safe house
Into the bowling alley I go, “Saturday me” with her yoga pants and her clean face and her Mr. Rogers jacket (yes, because I wear it around the house). This is the me that’s only me, the honest introvert; the quiet, swallowed-up, zipped-up me just holding tight to God’s hand, walking through the parking lot. This me and the bowling alley don’t really fit. “Saturday me” feels carved and open and way too vulnerable for public places.
A woman snickers when I walk in the door, says something behind her hand to the lumbering man beside her. He laughs, and the little boy next to them whispers, “Mom,” and looks askance at the ground. I wonder if that fact–the one about me not fitting–is as obvious to this woman as it is to me. “Saturday me” doesn’t venture out much. Of course, what the woman says probably isn’t about me at all. It’s probably about the way her t-shirt ripped under the arm when she threw a strike or about the hyper kid in the lane beside, or maybe, about how her son spent all his money on the video game arcade.
It feels like I’m walking into a cave, or better yet a seedy night club that hosts birthday parties during the day. The glass doors are tinted black with that film I sometimes see on car windows, and when I pull one of them open, my eyes have to adjust. The carpet on the floor looks like crushed velvet, like some sort of plush black canvas. Its abstract, neon art stretches beneath my shoes. Of course, that’s probably not what it looks like at all, but it’s what I remember, the way I remember smoke curling from cigarettes even though the bowling alley has gone smoke-free. I’m remembering the bowling alley of my childhood. The smoke smell saturated my clothes, even my hair, when we walked out, and it felt as if the booming music still reverberated in my ears. I remember pizza grease on my fingers. “Saturday me” runs things together, as though the vault of my collected treasures has been left wide open; as though a thief could ransack the whole place.
So I walk in feeling overexposed. But what I find inside those doors is the last thing “Saturday me” would ever expect.
The minute I walk in, I see them, the pack of teenagers crowded together.
My kids have friends. A lot of friends. When they’re not together, the kids chatter in Facebook groups that they’re always relabeling with off-the-wall names. They have found a place where it’s okay, even expected, to be unusual. For an autism mom, this is no small thing; we live with this nagging ache for our exceptional children to feel wanted, invited somewhere besides just at home. So every time I see the knot of them together, I smile: grateful.
One friend sees me and shouts my name and they all turn, opening ranks. I belong to them, and their faces look as open as I feel. They immediately leave the present-opening audience to say hello…to me. Trust me, I want to say, I am not as interesting as those gifts. But they get up from the formica tables and sweep me in their arms. They throw hands in the air to high five. They beam when they say my name, as though the rough syllables are made of light. I feel like a celebrity, and it takes me completely by surprise. These beautiful people love me; that much is clear, and I have no idea why. But then, I do; love is a gift. And these kids are generous. I want to point out to them that “Saturday me” is mostly and purposefully invisible, but at the moment, such a declaration seems clearly ridiculous. The moment one child moves away, another steps up, reaching for me with twinkling eyes. It’s as though they see me–yes, I think that’s it–me and not just things about me; me and none of the usual superfluous adjectives. I have noticed this about my children and their friends. It matters very little to them whether I show up splayed and vulnerable or neatly arranged, so long as I show up. They just delight in me.
Makes me think of a verse I’ve long loved about how God sees: People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). God knows only this me, sees only this me, and by grace, God loves me too. I’m still giddy about it, still surprised, the way I am when my husband looks into my blank face, seeing all the way to my carefully guarded, cracked-up heart, and calls me beautiful. Love does that.
So I stand just inside the doorway of the bowling alley, not-fitting suddenly fitting, wrapping my arms around another set of shoulders and another, thinking it’s an irony really, that these kids are called socially delayed, awkward, inept, and yet their love conquers fear and builds a safe house even for me when I feel weak. Why is it that real love is always such a surprise? The whole thing moves “Saturday me” to prayer, right there in the middle of a birthday party:
Would that the Lord would remake our eyes, so that we could really see each other; that he would remake our arms to open and our bodies to turn in welcome; that he would use us all as a roof over the broken.
