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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Finding Jack's Voice

(a) I have been meaning to post this for weeks and came here today to find this lovely weeks-old post sittting out there in edit mode.
(b) please forgive my tendency to suck at the blog
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How many times have you struggled to put words to the ideas coursing through your head?  You know - the times that you have a head or heart full of something that begs to,no, demands to get out but you just can't get the words to go there?

I have written before about my son's difficulties.  It is still very much a work in progress but we make little strides every single day.  He now says "I love you too, Mommy" instead of "I just love you Mommy", which for the longest time we tolerated because it was at least a small acknowledgement of affection, when we could cull little else out of him. 

At the risk of repeating myself with his story, he has rarely exhibited any kind of extreme emotion - love, fear, anger, sadness.  In a tender moment, he would say the words but rarely show affection.  When being disciplined, he will stare right though you or flat-out ignore, which often serves to just make me more angry and frustrated.  We are in the process of doctor's screenings and therapy and appointment after appointment to pinpoint what he needs and how to help him.  It is exhausting.

On August 24,  we celebrated our wedding anniversary and in typical corny fashion, I arrived to pick up the kids at mom's and she had my wedding video all cued up to watch.  The opening song was playing and Abby who is just starting to understand the concept of "happy tears" comes running over to me to cry on my shoulder.  I held her and struggled to get her to articulate how she was feeling.  (For what it is worth, the music from our wedding has always made her cry.  Ever since she was a baby.) I made a comment about her someday having a beautiful wedding and she burst into sobs again.  My adorable weirdo.  I stroked her hair and looked up to see my usually inattentive, usually "off-doing-other-things" baby boy, also wiping away tears.

My heart took a leap.  Jack doesn't react like that.

I rushed over to him and pulled his head close to me, and asked why he was crying.  While I stroked his hair, he took in a deep breath, pulled away from me so he could see my face, wiped away another trickling tear and said as clearly as could be, "because it is beautiful mommy".

It is a little thing.  That gives me so. much. hope.

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