This is what CB did while the girls dyed eggs yesterday.
This is what CB does all day, everyday... unless she is eating, sleeping or at school where they obviously don't let her "stim" all day. She drags around as many pom poms, beads and ratty torn magazines as possible and sits on the floor flipping pages and swirling her beads on the hard wood floor. She'll tap the pages as she turns. Sometimes she swirls a pom pom around for a different sound. There is often a musical toy around as well, playing the same song (without volume control) over and over. Then she smacks the floor as hard as she can three to five times intermittently and hums bars from certain songs repetitively. The whole thing goes on a loop repeating itself over and over and over.
She has done this all day, everyday, since she was around 2. If you think about it, REALLY think about it, it's mind boggling. At least, it is for me. Yet, somehow she never ever gets bored. Like, EVER. In fact, most days she'll look up to the ceiling and break into a broad smile, just so happy to be alive. Her contentment makes me happy and that keeps me from sliding down that hill of sad, because thinking can take you in either direction if you do it too hard or too much.
If only we all could block out the world and do the one thing we loved all day long. I'm actually a little jealous of her sometimes.
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7 comments:
There is a palpable sense of freedom in even your writing, here, -- the freedom of truth and honesty and experience and equanimity. I loved this post --
You always inspire me. Always. I love you for it.
--PT
Your perspective on this is truly amazing. I love that you don't rail against it and try to change something - force her to be someone she can't be. You are my hero.
This is beautiful. I sometimes wish I could be as happy as my son is most of the time, too.
The best thing of autism I think personally is what you wrote about with such serenity, is their sheer fact of how they can be so happy just to be them, just to be alive, over the littlest things isn't nothing short of amazing. Beautiful post. As a mother of 3 severely multi-disabled children, your blog is so refreshing.
I love this. I love that you let CB be herself and not despair that who she is isn't good enough. I love that you recognize that even if you don't get joy in beads and stim toys, she gets incredible joy from it and so that is good. She is good, you are good. thank you for making this autistic person feel calmer in your joy.
"thinking can take you in either direction if you do it too hard or too much" - so true, and such a good reminder. I love that you captured such an essence of CB, a sense of being, in this post. Beautiful.
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