rainbows
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you…(Genesis 9:14,15).
Twelve years old, and she asks for rainbows for her birthday.
My rainbow, this reminder that God is faithful; this beauty—a whole spectrum of color, Light bent through rain until we see Glory from every angle; my first born ray, she asks me to show her what she is to me. Only, she doesn’t know that’s what she asks.
It starts with her standing behind me, her head bent over my shoulder, her eye catching something I’m scrolling past on Pinterest. “Mom, a rainbow cake,” she says, pointing. “I want a rainbow cake for my birthday.” And so I start pinning, since I love a good theme—rainbow cake, decorations, even rainbow painted fingernails that might be just the thing for a bunch of twelve year old girls.
And Friday afternoon, my friend thinks she’s coming for coffee, and I put her to work helping me float balloons in every color, hang streamers, fill multi-colored bowls with snacks.
It’s the first year I can say without any doubt that Riley has real friends, friends who love her as she is and want to spend time with her, friends who probably don’t even know how their love has anchored her. I’d tried hosting slumber parties for her before, but she’d only been a satellite, unattached to a group of girls who agreed to come over because they were being nice.
So last Friday night, eight girls slept in our living room, curled into sleeping bags, their arms and legs draped over the chairs, their hair spread in fans of every shade across their pillows.
In the morning, when Kevin stepped softly down the stairs to make our coffee, he found Riley awake, sitting in a chair, keeping watch over the resting. I think she found joy in all of them collected there, these true friends, there to celebrate her. She’s usually restless when other people sleep while she’s awake. For years, she’s written Zoe letters instructing her to wake early, has prayed that God would get Zoe out of bed by first light. Riley likes company in her waking hours, and she doesn’t really like the way our breath grows deep and long and heavy when we rest. She complains that Zoe sleeps too loudly, says that she “honks.” Which is exactly why Zoe’s gift on Riley’s actual birthday far exceeded anything wrapped. Zoe asked me to wake her up when Riley woke up, so that they could eat breakfast together.
But this Saturday morning, Riley seemed content to watch her friends sleeping, all curved into each other, all collected in our living room. Adam, who had also risen early and had come downstairs to rejoin the party, lay in Riley’s sleeping bag on the floor, the baby pink fabric drawn up to his chin, his fingers holding the edge, his eyes wide.
“Shhhh,” Riley busily instructed him, glancing around the room like a queen. “Everyone’s asleep. You need to let them sleep, Adam.”
When Kevin stepped into view, Adam shifted. “Time to wake up?” Adam suggested hopefully, his voice small and quieted.
Kevin took the two to pick out donuts for the group, left the others breathing heavily, still lost to sleep. When I got downstairs, they had started to stir. A few of them carried on quiet conversations, rubbing their eyes in newborn light from the windows.
When Riley walked back in the door, they pulled her into the middle of them, the volume of chattering steadily rising. In moments, they launched a plan to go outside in their pajamas to jump in the dew on the trampoline. Adam walked to the door behind the pack, watching, and they called to him, “Hey Adam! Come jump with us!” Not once had I seen one of them uncomfortable with Adam’s presence. There had been no faces made behind his back, no laughing at difference. Acceptance may be one of the most precious gifts; this ability to find a rainbow beautiful, to understand every color necessary to creating the art.
Zoe had wandered upstairs to find her robe, and when she stood at the back door, I heard them cheer and begin to call her name. “Zoe! Zoe! Zoe!”
I smiled at Kevin, shaking my head in awe over the way that God answers our prayers, full to overflowing every time. We had prayed for just this: friends who were really her friends. Three of these girls had played basketball with Riley these last years, and four were friends from school. But from the time they’d arrived Friday afternoon, they’d embraced each other and played as one group. I’d seen no splitting off, no arguing, no one alienated from the rest. Even Adam had stayed with them as long as we would allow, sitting in the middle of all those sleeping bags and all those girls to watch a movie. I saw them throw their arms around Adam’s shoulders, heard them asking Riley what she’d like to do, noticed that they waited on her, that no one drifted away. And for the first time, I realized that Riley belongs to a group, that she’s no longer locked away and unable to participate. Autism is no longer her jailer. I still remember the days when she couldn’t make eye contact, couldn’t speak, when they called me in for a meeting at preschool because she wandered, disconnected.
Riley’s basketball coach once told me that he thought Riley had somehow unified his team, that they had rallied around her and grown closer for it. Watching these girls, listening to them talk about Justin Bieber and songs they like and books they read, and how—as they began to smell the bacon cooking in the kitchen—someone really should invent a bacon vending machine, and hearing Riley laugh and comment and get silly with them, I gave thanks for parents who teach their kids to delight in what makes each one unique. None of these girls seemed afraid of declaring a different preference or an unpopular opinion, nor did anyone seem offended by a unique perspective. And they simply accepted Riley’s eccentric commentary as part of the toss of thoughts and ideas. To them, she’s just Riley, I thought, just our Riley. And they love her for it.
Did you know that every person sees their own rainbow? That two people standing side by side will see the same light spectrum differently because of the variance in the angles and specific drops through which they see the light deconstructed? So what is this comfort we find in sameness when all that’s interesting, all the countless shades of variable beauty, may be found only in our unique perspectives?
Every time I start talking out loud about Riley, her twelve years of growing, these friends, my throat knots and I have to slow down, breathe, swallow. I am careful because not everyone understands my tears, how just speaking of her progress fills me with more awe and gratitude than I can contain. Not everyone knows how deeply she has blessed my life, nor all the things she’s taught me, nor all the ways God has used her to teach me to see. I am better because of her.
But I did not know, the day they told us that she had autism, how I could ever be her mother. How can a woman who loves words and shaping them mother a child who can’t speak? And what of all the ideas, the articles clipped, the ways I thought I would explain? I didn’t know, back then, if I’d ever hear her say my name.
And now she asks me for rainbows for her birthday. Now she sits in a clot of girls and laughs over silly things. She opens their gifts, sitting in the recliner, and I hear her say, “Oh, I love this. Thank you very much!” I am in the kitchen, and she calls to me, “Mom, mom, look!” And she holds out a gift card to one of her favorite stores, and she says to me, “Mom, I think I might like to get a scarf…like yours.”
And when she’s not looking, I swallow hard and my vision blurs, and again I whisper,
“Thank you.” Because, there’s really only one way any of this happens.
I did not know all the beauty we would see, how God would bend the light through all those tears and show us so much vibrant color already there, hidden from our view. Riley reminds me—every day when she wraps her arms around me in the morning, every word she speaks, every time she smiles at me—that God has promised to reveal His wealth in lives like ours,
and He always keeps His promises.
For twelve years, she has been my rainbow.
And He created rainbows to remember.
