Listening For Sustainability
My daughter,
with Fetal Alcohol crippling emotional intelligence damage
and Cerebral Palsy perpetual TerribleTwo
"is too many,
because Earth is all about ego-defiant me"
has taught herself
to attach her lips,
and sometimes her wet licking tongue
when she is feeling particularly needy
and/or playful
or maybe just hungry,
to my male dominant capital forehead
when she needs to feel noticed
attached
connected
invested in
better.
This Saturday morning
she commits the unpardonable sin
of waking up before seven a.m.
Eleven is closer to her business as usual.
After bath and costuming,
both accomplished with as little support from me,
autonomously distracted, as possible,
she goes to our kitchen
to watch her favorite animated song and dance loops
on It's All About You
Tube.
I am hanging out with my son,
also with cerebral palsy,
but unable to walk without balancing assistance
and unable to talk in either direction,
talk back or proclaim forth,
which is more his sister's favorite skill set.
After a few minutes
of only slightly compromised peace
this sunny summer Saturday morning,
the daughter comes in
to demand her support staff (me)
prepare her royal breakfast (immediately).
I invite her to self-serve.
She says No!
repeatedly
while I remind her
she is capable of going to the freezer,
extracting one microwave pancake and sausage
on a stick,
wrapping it in one rectangle of paper towel,
opening the microwave door,
placing it on the rotating glass plate inside,
closing the door,
pushing 1, 0, 0,
waiting for the ding,
and removing her breakfast by holding the stick,
waiting for it to cool,
removing the paper towel,
and devouring the pancake,
then the sausage,
as usual.
She responds
I want you to do it.
I respond
I want you to do it.
"No, Help me!"
"I am helping you!"
"No!
You do it; not me!"
"Why?"
"Because I"m watching my tablet."
"And I'm trying to meditate
and write!"
"No! Help me!"
So, I ask for a time out.
We have been at this same impasse countless times.
It's a ritual,
obsessive and compulsively lose/lose.
We are both not listening
while we are also not meditating
and watching
and writing healthier song and dance stories.
What's happening here?
You know you can make your own breakfast.
Is this about not wanting to be alone?
Do you want me to show you
how crazy I am about you?
"Can I have a kiss?"
And then we do the "my lips on your head"
And "my head on your lips" ritual.
I give her a back and shoulder massage
while she has her therapeutic attachment breakfast.
My daughter smiles,
leaves the room without further demands,
goes back to the freezer,
pulls out a Blanketed Pig
on a stick...
I go back to writing
about resilience
and remediating potential lose/lose Earth climates
and emotionally cooperative reparations.
My son goes back to sleep,
having had a good belly laugh
at our curiously outspoken craziness,
reminding me
Curiosity is a more effective active left-hemisphere tool
than working hard to feel right-hemisphere patience
in the face of apparent weapons
wielded by alien win/lose forces
in an otherwise win/win potentiated
interactive ego/eco-system.
He sits up,
groaning
repeatedly,
until I re-emerge
aware
He needs a diaper change,
on this peaceful sunny summer Saturday morning
riding still-revolving climates of Earth
re-creating green-blue-red
ultra-nonviolent win/win living systems
of actively communicating co-enlightenment.
Maybe we'll have lunch on the backyard deck
under our barn red umbrella
as the Thames River continues to flow downstream
from northern stars
toward southern sun sustained states.
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