synergy
The moment I return from my morning walk, Adam starts to move, like a pinball set in motion by the click of the front door. I hear his footsteps, purposeful and solid, before I actually see him, and just as I walk into the room, he snatches a sticky note from the edge of the bar and heads upstairs, his feet beating double time against the risers.
“Adam Jones is gettin’ to work,” Riley says appreciatively, glancing up. We call this her office, this place at the bar. She grips a mechanical pencil in hand, bends back over her planner like it’s a ledger, and I grin, because this is the posture of an enneagram one holding court. Watching Riley and Adam together feels like observing the staging of scenes from my imaginary memory, when as a little girl I played teacher, clutching a pencil carefully in hand, writing out assignments for invisible students. On the edge of the bar, a single sticky note has spawned at least four more. They look like wild neon flags, some of them curling up at the edges as though frozen mid-flutter.
I had given Riley just one note, bright pink, like a flower, the day we stood dissecting her stress and strategizing over a new routine for mornings, the day I discovered that her problem getting anywhere on time involved more than her lingering over things too long, more than her usual languid, methodical pace.
“Tell me what makes the morning hard for you,” I had said, and the moment I said the word hard her eyes had filled with tears. She couldn’t look me in the eye; her ocean blues darted over the borders of my face to avoid interpreting me.
“Well, I usually help Adam in the mornings,” she had said, pushing invisible stray hairs back from her face, sweeping soft hands over flushed cheeks like she does when things feel out of control. She lifted a hand as she spoke, pointing nowhere in particular, and then began listing all the things Adam needed to do, pulling on one finger at a time. I walked to my office and brought back the sticky note, told her to write all those things down. I figured this whirling list she tried to remember for Adam only heightened her anxiety, knowing from experience that sometimes the best way to convince a mind to rest is to find a way to relieve it of the need to keep on remembering. This is the essential beauty of prayer, one of the gifts God has given us in it, that we can open our hands and drop everything before Him, that finally, we can let go.
“I appreciate that you want to help your brother,” I began, as Riley immediately bent over the note and began oh-so-carefully to write, “but he’s old enough to do these things for himself, and he needs to.”
She had mentioned two handfuls of Riley-things, diligent, orderly, careful things like opening the curtains, like turning off his nightlight, like putting his water bottle and lunch box in his book bag. It’s not that Adam can’t or won’t do these things, but mostly that he’d never think of them. My Autistic two are opposites; in all the ways Riley is fastidious, Adam is indifferent. While Riley lives slowly, with ultra-diligence, Adam lives too quickly to think much about the exact spot his shoes land in the afternoon when he comes home. Not only that, Adam’s efficiency makes him unassertive when it comes to tasks someone else will readily perform on his behalf. I recognize in them the truth that all of our varied strengths become weaknesses when we are hard-pressed, and instead of appreciating one more than the other, I love both of them desperately. I smile over them, thinking that if I, with so much imperfection in my mothering, can feel this way about my kids, how generously and completely must God love all of us. Despite their differences, Riley and Adam share their own kind of a mutual harmony, a bond of understanding and community that leads them to trust each other’s strengths and accept each other’s weaknesses without any sense of competition. Not only do they help each other; they offer compassion; they show patience. They teach me a thousand things about love.
“But I just like to help people,” Riley had said in response that day, her face crumpling with a grief I had not entirely expected. In unburdening her, I had come perilously close to denying something fundamental about who she is.
“I know you do. And I love that about you! But you can help me by being ready to leave on time. Do you want to help me too?”
She looked up, and I could see that she had not considered this perspective. Finally, somewhat hopefully, she made eye contact, murmuring agreement. Of course she wanted to help me; she always wants to help. I knew that she could not understand why assuming Adam’s responsibilities was not only hurting her, it actually wasn’t really helping him.
“Well, this is a way you can help me. Let Adam do Adam’s things so that you can manage your things.” I had pressed that sticky note against the counter top, running my fingers along the top. “Here, write down all the things you worry that Adam won’t do, and we’ll add them to Adam’s list.” She had grimaced but nodded, wiping a wandering tear from her cheek as she picked up her mechanical pencil. Sometimes, it takes a pruning to be more fruitful, but that doesn’t make it easy to watch the trimmings fall and die. I know this because I have been pruned many times before; I have felt the pain of letting go of “things too extraordinary for me to know,” as David wrote in the Psalms, sometimes things I grabbed up in my diligent hands even though God never asked me to carry them.
Carefully, Riley had labeled that note, things Adam needs to do before school, going over every letter twice. Adam had hovered over her shoulder, watching without complaint as she listed all the minutiae, even bobbing up on his feet and turning his wrists a little as he often does when he’s excited. I realized then that Adam might even be grateful for the detailed list. He’s not embarrassed to rely on Riley’s meticulousness. That morning, I had observed their synergy with joy and thought, this is what we need, this kind of community.
Riley had eventually hopped off her perch, striding purposefully toward my office for more sticky notes, and Adam had only smiled, waiting to see what she would write down next. And that, I realize is something I had seen again this morning, right before Adam double-timed his way upstairs to do “the things”: He was smiling, so wide I could see his teeth.
