diversify, diversify, diversify

Is this thing on?

So a funny thing happened to me on the way to work today.

I didn't think about Autism.

I know, I know. Take your jaws off the floor. Calm down. Take it easy.

It's still a hot topic for me.

Just not the topic du jour.

Oh. It's important, all right. I mean, I'm still looking for ways to help Miss M to find her way, to feel comfortable, to find the people who see her.

I still love my autie village, full of wonderful friends, and tips, and gossip, and cheering (and commiserating).

It's that...life has been calling.

And she's boy, is she pissed.

You see, in these years of Extreme Parenting, I've neglected my passions, my well-being, my health, and recently I looked in the mirror and told myself to get my shiznit togethah.

I have been trying to find my balance, to swing on the swing, sit on the nubbly disco seat, temper my dragons with my own weighted blanket of sorts. I need occupational therapy.

You understand?

Yeah you do.

It's hard to find new friends now - those glittery types that I used to hang with - who get the whole PTSD/autism thing. They look at Miss M and see my quietly, gently-quirky daughter who seems pretty normal, and they really can't relate to my anxieties, my insecurities, my jungle-drums when life presents a curve. I mean, life has pretty much returned to "normal" - but we are forever weathered, softened, changed.

I tend to stick to my village, my tribe, and test a pinky toe in the typical waters every once in a while.

I pass.

But it ain't easy.

I understand Miss M when she tells me how exhausting it is to act normal for long periods of time.

It's like gaining weight and wearing a too-small skirt and sucking in your gut all day long.

You can do it.

You just don't want to.

Miss M? She ambles along gracefully. She towers over her chubby, dark mother - a gazelle with luxurious hair and long limbs, puberty padding out her bottom and hips, a sprinkling of pimples threatening her Pre-Rafaelite beauty.

She's eleven now, and likes a boy, and understands her physical changes, and likes them. She'd like to be a professor of Greek Studies when she's older. That, or a philosophy. She really likes philosophy. She found a book on Plato in the school library, and, well, she's "intrigued", she says.

She is incredibly in-tune with the environment, and is careful in matters concerning politics, global warming, human rights, and eco-friendliness. Her vibrations on another plane, it seems, only makes her more sensitive to other life forms and underrepresented groups.

She asked to watch The Blind Side the other night, because, she said, she needed to understand empathy.

Needed.

Needed to understand.

She has a best friend, and likes her class. She doesn't have nearly enough female friends, due to the scarcity of eccentric, intelligent, and interesting girls her age. It's hard to speak Greek when everyone else is wearing butt-crack jeans and listening to the Jonas Brothers.

I have moments of nauseous tremolo when I think of high school, and all that that encompasses, but as the 12-steppers say, one step at a goddamn time. And this need to understand? I think, maybe that this may be her key. That she has the ganas, the will to understand the things that don't come easily. That she thinks about things like people and empathy, and needs to figure them out.

Last Sunday, I woke up late. The kids didn't come in and jump in our bed, like they usually do. I went downstairs to find hot monkeybread in the oven, Broadway tunes belting on the stereo, and a hot pot of tea shared by the two girls. Miss M was stretched on the sofa near the window. She was reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"Hi," I said.

"Oh. Hi." she said, not looking up. She turned the page. Kept reading.

Roxie drank her tea and loudly proclaimed, "I put in two extra lumps. I hope you don't mind!" From the sound of her voice, she'd put in a few more extra lumps of sugar than she'd let on. She sat hunched at the coffee table, poring over her Wimpy kid book, lips parting, mouthing the words in a stage whisper.

I wandered back upstairs.

My husband was still sleeping, breathing like a baby orangutan.

I lay down next to him.

I felt a thin, sad, smile crack my face.

I'd almost missed it. But not quite.

We were entering the next phase.