Fragments

Door, Upper West Side

I have a new friend and I'm not telling her name but she is delightful and I am happy. This is a detail from her door. 

<*> <*> <*>

My walk through the city tonight feels like a stroll through a movie set. Here, a cafe where every single person seated at the outdoor tables is wearing a blue shirt, hues ranging from sky to azure to midnight. There, a blonde family of five - impossibly attractive and dressed to the nines for a festive occasion - pose for a photo as a man who can best be described as an African-American Gabby Hayes crosses the frame, fur lumberjack hat squashed down onto his head, pushing his squeaky wheeled shopping cart filled with dingy stuffed animals and dented soda cans.

Yes, this is my city. We all come out of central casting.

<*> <*> <*> 

Sunday, for the first time in ages, I stopped at Zabar's to pick up some lox, and had forgotten the artistry of the slicers there. While the stuff we usually get from our local bagel place is serviceable, this was a revelation: fresh, delicious and so thin you could nearly, as the saying goes, read the newspaper through it.

While I was watching the counter man slice, before I could stop it, the thought popped into my head that I should bring Walter some Zabar's lox next time I go see him, as it always delighted him so when I would arrive bearing real New York City appetizing. And then the sadness rushed in, a now constant tide.

<*> <*> <*>

Jacob has now woken up at 5:30 AM for more than a week.

This usually means that he is about to undergo a big leap in growth and understanding, his brain too excited to slumber past dawn.

It could however, just be an attempt to get uninterrupted screen time on his own terms, no brother to share and negotiate with.

Only time will tell.

<*> <*> <*>

Today I sat in the "big yard" with Ethan after school, eating our ice creams in a shady spot and watching the kids swirl around us, playing their hearts out. We are both still easily tired, the legacy of the stomach bug that swept through our household earlier this week, taking us down like bowling pins, Ethan the first to go on Monday afternoon.

So instead of jumping up to join the fracas, he sits beside me, in the quiet watching, rests his head on my shoulder, waves back at his friend's younger siblings when they spot us and yell hello.

I look at the Kindergarteners among them, and then down at my nearly eleven year-old son, sifting through the years that brought him from that to this. I can't quite believe that he was ever that little. Or that his time here is soon to come to a close.

Six years spent in these red brick walls. Now less than two weeks until goodbye.

Tonight is the 5th grade dance. The girls will dress in taffeta and heels. The boys will need to be persuaded to wash their faces and put on clean t-shirts. They'll arrive in groups, still separate; the boys here, the girls there.

Growing up. But not quite grown. Ethan's heart is mine for yet a little bit longer.

<*> <*> <*> 

I need to change the name of my blog. My sandwich is open faced now. Open to the heavens. 

Although, needless to say, most days I am still quite squashed.

<*> <*> <*>

I thought we were finally done with Thomas forever... until Jake stared obsessing over him again about three months ago.  Only now we have to discuss which season and which episode number and who the narrator is and what year it came out and is it a "classic" episode or a new one and does the narrator talk "Americanish" or "Englanish" and...  (I say bomb Sodor back to the stone ages & be done with it!)

Well, we did get a break from it for a while. Over the years, we have cycled through obsessions with Teletubbies, Batman, Bakugan, Blues Clues, Ben 10, Power Rangers, Sponge Bob, Dragonball Z Kai, Pingu, and - do NOT ask me why - old basketball games/teams. Specifically the 1974 Celtics for some reason - and we're New Yorkers! Some of these were a relief, while others made me long for the fat controller.

<*> <*> <*> 

It has been a month since my last post.

A month.

I never thought I would lose my voice for so long.

But the other losses have been adding up, cumulative, weighing me down. The words swirl in my head, coalesce into nothing more than little jagged fragments. A sentence here, a thought there, an amusing facebook update at most.

I write them down, thinking I will flesh them out into posts soon, but there they remain, dry bones waiting for life.

