Of Babies, Birthdays, and Embracing Minecraft as a Special Interest

One of our friends gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday! Singularity had followed Kristina's pregnancy with interest, and two days ago he got to feel the fetus moving. (Singularity always uses the correct terminology, in this case he learned that it's not a baby until it has been born from It's So Amazing.) Kristina hadn't given her fetus a nickname, so Singularity did: Grass Block! 

Grass Block??? How does Singularity come up with these things? Of course, he is a Minecraft aficionado. But why a grass block? I asked him why, but he said that he doesn't really know. But there is one special quality about a grass block in Minecraft: if you dig it up with an ordinary shovel, it becomes a dirt block, but if you dig it up with a tool that has the "silk touch" enchantment, it retains the form of the grass block. In other words, a grass block is something that needs special handling to be extracted intact. In a weird way, it's kind of like a baby being birthed. I'm not sure if this parallel was obvious to Singularity or not. 

Speaking of Minecraft, Singularity recently had his tenth birthday, and his birthday party was Minecraft-themed. Most of his gifts and almost all of the party food stayed on-theme.

We also dined on such Minecraft foods as chicken, pork chops, steak, bread, potatoes, and various potions (strength, swiftness, fire resistance, etc.). We also constructed a ghast pinata.

Can you tell that Minecraft is Singularity's current special interest? As usual my modus operandi is to embrace it and use it in a creative, rather than rote, way and as the vehicle for meaningful interpersonal connection. 

We are also using Minecraft as the medium for Singularity to do his school assignment of inventing a machine to transport frozen yogurt from a nearby shop to his school. Singularity didn't want to use Minecraft, because he thought that he would too easily become distracted and start building things with redstone (electrical circuits). (Yay, Singularity, for this stroke of self-awareness!) We solved the problem by having him guide me through creating it. We haven't gotten very far yet, as I'm not a skilled Minecraft player and terraforming is surprisingly time-consuming, but I'm sure that we will have some kind of working system in the end. Oh, and we will use lava to represent the frozen yogurt. 

Can you tell that I think that Minecraft is fun, too? I can very much relate to how easily a person can get sucked into playing it and be reluctant to stop when asked to.

Human Sexuality, Reproduction, and Babies

Singularity has been studying his copy of It's So Amazing, by Robie H. Harris, again. 

About a year ago, Singularity went through a phase of being interested in this book. His interest at the time focused mainly in the physical differences between females and males (he drew vulvas on the page that showed the physical progression from baby girl to old woman!) and on sexual intercourse. He asked me in his most charming way, "Did you and Klailklop do sexual intercourse to make me?" 

This year, two women close to us have been pregnant. Aretha gave birth to Baby G in July, and Kristina's baby is due to arrive in September. And so Singularity has been interested in human reproduction again. 

He has studied the book from cover to cover. My wunderkind has been studying things that interested him since he was 18 months old and we realized that he was able to read. With his encyclopedic mind, he was able to tell me that the section about AIDS and HIV began on page 72. Not only has he been studying the book, but he insisted that I read it, cover to cover, as his bedtime reading over about a week. 

This time around, however, his interest in the book has focused more on the joining of the sperm and egg and pregnancy. He has absorbed so many of the technical details that he was able to explicate the differences between zygote, embryo and fetus. These are details that I couldn't have explained without consulting a reference source. 

I love this book. It does a wonderful job of discussing everything, including same-sex partnerships and adoption, in a gentle and humane way. The only thing it doesn't discuss is transgenderedness.

Anyway, we met Aretha's baby, whom I shall refer to as Baby G, last week. Aaaaah, the softness of a newborn. There is nothing like it. Singularity didn't want to hold her, but I certainly did! 

After we met Baby G, Singularity and I came home and took out our box of baby treasures. It contains, in chronological order, the ultrasounds of his fetal self, our matching hospital wristbands, the footie sleeper that Singularity wore home from the hospital,  the shriveled stump of his umbilical cord, the mobile at which Baby Singularity stared for extended periods, a pacifier and the tether that attached it to his clothing, and the bowl that contained the first rice cereal I ever fed him at 5 months (before then, every cell but one in his body had been nourished by me). I love revisiting these items with Singularity. They remind me of how much I wanted to have a child in my life and how happy I am that I got Singularity as my kid!

Going Away and Letting Go, and an Epiphany

As I write this, I am at a writers retreat at Santa Sabina, on the gorgeous campus of Dominican University. As a mom and newish writer, I have had some issues with attending a writers retreat:

• I'm still not entirely comfortable with thinking of myself as a writer, even though I have belonged to a writing group for almost a year and have been writing poetry and this blog for almost as long. I feel a bit of "impostor syndrome" over calling myself a writer. I have not been a writer for long, as compared to others who have been writing for more years or for a greater portion of their lives.
  
  I have felt this way in the past, though not about writing. In my life as a musician, especially when I began playing again after a number of years, I used to feel like an impostor. I didn't have a great facility with my instrument (viola), and I hadn't been very committed to it. However, over twenty years later, I no longer feel like an impostor and can comfortably say that I am a musician. And in the case of music, it was years of practice and experience that made me feel credible as a musician.
  
