good stuff
We come to the table rumpled, our various work hastily scrubbed from our hands, the last of the day’s energy fading with the afternoon light. Life feels right when we finally arrive here together; it’s like our daily rendezvous at the meet-up point, like returning to base camp. This table, with its temperamental scars from moisture and heat, with its history of generations of place settings and fragments of conversations, serves as a safe place to come as we are. We draw our chairs up and Adam prays, always and only Thank you for what he’s eating; he never mentions the things he’s left off his plate. Of all my children, he’s the most efficient, the most plain spoken, the most honest. He never wastes words.
I smile as we lift our heads after Adam’s hasty prayer, appreciating his unapologetic neediness, his unpretentious nakedness before God. Below that quickness rests a bald and humble admission–I’m hungry; a careful recognition–You have provided what I need; a tender receiving–Thank you. There’s nothing less holy about a short prayer. It was Solomon, in his wisdom, who wrote, “God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.”
Turning our attention to our meal, forks clicking against our plates, we settle into simple conversation about the day. Of course, no conversation is ever really simple at our house. Ever aware both of Adam’s need to grow in verbal communication and his preferences not to participate, Kevin and I always look for opportunities to draw him out. Kevin asks about school, to which Adam briefly and reluctantly replies, “Good,” which in Adam’s mind, is an entirely sufficient answer and the end of the discussion. To be fair, one or two word answers are fairly common childhood replies to such questions; I’ve talked to more than one lamenting mama trying to find out more about a day than “nothing much.” Of course, for Adam that one word amounts to paragraphs. Good may well be Adam’s favorite word, the word version of a humble chalice, a plain box stuffed with treasure; it’s efficient and meaningful without being fancy. Surely Adam calls nothing good that isn’t, in his estimation, truly good, and when words are hard to come by, there’s more poetry in speaking. Adam’s voice dips, deep and maybe a touch gravelly with dismissal, as he pointedly focuses on his plate.
“Good? Well, what was your favorite thing about it?” Kevin pretends ignorance of the I-don’t-want-to drawn into Adam’s expression, Adam’s posture, Adam’s tone, and forges ahead, because we love to hear our son’s voice. And if more than eloquence, we as flawed humans seek connection no matter how awkward with our son, I imagine God must likely care even less if our prayers should be bumbling, or even reluctant, before him. As we seek Adam to draw him out, so also–even more, God seeks all of us.
“Recess,” Adam blurts, making an error sound with his throat, the kind of two-note progression most of us interpret as the video game equivalent of out-of-bounds, which to Adam’s immediate displeasure, evokes laughter from the table instead of accomplishing the desired effect. Without meaning it, he has taught us how to object with levity.
Grinning wide, Kevin asks, “Well, what did you do at recess?” We poke the bear, because our bear is tall and lean and tender, even when he’s grumpy, and his words are as precious as gemstones.
“Basketball,” Adam says, eyes flashing. “That’s it.” In light of our failed comprehension of applicable sounds, Adam switches to words. That’s it, he says, which is to say, I’m finished talking; I have no more words; Stop asking me questions!
But despite Adam’s clear objections, I take up the thread. “Who did you play basketball with today?”
“Recess,” Adam says, a little more gently because I’m the one who asked, and I receive the lion’s share of Adam’s patience. But he’s only partially heard me, having willed with his inattention the end of the conversation.
“I know, you played basketball at recess. But who did you play with?” I say, repeating my question. I can see from Adam’s expression that he does not appreciate my persistence.
He blurts out two names, two friends and fellow students, boys whom I know enjoy sports, boys with more developed social and language skills than Adam. I imagine them beckoning, ball crooked in one elbow, encouraging him to join in. “That’s it,” he says again, repeating that out-of-bounds sound for emphasis.
So, knowing we won’t get much more from Adam on this topic, we turn to Riley. Where Adam has a miser’s budget for words, Riley has a wealth and spends generously. She mentions absolutely everything she did, from putting her book bag away when she got to school to Music and Movement class to This Money Life and the break she took along the way. It’s ALL her favorite. She even mentions doing “my job, which is taking care of the hand sanitizer with Adam Jones.”
I turn to Adam after Riley says this, seizing the opportunity to drag him back into the conversation. “Did you do a good job helping Riley with the hand sanitizer?”
That word again, good, is an old-fashioned, Biblical assessment that used to mean so much more than it does now. God made the world and called it good, made people and called them very good, and it was Jesus who said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Years ago, in one of my favorites of his sketches, Bill Cosby quipped about this, the way that we human beings label things amazing, fantastic, awesome, and God settles for good, for holiness cloaked in humanity. It would be something–the best thing, one day to hear God say, “Well done, good servant.”
“NO,” Adam says, but with regard to talking instead of in answer to my question.
“You didn’t do a good job helping Riley with the hand sanitizer?”
“Yes,” he says now more carefully, making precious eye contact with me. In that chaos of information in my eyes, Adam searches to see that I understand: “Good job helping hand sanitizer with Riley.” In our whole time at the table together so far, this accounts for the largest number of words Adam has spoken voluntarily, in fact, for Adam, this stilted sentence might even qualify as verbose, but then, this is a topic he cares about.
I look at my son and smile, because instantly I understand. Diligence has come with maturity for Adam. He has always been my reluctant worker, but now, doing good work is important to him. He is the son in Jesus’s story who refused to help and then turned back to the work. And lately whatever he does, if the work belongs to him, he works at it with all [his] heart, as the writer of Colossians says, as though working for God and not for men. My mama heart has been gladdened by this fruit: Even when occupied or out of the room, Adam remains attentive to the good work we’ve planned in advance (that advance part is important) for him to do. If I’m cooking, he stays close by to dry and put away dishes, and he never leaves the room before we’ve cleaned the kitchen after supper. Although I never notice Adam checking the trash cans, no sooner have I observed them full than he empties them, ferrying bags outside. Without fail on Tuesdays after school, he rolls the bins out to the curb for pick up. I do not remind him of these things; he owns these tasks, he seems determined to do good. My half-way job, how-quickly-can-I-be-done kid has grown just-do-it quick without sacrificing effort. So I reach for him now, touch his long, lean arm to reassure him.
“I know, I know. You do a very good job.”
