a few other ones: American, Australian, and one that, as an oldest child, I’d never learned but am picking up from LB: that of the youngest child, and its attendant worries of being overlooked or forgotten, and right now that looks like two little feet burrowing into my legs while I type.
Later I’ll go back to my foreign-language study manual and read again about how an autistic person needs to be taught organisation (with a Z if you’re American/nasty) to succeed, and I’ll think about how I wasn’t planning on teaching that particular skill back before that scar in my abdomen appeared but how “lucky” it is that organisation is my jam; how I wasn’t planning on jumping in the pool but somehow ended up dressing for it. How this “job” of loving two small humans into their own personhood is so much, too much, more than I can handle, and how I am still, somehow, made just for it.