tHERsDay

In the dark of 6:00 am, as I helped CB step out of her pajamas and into her school clothes, I had this random thought. A thought about how I'll never have all my children out of diapers. But the thought didn't really bother me. Certainly, it used to, and I'd dwell on it and feel a bit sorry for lots of things.  Mostly for myself.  But this thought just passed, like a gust that merely stirred the air.

By the time the bus arrived out front, I had wrestled CB's gloves on. A process that takes a full five minutes for both hands.  I let her out into the bitter, bitter cold of morning. I watched her walk through the still dark morning down the driveway toward the yellow blinking lights. Her silhouette looked straight, her gait had no trace of a tilt or shuffle. Her arms were uncharacteristically by her side, unstimming. She was walking, quite unassumingly... with no trace of her disability.

She looked (though I dislike this word because it means nothing) "normal."  Of course, she is normal all the time.  I suppose I mean she looked like my other girls look.  Like someone without Autism and neurological impairments. Like the rest of the high school girls across the street.

She boarded the bus and I went into the kitchen to prepare the lunches for 'round two' of the morning madness.  In my heart was the slow, wrenching pain of missing something that was never mine to know. Wistful, fleeting. Gone by the time I took out the bread for the sandwiches.