w-asp
He doesn’t want to cut the bushes.
“Please don’t cutting the bushes,” Adam says to me first thing when I walk in the kitchen on Saturday morning, bending low as though unless he’s close to my ear I might not hear, that voice of his deep and gentle.
I glance at the white board where we all prepare Adam for things to which he would otherwise vehemently object, and I see where, below some reminder Riley has rainbow-written about Adam leaving his water bottle at school, Kevin has written carefully in brown, “12:30pm – help Dad cut the bushes.” The words look unassuming and quiet, especially squeezed in the white space below Riley’s vibrant letters. I would not have noticed them except for Adam’s pointed demurral.
I turn away from the board, and Adam follows me into the kitchen, politely repeating his exception. Had he more ease retrieving words, this might have been the beginning of a monologue about why he should be excused from this particular activity. I interpret the comment, especially in repetition, as something akin to, Come on, Mom. Help me out here. Adam recognizes I have some pull with his dad, or at least, equal power over the whiteboard eraser. I don’t know exactly why, but Adam, like many of our other friends with Autism, believes that written words hold more weight than spoken ones. Maybe, it’s that ephemeral thoughts become concrete when transposed into letters and sentences. They remain (nevermind the eraser), while unwritten plans and ideas have a nasty habit of changing unexpectedly.
I turn to Adam smiling, remembering a time when he made his most vociferous protests in writing, scrawling them quickly and repetitively over a white board he carried in his hands. This he might have done today, except for the fact that his dad’s hand formed the letters, the instruction, on the board. Adam recognizes Kevin’s authority with a level of respect and submission that teaches my heart, since I know Adam’s obedience to be a direct response to love rather than intimidation. Kevin fathers with gentleness and strength that need not resort to fierceness.
“You are asking the wrong parent,” I say, catching Adam’s eyes with my own, laying a hand briefly against the plane of his cheek. “You need to talk to your dad about that.” I don’t know if Adam will do this; he doesn’t like to openly disagree with Kevin’s plans.
But when Kevin walks in the kitchen a few minutes later, Adam does approach, holding one hand in front of his mouth as he leans in, as he says again, “Please don’t cutting the bushes.” Adam speaks so softly Kevin has to focus on the words. I watch Kevin’s expression change from puzzlement to understanding, with a light smile.
“No, we’re going to cut the bushes, buddy,” Kevin says, “but we can start earlier if you want to and get it over with. Do you want to do that?”
Adam must have murmured reluctant assent, because he runs upstairs to get his shoes. Meanwhile I’m thinking this underscores how little Adam wants to do this, because he rarely, if ever, agrees to depart from a specified, written time. Even so, I hear no more comment or objection from Adam, who, excepting Kevin’s will–may it be to me as you have said, returns with shoes on and follows Kevin out the door to cut the bushes. In my son, I often catch the reflection of a Story, a garden, an earnest let this pass, but not my will.
I grab my book and settle in to a rocking chair on the porch, listening with some pleasure to the soft, careful sound of Kevin’s voice as he teaches Adam, as the two of them work side-by-side at the fence gate just beyond where I sit. Occasionally, I turn to look at them, the way their bodies make the same line as they bend over the bushes, the way their shoulders make a match set. Watching Adam learn his father’s ways, I think I understand a little more about why God chooses to work through His children. We become something in practice that we otherwise never would, as we watch how He moves and try to move with Him.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,” Adam says. I don’t see, because I’ve turned back to read, but the tone Adam uses sounds mild and factual, just as it would if he were commenting about the color of the leaves in his hands. Absorbed in a paragraph, I imagine Adam has scraped himself with a branch. I hear Kevin’s calm tones in response, and I keep reading, trusting the father to care for the son.
After a while, it’s the absence of Kevin’s voice I notice, and I look up to find him clipping alone, having moved from the bushes at the gate to the gardenia–still in elegant bloom–at the outer corner of the porch.
“Where’d your partner go?” I ask, careening, looking for some snatch of Adam’s hair or a flash of skin, thinking maybe Adam still stands silently at Kevin’s side, hidden by the gardenia, which has grown into something ample and wild over the summer.
“Well, he got stung by a wasp, Kevin says warily, and I grimace, thinking of the pain; thinking Autism will require Adam to forever associate cutting the bushes with stinging discomfort. He will believe that obedience hurts. But then, it often does. And isn’t that why we mostly hate that word—obedience, why we want to erase it somehow or maybe write over it with our objections? Obedience requires at least a submission, a humbling of self-will in acceptance of greater authority, and we are a strong-willed people.
“I put some ice on it and wrapped it with a cloth,” Kevin’s saying now, and I imagine the tenderness of his fatherly fingers on Adam’s arm, the way Kevin stopped and bent to focus on Adam’s injury, the way Kevin’s voice and his nearness must’ve soothed. So maybe Adam made a rule in his mind–obedience hurts–but maybe next to that one he made a few more: Dad loves me. He sees me. He tends my wounds.
James, the brother of Jesus, encouraged, “Consider it pure joy when you face trials, because the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that you will be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4, emphasis added).” What will happen when I obeying hurts? This is a question of faith. And I may believe I know with certainty that God will take care of me, that His grace will see me through, that He will tend my wounds and supply what I need, but nothing matures me like pressing on through stinging pain as that faith becomes sight, as I feel the tenderness of His fingers on my arm.
I find Adam in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, the towel swinging back and forth from his hand.
“Tell me what happened,” I say, pointing at the deep red dot left by the sting. What hurt you?”
“Wasp,” he says carefully, peering at the wound, but not with any deep resentment. He says wasp like asp with a ‘w’, even after I repeat the word a few times telling him I’m sorry, and I can’t help but smile. It seems everything hard comes back around to that snake.
