Lucky me

The Hug ..., originally uploaded by l'enfer.

A friend I hadn't seen in a long time was telling me, today, about her family troubles. Her three sons are all in various stages of drug addiction or recovery from it. One of her sons is in jail. All three of them are bipolar. I felt so, so sorry for her and was trying my best just to listen and be supportive of her. And then she said, "But it's not as hard as what you've had to go through." It took me a minute to realize she was talking about my middle daughter, who is autistic. People have said things like this to me before. What they mean is, 'Whatever trouble I'm having with my kid, even if it's addiction, jail, mental illness, there's still the possibility of hope for my kid. But your daughter is really, really autistic and there's no hope for her.' And I even get it.

Now, of course, that's not how I think about my life. I think of myself as the mother of four kids: my twins, adopted from Vietnam when they were babies, who are straight-A students and incredibly talented artists; my nine-year old who came downstairs the other day and said, "Mommy, I've been reading Shakespeare!" And she had; and my middle girl who is autistic, yes, but who is also funny and loving and silly. And I think of myself as a person who somehow chose both wisely and well in love; I'm married to a man who has been, for twenty-four years, my best friend and intellectual partner.

Which is why there's always a moment of disconnect for me when people tell me that they know their problems don't amount to much compared to mine. But when I do figure out what they mean, I don't mind it. In fact, I'm happy to be a yardstick by which they measure their life and find it, surprisingly, better than they thought. There's a scene in one of my favorite movies of all time "Truly, Madly, Deeply," in which Alan Rickman talks about a little girl who has died. He says:
"There's a little girl .... She was knocked over and she died. Her parents, and family, and friends from kindergarten... She used to go to this playground. See, they made an area in the park. Gave 'em money for swings, and little wooden animals, and there are these plaques on the sides of the swing, bottom of the horse: 'From Alice's mom and dad. In Memory of Alice, who used to play here'... And when you see the parents take their child from the swing, and see the sign... They hold on to their son and daughter, so tightly, clinging on for dear life."

Everyone I know has some deep heartache, some hard rows to hoe. We all need those signs, to remind us to cling tightly to what is good in our lives. So if my friend was thinking, today, 'Maybe my kids are addicted, bipolar, in jail. But at least I can hope that they'll go to rehab and someday live clean, normal, independent lives,' then I've been able to give her some real comfort by reminding her what she does have. And she's done the same for me.