I am tired of waiting. Of silence.

So I scoop my shards up, spread open my hands just a bit, so that they may waft out between my fingers, sprinkle down onto this page, and leave them there, where they fall, willy-nilly.

Not quite a post, but not quite NOT one, either.

A start.

Clearing my throat.

More to follow.

I Listened to a Bunch of Mothers (and some non-mothers and a cool dude) on Mothers Day

So, the second annual NYC Listen to Your Mother Show has come and gone. I would say it completely dominated my life for the past month, but that wouldn't be quite true.  It had a lot of competition from my Uncle's decline and death and Jake's IEP and Ethan's... well, you get the idea.

But it DID dominate the awesome in my life. And having something major and all-consuming to do on the first Mothers Day without my mother was, frankly, a godsend. I know I have just side-stepped the pain, that it will hit at some point, but if I can put it off just a little longer, that's fine with me right now.

(I haven't even finished my "first Mothers Day without my mother" post which is sitting half-written on my computer. Every time I go to it and see the picture of the two of us last year on Mothers Day I just get too sad, and let myself get distracted by Facebook and the Twitterverse.)

The show was... well, it's hard to find words to describe it... wonderful... glorious... moving, inspiring, side-splittingly funny, heart-rending and thought provoking, all in turn and often simultaneously.

And I can say this without seeming conceited because I was just a small cog in the great works of it all. What an awesome talented bunch of folks up there on the stage and behind the scenes. It was an overflowing vat of wonderful, all around.

My co-producer & directors - Holly Rosen Fink, Amy Wilson, and Shari Simpson - were amazing to work with. They all really carried the day when I was less than my 100% capable self, due to my mother's dying in January just as the production was ramping up.

And the cast... well, you're just going to have to watch the videos when they come out on YouTube soon.

The experience on Sunday was lovely for everyone, in the cast and audience alike. And if you weren't able to be there, I hope you can come next year. And if you're not near NYC there's probably a LTYM near you - find it!

And if you're one of my many dear friends who was producing and/or directing one of the 24 LTYMs around the country this year - yay! Can't wait to see YOUR city on video, too!

But until then... here's a taste - what I read (an edited version of this post from last year):

Planets

Tonight my son Ethan and I ran a little excursion after dinner. Just the two of us. When we walked out the door it was not quite seven o'clock. These days that means a sky full of light.

Added to the ridiculously unseasonable warmth, us stepping out on a March eve in mere t-shirts, and I was hard pressed to remember it wasn't a languorous summer evening, but yet a school night, and thus we had to execute our errand quickly and hurry home.

Besides, I had promised the upstairs neighbors with whom I had parked Ethan’s twin brother Jacob that we'd be back within the hour, and I sorely did not want to abuse my favor currency with them. Friends who are comfortable taking on Jacob are few and far between, precious as diamonds.

Jake himself was delirious to be upstairs with the neighbors and their white terrier, with whom he is nearly as obsessed as he is with our cat. Jacob calls these animals 'my best friends' which, though it breaks my heart, is true.

Ethan and I were on a mission.

We absolutely HAD to go to the bookstore tonight because he had finished the last book of a particular series in our possession the day before, and thus we were now in the dreaded state of NOTHING TO READ.

Ethan is in high, silly spirits as we walk the busy Broadway blocks to our local Barnes & Noble. He skips and darts around me walking down the street, as much crazed mosquito as boy.

"Look at all the people out in the evening!" Ethan proclaims with wonderment, and I dive again into pointless regret that we are not living anything like the life I had imagined, filled with evening family strolls and nighttime explorations of the city.

Jacob does not like to leave home all that much, and to be out with Jacob and Ethan together is most often a form of torture. I must have some wealth of resilience in my bones, some stored reserve of calm and good mothering at the ready.

There are days when I can and days when I can't and today was decidedly in the impossible column.

