confession

So one time (about two years ago) I got really frustrated about something and swore in front of Martin. It was the worst kind of swearing: GD. God dammit. I must have cringed or looked pained or something because Martin realized right away that I had done something very bad. He then ran around the house repeating it with a big smile on his face. He even said it at daycare once.

To this day, if I even say "darn it," Martin looks at me with a kind of gleeful suspicion. He gets a knowing look that says, "Watch out, Graber, you're almost doing something bad and I know." Tonight, I had the kids by myself because my husband was at a meeting. Hoping for the best, I put Martin in the tub and tried to get Sasha ready for bed. I heard all sorts of splashing and horsing around in the bathroom, but I didn't mind. Then Martin asked me to remove the bath mat from the tub. I told him it belonged in the tub so that he wouldn't slip during the course of his monkeying around. He then picked up the wet mat and flung it on the floor, getting water everywhere. "Darn it, Martin," I said. He looked at me, recognizing my statement's proximity to GD, and said, "Mama, God is love. It is love time." As he said the second sentence, he crossed his arms over his chest, a sign for love that he learned when memorizing a verse about love in Sunday School. I was undone.

I was reading Judith Butler today. She was writing on violence and the grief that comes after it and the possibilities for creating interesting politics after violence occurs. In her consideration of how we are affected by violence, loss, and grief, she wrote, "Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something." Although she was writing about the loss of death, her words speak to the way we feel about the living, with the people we love now and all their complications. Sometimes, I mourn all the losses that autism has exacted from our lives. I can get pretty sad about the gap between our world and Martin's world. But then I experience moments where Martin's world is the right world. It is love time. Then I realize that I am losing only if I don't pay attention.