oh the places you’ll go
In the hallway at our neurologist’s office, as Riley and I breeze along behind the medical assistant on the way to an exam room, I realize again how much my daughter has grown up.
It’s a flaw of ours as parents, that while we encourage and facilitate growth in our children, we lack proficiency in the kind of careful attention it takes to notice all of the increments of that growth. If anything, our proximity to the situation blinds us to the subtleties of change, and repetitively, we all experience this kind of startling enlightenment. I think this might be why God constantly commands my attention to what He’s doing.
One of the blessings I have received in loving my exceptional people has been an acquired appreciation for less splashy signs of forward motion, which is why right now I am utterly delighted by the friendly, completely appropriate way Riley responds as the medical assistant looks back over her shoulder and makes small talk, the way Riley manages the exchange without looking to me for confirmation. The medical assistant’s top swings out from her waist like little gauzy wings disturbed by the movement of her hips as she walks. I feel grateful that she has offered Riley the dignity of adult conversation, that she doesn’t address herself to Riley but look at me, as if Riley is the body and I am the mouth and the brain. Instead, I feel perfectly happy to fade into the anonymity of the hallway, the long stretch of industrial grade cadet blue carpet, the black metal doorframes, the plain cream walls. I could be any hallway in any medical office anywhere, and I could be anyone or no one at all. Suddenly, I realize what it means to be less so that someone else can be more. Love makes that entirely right.
When we reach the door to the exam room, the medical assistant considers me politely through thick-rimmed, stylish glasses. She says to Riley, “Is this your mom? Is it okay if she comes in with us?”
“Yes, that’s my mom,” Riley says, holding up her hand to point unnecessarily in my direction. It’s the first moment her Autism tells, something about the way she lifts her hand, her dedication to specificity. The medical assistant smiles wide, inclining her head. “And yes, she can come in with us.” Riley nods as she says the word yes.
“Okay, good. Let’s get to it, then.”
I sit back in a chair in the corner of the room, reminding myself, as I often must do, to quiet my Instant Advocate, that is, the part of me that feels immediately inclined to interject. We have lived a lot of life together, and for a good part of it, Riley couldn’t speak. Sometimes I still want to step in when it would be better for Riley to express things herself.
After taking Riley’s vitals, the medical assistant asks Riley the typical questions–about her health, her medications, her seizure history. I am here to intercede, should Riley get confused or flustered, should she find it difficult to remember or understand. I consider it a joy to help and also a joy not to be needed as much anymore in this way. So, I listen and smile, finding nothing to correct or elucidate, as Riley very competently replies, often using that odd, angled pointer finger to jab the air in front of her, sometimes flattening her open hands and lifting them in the air as if to underline her spoken words before they diffuse and fade. In fact, Riley supplies details I could not have remembered, like the exact date of her last seizure and the twisty generic names for her pills, and she laughs easily when the medical assistant responds in a jaunty way or blames her computer for accepting the information too slowly.
From my corner, I have the leisure to reflect on intercession; to think about the maturity it produces in prayer; to consider that God has supplied for me not only one intercessor but two. I smile to think of prayer as a gathering of presence, not just me and the Father, but also the Son, the Spirit, with us, ready and listening, maybe remembering who I once was as they delight in who I am right now, maybe seeing already who I will become.
For a moment, I watch Riley’s face, how her mouth curls up at the corners when she talks, the way she stills as she listens. I can trace so many years in the contours of that face.
I remember, now with fuller joy, the days when Riley needed me to speak for her, when she communicated in a series of grunts, jabbing that finger of hers toward unreachable things, her hair, curls of spun gold, shaking around her ears. I remember the fierce, stilted way she formed syllables with her mouth when I made her repeat sentences after me, forcing her to say even the most basic things—hello, thank you, more, please. We were like climbers lunging for handholds, wobbling as our feet found purchase. We often fell and nursed our wounds; we often felt too exhausted to move. For Riley, who had no concept then of any destination, our efforts often inspired outrage, although she had no words for those feelings nor even any skill to identify them. She cried many tears, her cheeks flushed cherry-red, her blue eyes flashing.
Of course, this is not to say that we have at last arrived. Riley still struggles to understand where she’s headed and why her path veers away from certain milestones other people can reach more easily. She still gets sad and cries about facts that just don’t make sense to her.
“I’m an adult now, and I ought to be able to drive,” she told me with some vehemence just days ago, as we talked about new things she’d like to learn. While I considered with gratitude that she can, now as a young adult, articulate her feelings about this, she told me that this year she had added a purple car to her Christmas wish list. As she said this, I heard a challenge in her voice, warning me against levity or deliberate evasion, telling me that she would face any obstacles with stubborn, determined resolve.
I smiled and listened and prayed. I encouraged her to pray too.
So, we’re still flailing for footholds, and I still grieve obstacles that keep Riley from the territory she wants to reach, but I do so with hope, with a lot more experience of God’s intervention than I had in our early days. Along the way, standing still at these startling plateaus, I’ve discovered that the outrage I feel for where we are now might just reveal my own lack of vision for where we may soon be headed.