<^>^<^>

Mission accomplished, book in hand, Ethan and I pushed through the store's glass doors into a city become night, the sky's blue glow nearly extinguished, the streets bathed in yellow-orange incandescence.

Turning west to walk the two short blocks to Riverside and home, the brightest of stars appeared in the overhead sky.

Not stars, planets: Venus and Jupiter blazing in the deep cerulean sky that slices between the high-rises, thankfully not obliterated. These two gods are in a much celebrated love fest this month, a rare conjunction.

And yet, while they appear to be quite close, kissing distance tonight, they are in fact not truly crossing at all. It's just an artifact of our perspective, the way they look from here on our own mudball.

They are in fact deeply distant from each other, Venus, sunward, drawing us in toward the heart of our solar system, while Jupiter circles round us from the outside.

I do not like that my children are distant planets, each locked into their own distinct orbits, occasionally approaching but never truly crossing paths, both merely circling 'round me, their sun.

How I wish instead they were more like a double star system, like so many of the other twins we know: circling each other, at times closer, at times more distant but always in orbit, one about the other; connected, entwined, hurtling through space as one.

But I must, as ever, resist the siren pull of the "what ifs," of that dark matter that draws me to its crushing embrace.

I must instead stay here, in the now, in the track of my actual sons.

The one who lives on planet Autism.

And the one who does not.

Goodbye, Uncle Walter

Mom & Uncle Walter, November, 2012

In case you've been wondering where I've been lately....

The day after my mother passed in January, my Uncle Walter got diagnosed with stage four, metastatic lung cancer. He was given a three to six month prognosis.

Less than a week after that I was taking him to oncology appointments, visiting him in his Long Island home, spending time with my cousins - his daughters - as they cycled through town, coming in as often as they could.

In spite of how unfair this all was, in spite of his (growing) pain, in spite of his (very understandable) fear of death, he somehow maintained an upbeat, positive attitude throughout it all. He was magnificent, amazing.

Last Friday, he lost the fight. His daughters were with him for the last day of his life (I had sat vigil, awaiting their arrival).

His funeral was Monday. Family, neighbors, colleagues, friends all gathered. The rabbi delivered a lovely eulogy. Jess spoke for the daughters (Annette was too overcome to go join her at the podium) and said so many beautiful true things about Walter. And I spoke too.

It was a beautiful May day at the cemetery. Afterward we gathered in the backyard he so loved and ate and drank and shared fond memories of Walter. He was much beloved by all who knew him.

In the coming days I will tell more stories from these last three months, but for now I will just share the words I spoke at the funeral, here:


Walter was my uncle. My mother's "little brother" as she was so fond of calling him in recent years - and he was so UN-fond of hearing. Still, he put up with it with a grimacey smile because he loved his sister - his big sister Sylvia - so very much.

We were a close family. Growing up, "the relatives" meant Walter and his family - my Aunt Eva and cousins Jessie and Annette who were truly my best friends. Besides my parents, the Heimers - as we called them - were my very favorite people, the ones I was closest to, knew I would be intimately connected to for the rest of my life.

And we are.

I loved my Uncle Walter and am so grateful to have had the chance to spend so much time with him over the years -- and especially in this last year of his life which my Mother spent in the Nursing Home just 9/10ths of a mile from his house (yes, I clocked it on the odometer).

My mother absolutely loved Walter's frequent visits. Sometimes I would also be there during them, and the three of us would hang out together in the courtyard. Walter always turned the heads of staff and resident alike - he was such a handsome man, such a dapper dresser, in his suit and fedora -and mom was so proud to tell everyone who he was - her baby brother.

Walt visiting Mom at the nursing home

Every time I would come into my mom's room she was always showing me the flowers and chocolates he had brought her on his last visit. "My brother is so good to me" she would tell me, so grateful for his company, so much love twined between them.