  Incidentally, at this retreat we were asked to bring a sanctuary object, something that represents sanctuary to us. The object that I brought is the heavy metal practice mute that I use to dampen my sound when practicing my viola at times when I don't want to disturb others:
  
  
  
  

  My practice mute represents practice. The process of working on something to gain proficiency in it. This process is a practice in itself, almost in the sense of meditation practice. In this case, I am engaging in the practice of writing. Maybe one day I can wear the identity of writer without feeling like an impostor.
  
  
• I am on a retreat. I am doing something for myself. I am not used to this, and part of me still feels as if I should be doing something else. At the beginning of the retreat I felt adrift. Like, what should I do now, in the absence of the things that I usually do and my usual ways of being? I wasn't ready to jump into writing.
  
  And so I made a collage! There was something freeing and inspiring about not thinking in words and flipping through hundreds of images. The next morning, I wrote and wrote and wrote.
  
  I have started a collection of images to take home, so that I can use the collage technique for dislodging my mind from the deep groove it can get into. I think that Singularity may also enjoy collage.
  
• It is still anxiety-producing to let go and let Klailklop assume all of the parental duties while I am away. I know that he has been able to do all of the routine activities of taking care of Singularity, but before this retreat he had not had to do all of them on his own. The last time I went away for a weekend, Klailklop had a lot more help than he wanted this time. Whereas the last time there was always someone there in the morning to help get Singularity up and again in the evening to get him to bed, Klailklop has been handling it on his own. (I sometimes still think of the evening routine as "putting Singularity away for the night"!) I think that it is courageous of Klailklop to take all of this on, and I am beyond grateful that he wants to do it.
  
  I have been thinking a lot about this in connection with the post I wrote yesterday about letting go of attachment to desired outcomes. I am trying to let go of the ways in which I wished to see Klailklop interacting with Singularity.
  

  

  Everyone seems so happy to let go of the bird in Picasso's Ronde de la Jeunesse.

  
  
  When Singularity was younger, I observed that I was much more closely bound to him, and I thought that I must be using effective parenting strategies than Klailklop. Whenever I saw Klailklop doing something I considered wrong-headed or disrespectful to Singularity, I tried to convince Klailklop to be more like me as a parent. Need I even mention that I was never successful?
  
  My style of parenting is authentic to me, but not to Klailklop, and I now see that my hubris-ridden attempts to change Klailklop's parenting was disrespectful to Klailklop and interfered with his ability to discover a way of parenting that was authentic to himself.
  
  It was also destructive to our relationship as a couple. Klailklop and I have been going to couples counseling for about two years, and we have recently been talking about stopping. Now that I have had this epiphany, I think that it really will be all right.
  
  I think that it will probably still be a struggle at times to let go of what I think Klailklop and Singularity's relationship should be like, but at least I can recognize it as a goal. It has become easier for me to let go of some control over what happens to Singularity as he grows older and become more expressive of his own needs. 

And now my writers retreat is coming to an end, and I will return to my everyday life later today. I hope that some of the calm and clarity of the retreat will follow me there. 

The Zen Mom: Letting Go of Attachment

Once, when Singularity was about 4 years old, we had to go somewhere, and I was having a hard time getting him to cooperate with getting ready. I didn't know what the hang-up was. He just wasn't ready, you know? 

So I sat down next to him to wait it out, whatever it was. I realized at that moment that what we were doing was slowing down to speed up. I could have rushed him, but I don't think that it would have led to a good outcome. He might have had a tantrum, and I just didn't want to see him upset. This is what our ABA team calls "antecedent management". 

There are so few things in which being on time matters (perhaps catching the last ferry of the day to get off the island or the airplane that will take you home) or even things that you must attend (your own wedding). In the end, I am sure that whatever time Singularity needed to become ready to go was less than the time it would have taken for him to have the tantrum and for me to help him put himself together again. Simply waiting with compassion and patience was less damaging to him and to myself as well. Rushing just causes anxiety, so why hurry?

As I began writing this, another memory gathered in my mind. I think Singularity was in first or second grade, and we were walking home from school. We were just down the street from the school when Singularity stopped. And lay down. Under a tree in someone's yard. I could have been annoyed, but instead I just lay down next to him. He said that he saw the number five in the tree branches, so I tried to see it too. 

While Singularity and I lay there, the woman who lived in the house saw us lying there, and we talked about how sometimes we just have to take time out to follow our children's lead. Little did I know that a year or two later I would meet her in a support group for autism parents! 

I have always referred to moments like these as "Zen mom" moments. Times of letting go of whatever ideas I may have had for how the day would go and just following our singular path wherever it leads. 

It certainly hasn't always been easy to get into this frame of mind. For instance, I was totally gobsmacked when we received Singularity's first diagnosis of PDD-NOS in 2008, even though we were aware of his autistic qualities. I was just attached to my ideas of what his life would be like and of what my life would be like with him. I think that I cried for about three months, but slowly I got used to the idea that his developmental trajectory would be idiosyncratic and that our life would be different than I had expected. 

Now, although it is sometimes vexing (during those moments when I haven't let go of my attachment to the way I think things should happen), Singularity's autism is something that I embrace. Indeed, one of the reasons I began this blog was to celebrate the amazing person Singularity is. 

*****

Postscript: In an amazing coincidence, searched for images of "looking up into a tree," the image to which I was most attracted, which you see above, was accompanied by a quote from Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller.