Yesterday was a moving day again. Matt and I flew back to Toronto, leaving a sunny, mild Boston for a rainy, cold Toronto. I had a lot of assimilation and expiation to work through, trying do justify my existence., very hard to do. I’ll get back into the pool today — in about an hour — and that will (slowly) ease my body as I limber up.
So the planet is heating up, we are told, and there’s lots we can do about it, and don’t. That’s assuming we are ALL AWARE of whats’ gong on and of what we are doing. This past year I have been spending more and more time with my challenged son and I constantly realize how much support and reinforcement (and repetition) he needs to function - and he is what is called “high-functioning”. (I am what is called a bitch.) He is also patient and cheerful and, I’m happy to say, forgiving. I try to be, after I recover a modicum of patience and try to put myself in his shoes. Even as I try to project into his mind, I am aware of what an ordeal every moment of his life must be. We take things we take for granted: actions and activities and automatic adjustments to external circumstances. Nothing is easy for him. I make it worse by being impatient and feeling sorry for myself. I have no right.
I’m not beating myself up, though I do that, too. I’m just reminding myself of how far short I fall in my care of him. And yet, the life of challenged citizens in our communities is far superior to their lives in the past, that any but the most wealthy families (and even then, there had to be a will), could manage or afford. Thanks to changing attitudes and government support they are allowed and have learned to be relatively independent and to have lives of their own, at whatever level, with, as I say, a lot of support. But they are not the ones who remember to take out compost or separate the foil from the recyclable material, or, or, or. Hell, they don’t even clean up after themselves. They don’t have the knowledge or understanding or discipline or skill to do it. We have to do it for them.
And the big question is: do we have the will?