Family Togetherness

George Burns once said that happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

In that case, my husband and I are ecstatic.

Andy has such a family, spanning multiple cities near and far.  We all get together in July at an annual party my in-laws have hosted at their Michigan cottage for over three decades.  This close-knit group takes family seriously, gathering for Independence Day whenever the circumstances of their lives permit.

I’ve been attending this party since 1998, that first summer when we were “Andy’s girlfriend and her eight-year-old daughter.” His family’s generous welcome swept Natalie into a tide of exuberant children as I was embraced by grown-ups thrilled that cousin Andy had finally found “the one.”

The party has been a focal point of my summer for years.  Yet it’s been years since I felt truly whole at this model of family togetherness.  It’s been years since Daniel has been with us.

***

Days of list-making and strategizing helped quell my apprehension as I prepared for those weekends, and the unpredictable outbursts that marked Daniel’s life, especially in an unfamiliar setting.  No excursion was simple with my special little boy, least of all traveling three and a half hours for a long weekend away from home.  I knew my son’s quirks and needs would likely trump my fantasy of a breezy weekend together.  But those trips to Michigan were the only vacations we took back then, and we looked forward to them, particularly my husband, whose business keeps him busy from March through Labor Day.  This is the only weekend he takes all summer to enjoy his parents’ cottage and see his extended family.  It was an effort well worth making.

I never really relaxed on those trips, running after Daniel and monitoring his conduct, aware that his unusual behavior can be intrusive.  It was exhausting, in fact, keeping him on track and occupied, his interests so often at odds with the agenda at hand, cut off from the stability of home and routine.

It was worth it to me, though.  Of course it was.  We were attending a family party, and Daniel was part of that family, too.

And Daniel loved the cottage, racing down the wooden steps to the long stretch of beach, smoother than the rockier shores on the Chicago side of the lake, free of disquieting, public crowds.  He ran up and down the sand for hours, mesmerized by the pulse of waves across his feet, delighted by the splashes he made, again and again, tossing sticks and pebbles into the lapping water.

I didn’t mind chasing him when he strayed too far, bundling him in a towel and checking for sunburn; climbing the steps for bathroom breaks, cooling him with juice boxes and damp cloths to his forehead, then following him back to the beach for another round.

I didn’t begrudge Andy’s absence during those long afternoons, as he led the party’s golf tournament at the local course.  He needed those unburdened hours, reconnecting with cousins he’s kept close since childhood.  I got to know the beach-going contingent, through snatched conversations as I followed Daniel’s erratic motion up and down the shore.  Supervising him was becoming a two-man operation, but I could still manage him by myself for an afternoon.

Until the inevitable breakdown, stoked by sun, sensory overload, and a boisterous, unstructured milieu.  Daniel’s changes of mood, his wild, sudden tantrums, were nothing new, but more difficult to weather away from home.  I’d hustle him to our bedroom and a soothing bath, lay quietly with him across the bed, stroking his back and singing softly against his ear until he finally settled and calmed.

By which time he was ready to leave all together, just as the evening of the all-day affair was getting underway.  He’d pull me repeatedly to his travel bag, asking for home, or make his way down to the car when my back was turned, until at last I’d get him to sleep, and could rejoin the party for its few remaining hours.

***

I don’t remember making the decision to leave him behind, secure in the knowledge that he’d enjoy himself, as he always did, at his father and step-mother’s home.  Perhaps I reminded myself that he would in fact be happier, no longer forced to endure an event which ultimately left him overwrought and overwhelmed.  One year we simply conceded that the sprawling, festive party the rest of us enjoyed was not right for my son, however much I wanted it to be.

It was the right decision.  I know this.  The rest of us needed down time, freedom, for Andy to reinforce the relationships he’s maintained through his lifetime, for Natalie and I to find our places in the family we now called our own.

But the party was never the same, for me, without him.

And I understand now that the party was never the same with him, either, never matching the scenario I’d imagined, the nurturing, familial experience I wanted so badly to find in this occasion, for both my precious children.  Autism had already shredded the screenplay I was still trying to direct; I was merely clinging to pages of an untenable script, unwilling to accept that my family could never enact the story my heart had written.  This happy party scene had already been scrapped from the film of our lives together.  I just wasn’t ready to let it go.

***

The parties are easier for me now.  I can engage, and laugh, and converse, and, in recent years, help run the whole companionable show, unencumbered by my son’s needs and demands, my simmering worry that he’d turn miserable and unreachable in the midst of all the wonderful togetherness.

I still remember, though, the moments when he was happy there, lulled by the motion of waves and the warm sand beneath his feet.  I remember his joy as he ran to toss another stick across the water, pleased with his accomplishment, twisting his fingers in front of his face as he does when he is happy.  I wish those moments could have lasted, could have been enough to make the experience whole.  But they are what we have, and I cherish their memory.

A few years ago I called to tell Daniel’s group home director that I wouldn’t be visiting that weekend because I’d be in Michigan for a family reunion.  I described our earlier visits to the cottage, how we tried to make those weekends happen in spite of Daniel’s limitations.

“He loved it there, Sam,” I told him.  “He loved the beach, if just for a little while.”  My voice broke with unhealed regret.  Daniel had been going through a rough patch in recent months, and I felt guilty that I wouldn’t be visiting.  “I just can’t accept it, that he may never see that beach again.”

Sam was silent for a moment, then spoke with the quiet confidence that always reassured me.

“You’ll get him there, Kristen,” he told me gently. “It may take 15 years, but you’ll get him there again, someday.”

I’m holding on to that script for now.

There are still scenes of our lives yet to be written.