Today is a beautiful day. It's the middle of August but feels like late September outside. There's a dry crispness in the air that hints tantalizingly of impending Fall. Today is a day to enjoy the sweet anticipation of pumpkins, dry leaves crackling underfoot, and the smell of Russian Tea simmering on the stove. I don't know what Fall is going to bring here at the House of Cockrell. Thus far, summer has brought us many things. Summer brought us family, holidays, warm nights, and plenty of mosquitoes. June brought the beginning of a long road of therapy sessions for Aud. August has brought Aid's first day of school. (That was a day that not so long ago seemed an eternity away.) September will bring Aud's developmental evaluation and all the uncertainties that go with it. It's easy for me to look ahead (sometimes in terror, sometimes in joy) at what is to come or what might be. I have no trouble at all conjuring situations yet to be and bringing them to fruition in my mind's eye as if they were plays unfolding on a stage. It is more difficult to me to minutely examine choices that were already made and events that already happened. Choice is taken out of memory. It is easier to plan your future choices than to look back and decide if past choices were good or right ones. However, today I am looking back on a summer that slipped away. I've woken up many mornings wondering how months can pass unnoticed and at times feeling a sense of failure at the little I've accomplished in half a year. I feel as though it has been a summer spent in waiting. Waiting for school to start. Waiting for company to get here. Waiting for cooler weather. Waiting for rain. Waiting for Lego Club at the library to begin. Waiting for this looming doctor's appointment that will give us a look at what the future holds for Aud and where the next fork in the road will lead. I've said before that life with Aud has been one long lesson in patience. How satisfying it would be if we had all the answers given to us the instant we wanted them. Life would have been so much easier for the past two and a half years if they had been able to tell us everything we know now and what we're about to find out in September on the day we left the hospital to take Aud home. I would trade a lot of things to have been able to have that understanding sooner. There's no describing the heartache and guilt it would have saved me from as a mother, not to mention what wonders it might have done for Aud's first two years of life. I've spent many nights baring my soul to God and praying to see the reason behind it. More than once I've sat in her bedroom floor surrounded by untouched dolls, books, stuffed toys, etc. and I've cried until there were no more tears. Mark has held on to me while I sobbed so hard I couldn't hold myself up. And you might feel like that makes me a selfish and terrible person. But it's not just for the 'normal' little girl I expected to have or for myself that I've cried. My grief has also been for this amazing child we've been given who has strength and courage most people never realize in their lifetime. A little girl who is misunderstood and judged by shallow-minded people I see looking at her sideways in a restaurant when she can't stop repeating the same word over and over or when she screams in public places because she can't cope with the noises or other sensory overload. It's a physical ache to know that your child is preset to travel a harder road than you've ever been on. I've spent time being angry at God. I've spent time thanking Him. And while it isn't an easy road we're on, it's the one we've been given. Aud is who she is and while I might wish for the power to erase the prejudices of narrow-minded people who see us struggling through a shopping trip and think we don't believe in discipline or cut their eyes sideways when she acts oddly, I don't wish to change who she is. I'm not going to lie, sometimes she terrifies me. There are times I feel I am beyond inadequately equipped to parent and guide her. There are days when I feel I will never have enough to give her. Days when I feel I will never have enough patience, enough grace, enough self-control. However, there are also days when I wish others could know the happiness of hearing your child's first two word sentence in the way Mark and I have. Aud is teaching me little by little, day by day, the lessons I haven't yet learned from life, and there seem to be an infinite amount of them. While I wish I could have been given understanding sooner, I also feel like I'm being given knowledge a little at a time for a reason. If someone had given it to me all in one dose, I don't know that I could have handled it. So with each diagnosis and impending evaluation, with each therapy session that brings a new challenge or victory, I am being given a chance to better myself, to improve as a parent, as an advocate, and as a human being. I become less judgmental, less critical, more accepting, more flexible, more loving. I gain, bit by bit, things like patience and gentleness. I don't understand the 'why' behind it. I may not ever know. I don't necessarily believe that God made Aud this way to make me a better person. I somehow feel that would be incredibly egotistical of me. I do think Aud makes the world a better place, just as I feel Aid makes the world a better place. And maybe Aud does that by forcing the people around her to find ways to better themselves, just like Aid does it with his exuberance and love for all that surrounds him. Together, they are an unstoppable force. I am lucky to be called their mommy. And while some days that's easier said than done, I try my hardest to take my cues from them. Who knows, maybe one day, the world will be a little brighter place because of it. So I end this blogginess by saying, I have not always and will not always make the best choice for the moment in time the choice needs to be made, and that's okay. The past shapes the future, but does not define it. I look back on a busy and chaotic summer and know that I didn't accomplish everything I wished I had. I'm at peace with that. I know that life isn't only about what's already happened. Nor is it about what will happen in the future. Life is about the moment where things past and future meet. Take a minute to look back and look ahead. The moment you're sitting in is a perfect meshing of the two. That moment is now. A perfect combination of reminiscence and anticipation. I think I'll take some coffee outside and soak it in.
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