Collection of Moments
I sat on the edge of my hospital bed, a small box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and a tiny carton of milk for my effort – giving birth in eight hours, passing a kidney stone for four days before that. Adam was asleep in his clear plastic crib, swaddled tightly in blue hospital flannel. This is a moment I will never forget – how the air shifted, time punctuated.
Life is a collection of moments, memory the lingering perfume.
I am a collector of moments:
Adam rubbing his bare tummy against mine
Adam nursing and staring into my eyes
Adam weaned at 3 ½ years and how I could have continued
Adam’s gleaming smile
Adam’s starry eyes
Adam running to me while I work, giving me gentle kisses on my cheek
Adam running to me and saying “here I come!”
Adam crawling under the covers, utterly relaxed
The way Adam looks straight into my eyes like he’s saying I get you, I love you.
Watching Adam interact with others
Watching Adam from afar, becoming more adept at everything
Watching Adam is like watching TIME with a pierced heart.
If this is autism, then it most certainly is God’s correction of “normal.”
Life is a collection of moments, memory the lingering perfume.
I am a collector of moments:
Adam rubbing his bare tummy against mine
Adam nursing and staring into my eyes
Adam weaned at 3 ½ years and how I could have continued
Adam’s gleaming smile
Adam’s starry eyes
Adam running to me while I work, giving me gentle kisses on my cheek
Adam running to me and saying “here I come!”
Adam crawling under the covers, utterly relaxed
The way Adam looks straight into my eyes like he’s saying I get you, I love you.
Watching Adam interact with others
Watching Adam from afar, becoming more adept at everything
Watching Adam is like watching TIME with a pierced heart.
If this is autism, then it most certainly is God’s correction of “normal.”
2 Comments:
such beautiful memories. one of mine is watching fluffy nurse as he watches me, cupping my breast like a shakesperean goblet with both hands, nursing nursing and then finally giving in to the impulse and letting his mouth erupt into a huge toothless smile, milk pooling at the corner of his mouth. so dear. i want another.
I often think I have quite excised "normal" from my vocabulary---growing up Asian American was just the start.
I've been meaning to respond to your query about my poetry paper---it is still quite a work in progress! I have bits of it on my blog---if you go to the "Categories" section (on the right side of the page) and try the links to "Metaphor and Metonymy" and "Poetry and Autism" you'll get to the entries in which I've written about "autism and the language of poetry."
Am sure you will have much more to add to your memory list.
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