And that love has roots that go all the way back. My mother often told me the story of going to see her new - baby - brother who had just been born. At that time they didn't allow children under 16 into hospitals, so my then 5 year-old mother stood outside the building, under Grandma Dunia's hospital room window - and she held Walter up for Mom to see.

Recently, at a family gathering, Jessie went to the basement for a bottle of seltzer and came up with an old journal of Walter's from 1941 when he would have been 14. (You never know what you're going to find in that basement.)

This entry from February says so much: "My older sister is a swell gal. My ideal. I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

And in spite of her being a girl, they did have fun, throughout their lives together. In jazz clubs in the 1940s, at family holidays - always together, on vacation in Maine, hanging out in the lush backyard of Walt & Eva's Port Washington house..

The other day I was rifling through my old photo box - you know why - and came up with a great shot of Walt & Eva from 1968. I showed it to my husband Danny and he commented: Eva looks great and Walter... looks like movie star! And indeed he did.

 

Everyone thinks my own son Ethan takes quite a bit after the Heimer clan, looks a lot like Walter. He does. I can only hope he grows up to be a warm, loving mensch like my Uncle Walter. There's a good chance of it - he already has his huge - and not always appropriate - sense of humor.

~*~*~*~

Goodbye Walter. You were loved. You will be missed. Keep my mom good company, Ok?

Wordless Wednesday: Boys Spring Haircuts - 2013 Edition

Before haircuts - obviously

As promised: photographic evidence from the boys spring haircuts a couple of weeks ago, before and after. And then even some fun together afterwards: goofing around on the Riverside Park cannonballs, a thing that never seems to get old, even if Ethan has long outgrown the playground.

First: Shaggy!

During: Ethan in the chair, Jake checking out his new 'do in the mirror.

And after: Shorn!

Cannonballs!

Happy Spring everyone!

Perspective, again

Photo by Lucky Tran via @illuminator99

I hate this.

My heart is breaking.

For my friends.

For my family.

For perfect strangers.

For my country.

I do not understand people who want to do this.

To inflict harm upon strangers.

To turn a joyful occasion into terror and sorrow.

To kill children.

I know human beings can lose their humanity.

It happens in war.

It happens in homes with the doors closed and everything looking just peachy from the outside.

I understand it with my head.

But not my heart.

Never.

~~~ * ~~~

After a long (for me) hiatus, with my head too wrapped up in other things, I was finally ready to post yesterday. About something lovely that happened with Jake the other day. Something small. Sweet and joyful.

And then Boston.

And then I just couldn't.

And I know life goes on.

But still, we must take pause.

I was walking home with Ethan, after school pickup yesterday, when we heard a man yelling; shouting, screaming on Broadway.

Fearful it was another crazed homeless man (one had badly frightened him a few years ago) I looked about and saw just an ordinary young man with a cell phone.

"No, no, no, no, no! What happened?" he said when words returned after the screams of anguish subsided. "Were is Meagan? Is she all right? Is she alright?"

Ethan and I kept walking. He was concerned. I assumed it was a personal matter, a car accident, maybe.

And then we got home, and Danny told me what had happened.

Ethan wanted to know more, and didn't. And I was torn between sheltering him from the horrors of this world and trying to honestly explain the evils in it without unduly frightening him.

I settled for a middle ground.

And he fell asleep last night easier than I did, sitting benumbed on the sofa, parked before a TV showing me over and over again things I did not want to see or hear yet couldn't tear myself away from.

I have dear friends in Boston. Family. All safe. (There but for the grace...)

~~~ * ~~~

In days to come I will tell you of Jake's small triumphs, of Ethan's growing obsession with Magic the Gathering; share photos of the boys' spring haircuts, talk about how wonderful this year's Listen to Your Mother show is going to be and encourage you to buy tickets.

But today, now, I will simply take my pause.

Reflect on how tiny my troubles appear in the light of larger tragedy.

I am getting tired of how often the world gives opportunity for this sort of perspective these days.

Wishing peace for those suffering.

