how to fix it
Five minutes before we leave for school, I come down to check on Riley.
Before I left the room in search of a shower, while she attended to what-I-don’t-know upstairs, I prepared for leaving at the right time, filling in steps I know otherwise will take her too long. I collected her morning pills (yes, even in the bloom of youth she has those) and put them in the little dish my dad gave her on one of our trips to the beach, a deep blue thing I think must actually be some sort of plastic lid, but which, because Papa bequeathed it for this purpose, has become Riley’s place for medicine. I pause, placing the lid with its pills beside the phone stand my dad made her out of a block of old wood, thinking how Fathers do this, how they create solid foundations, touchpoints, perfect places for meeting our needs; thinking how God, always well ahead of us, still re-creates and redefines the world. Riley accepts new definitions from fathers who love her; she allows that a plastic lid could be a pill holder because Papa says so. Meanwhile I spend a good deal of emotional energy fussing over definitions.
I had, before going to get clean, gathered Riley’s breakfast, smearing a toasted bagel with cream cheese, pouring steaming coffee over a dash of cream. I put her bookbag and her jacket beside the stool where she perches to eat, to take those pills; I got out fresh masks and sat one by her pills, one by the device that controls Adam’s insulin pump. I did all this feeling thankful for Love that prepares in advance of me, making my paths straight. And then, with plenty of time still left before the time comes to leave, I went to get ready myself.
But five minutes until go time, Riley hasn’t made it back down the stairs. I find the bagel, the coffee, the pills, still sitting exactly where I left them and no sign at all that she has even walked in this room since I walked out.
“Hey Riley,” I call tentatively up the stair well, balancing my foot on the bottom step, toe-heel, toe-heel, like a pendulum.
“Yes?” She calls back after a beat, her voice sounding harried but strong, and I pull my foot off the step, breathing relief. I can’t help it: When she falls off her routine this much I immediately think seizure, seizure, seizure, the word like a silent alarm thudding in my belly.
“Honey, it’s nearly time for school. We need to braid your hair.” She can’t stand hair dropping in her face, hair caressing her cheeks while she’s trying to concentrate; every day I braid all those wild, brassy lengths into a plait down her back.
“Okay,” she says, if a little weakly, and I know that some obsession struck, that some sequential finishing the rest of us would set aside has consumed all her attention, all her time.
I get out a plastic bag for the pills, stowing the lid back in the drawer where she keeps it; I transfer the bagel from the plate to a paper towel so she can eat it in the car.
“Did you get distracted?” I ask, knowing the answer, watching Riley walk down the stairs one step at a time, her arms and hands filled up with shoes and socks and the basket where she keeps her jewelry. Her hair falls across her cheeks, bounces and sweeps across the middle of her back.
“Well, when I was getting dressed, the knob on my drawer fell off and I was trying to fix it,” she says, sniffing a little. For a moment, I marvel; I remember when she didn’t have those words, when she could not have explained so well. I know that turn of her head, the way her eyes glisten; I know that anxious edge she’s balancing. She has spent over half an hour trying to solve this unexpected problem, unable to let it go. It never occurred to her to ask for help. Autism can be this way; it grabs about her wrists like a vise. I understand what happened here: sometimes things fall apart, the small things first, and I briefly forget my life is not a DIY project.
I don’t yet know but will later learn that Kevin heard me call and found her there, sitting on the floor in front of her dresser in distress, told her leave it with me, fixed that knob and tightened all the others when we left for school.
“That’s frustrating,” I say honestly while she settles herself on the stool, running my fingers through her hair in search of tangles, picking up the hairbrush. “But here’s the thing: sometimes you have to set aside certain things to focus on other things. Come to Dad or me; tells us about what troubles you; give it to us so you can let it go.” I separate her hair into three thick cords and weave them together, remembering what God said about the cord not quickly broken, about how much stronger we are together than apart. “Here’s what will happen now, because it’s time to go: I’ll braid your hair and help you put on your jewelry; I’ll take your things to the car. It will be okay; we’ll worry about the drawer later.”
“Mmmhmm,” she says, acknowledging, agreeing, and–I can feel it as my fingers skim her scalp–relaxing in surrender, in trust.
And then slowly, I pick up the first thick hank to begin the braid. “Father, give her peace,” I pray right out loud, speaking the words over her head. “Right now, we’re giving you everything we just don’t know how to fix. Please, give us peace.”
“Mmmhmm,” she says again, and then, she begins to laugh and it’s the laughter of the free, the laughter of those who can laugh at the days to come.
