The recent reason is simply that I have spent a few years imagining and setting up for a year when I could live everywhere and nowhere, traveling easily to family and staying with them while I am helpful, moving onto other family members when they crave my help, all the while satisfying my deep desire to spend all my time with family. In my imagination, that was a life of happiness for me.
And over the past five months, that's what I've been doing. And, turns out, I was right! That is a life of happiness for me!
Today my oldest son turns twenty-five. And I am thinking again: "I was right."
I had spent years and years imagining myself as a mom. Craving and creating situations that might best serve to make that dream come true.
Now, I was younger then. Still not experienced enough to know how true it is that what I imagine and create will happen but that it will also surprise me by feeling and looking different than what I imagined I was creating.
So while my dream was coming true, while my son was being built in my belly and born from my body, and my love for him was surprising me by feeling unfamiliar despite years of preparation, I was not immediately aware that it had happened, that I had made my biggest clearest dream come true. That he had brought that gift to me on his birthday.
But I was immediately aware that I was right. About my desire to be a mom, not so much my idea of what that meant.
Indeed, I couldn't have been more wrong about that! But my son, in his interest in continuing to gift me with truth, made certain to let me know.
He didn't go to sleep just because I was singing, he didn't listen to my instructions just because I said them with love and kindness, he didn't eat his vegetables just because I patiently explained the reasons to do so, he didn't calm down just because I spoke to him as an equal rather than treating him like a lesser citizen. All these things and more I had been so certain of, despite my experience as the oldest of eight with four young brothers I often babysat ("They're different," I thought, "they have disabilities and stuff. When I have my own children they won't be adopted so they'll begin life with my style of parenting and will listen better because of that." Boy, I was a cute little fool! ;D) I had been sure I knew what living life as a mom would look and feel like for me.
Yet together my son and I (and eventually my sons and I) figured out ways to live the life I had imagined while creating more realistic and true experiences of living it. And always it was, and is, clear to me: "I was right."
Happy birthday, Jory Rand. You are a wonderful husband and father. A kind and considerate brother and son. You are perfect and continue to grow in perfect directions as a man. You are more than I imagined and everything I could hope for.
I hope with all of my heart that as you create, imagine, and adjust the life you're living, you have ample opportunities to honestly tell yourself: "I was right."
I love you!!!
Hugs, smiles, and love!!
Autism Answers with Tsara Shelton (Facebook) www.tsarashelton.com / www.fourbrothersoneworld.com
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| Jory Rand Shelton (Photo by Tim Hale @ Tim Hale photography) |