And light and love to enter the hearts and minds of all those who would do such a thing, rendering the unthinkable, unthinkable once more.

Autism awareness... acceptance... celebration... whatever Day

Hi everyone. I should have a wonderful new post for you today about autism and my son Jacob. But I don't. Today is the final day of my sons' week and a half long spring break, and I've been too busy being a mom.

Today I could have ignored my son Jacob and written a post or spent the day tooling around the city with him, running errands and enjoying his company. You know which way I went with that.

So instead, you can read the posts I wrote last year: My 1 in 88 or Still Aware and Still Accepting and the year before: Every day is Autism Awareness Day 'round these parts

You can read some wonderful posts my friends have written this year, such as: I'm Aware. and I Got A Name

You could check out the Autism Shines Facebook page and see the faces of so many beautiful autistic folks.

And if you're one of the strangers Jake walked up to yesterday, flashed his sweet smile at and asked to pant like a dog or meow like a cat (then gave a demonstration)? Maybe you're a bit more aware today anyway. 

If you're one of the strangers who smiled back and obliged him? Definitely accepting. And thank you! 

March '13 Round-Up: What I Loved on OTHER People's Blogs

New York Public Library by Neil Kramer

Welcome to the March edition of my monthly "What I Loved on OTHER People's Blogs" feature. The place where I share what has caught my eye (and brain, and heart) on the internet over the past month.

Also, as usual, I am also featuring many photos from my friend and amazing intstagram photographer Neil Kramer - of the blog Citizen of the Month - who has been in NYC this month and doing some wonderful work.

Please notice a lot more humor this month. (Don't worry, there's still a lot of gut wrenching, lyrical beauty and thoughts on autism, as per usual.) March is such a heavy, heavy month for me, I really needed help to lighten up - so I'm passing that on to you here.

Morning, Queens by Neil Kramer

Let's start with some funny...

A conversation about the cat that has nothing to do with her weight by Alice of Finslippy

And Then The Phone Rang by Nancy of Midlife Mixtape

St. Patrick's Day Parade, NYC by Neil Kramer

Frida & Diego by Deb of Deb on the Rocks

Hop on the Bus, Gus by Anna of An Inch of Gray

Chrysler Building, NYC by Neil Kramer

Was It My Fault by Tracy of Sellabit Mum at Scary Mommy

Our real lives by Mary (the Barnmaven) of Clean Shavings

Reading, Highline, NYC by Neil Kramer

Why it’s okay for parents of autistic children to not be okay… by Lexi of Mostly True Stuff

Dear Relative: What Are You Waiting For? by Leigh of Flappiness Is...  

Elevated #1 train 125th St., NYC by Neil Kramer

Chosen: First Grade Politics by Debby of Everybody's Boy

Our "College" Tour by Liane at Autism After 16

Yellow Chair, Highline, NYC by Neil Kramer

For the First Time (Since Ever) He Didn’t Sit Alone by Jo of A Sweet Dose of Truth

six years — or — no. hell, no. hell to the mothereffing no. by Jess of a diary of a mom

Woman 23rd St., NYC by Neil Kramer

And because I promised you funny and after the first two selections we dove back into serious... ending with funny!
 
The Game of Life by Jillsmo of Yeah. Good Times.

Evasive Maneuvers: A Guide To Parental Escape by Vikki of Up Popped a Fox

And now, a word from Max's sleep-deprived dad AND Special needs mom's head explodes! by Ellen of Love That Max (Who was extra funny this month and I just couldn't choose!)

Clock near Flatiron Building, NYC by Neil Kramer

Finally, a few more photos from Neil, who was on fire this month - really inspired by NYC architecture...

Hotel New Yorker, NYC by Neil Kramer

In Shadows, NYC by Neil Kramer

Madison Avenue, NYC by Neil Kramer

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC by Neil Kramer

Reflection, NYC by Neil Kramer