Among other things that irk me, drivers who fail to pull fully into their parking spaces, leaving their butt ends in the driving lane, annoy me to no end.
At the mall recently I encountered an all-star offender, nearly half an SUV hanging out of its allotted space, a prime spot just four slots back from the front of the lot.
Muttering, I steered around the vehicle, noting that the driver remained in his seat, talking, it appeared, on a cell phone.
After parking my own car, I cast a baleful glance his way as I walked toward the store, shaking my head and gesturing in “what the hell?” fashion as I passed.
Entering Macy’s, a stab of remorse at my peevishness made me turn back and glance at the car. The driver was leaning out his door and looking back, as if just noticing his poor parking skills.
Then, with mounting dismay, I watched as he got out and began pushing the SUV forward, right hand on the steering wheel, knees bent with the effort of moving the car.
The car I now realized had stalled.
Mortified, I hurried to the third floor to buy the gift I’d gone to purchase. I’d planned to take the package back to my car before an appointment at the Apple store, but hesitated, afraid the motorist I’d wrongly condemned would spot me as I returned.
Warily, I approached the glass doors and peeked out. Man and car remained, joined now by a minivan parked nearby. After transferring several items from the backseat of the stalled car, the man finally climbed into the minivan, and I waited for it to drive away so I could slink to my car unobserved.
They didn’t move. Skulking by the door as customers came and went, I realized the man and his rescuer had settled in to wait for a tow truck.
And there I stood, frozen, too ashamed to approach my car, trapped by my own bad behavior.
This humiliating episode should logically segue into commentary on erroneous judgments, stories we’ve all heard about persons, often disabled, unfairly attacked when others jump to conclusions about behavior that to the casual observer is extreme or inappropriate.
In truth, though, I have not personally endured a truly terrible episode of judgment in relation to my disabled son, at least none that I’ve allowed myself to remember. Sure, we’ve withstood sidelong, perplexed, or disapproving glances, startled comments here or there. But Daniel’s autism is pronounced enough that most people soon discern that something beyond the norm is at work, that he is indeed “legitimately” disabled.
And if I’m honest, people rarely had the chance to point out my son’s inappropriate behavior. I was too quick for that, heading off reproach with explanation before it began.
For years I carried my son’s disability ahead of me, preempting anticipated criticism before it could hurt either of us. Actually, Daniel is insulated by the very disorder that makes him vulnerable. But I couldn’t bear to have him misunderstood, deemed a brat or “behavior problem” when his issues went much deeper, were, in fact, beyond his control. In public, my instinct to protect him kicked into overdrive, drawing a cloak of justification around his shoulders, shielding him from an insensitive world willing to indict my child along with autism’s distasteful side effects.
But I was acutely aware of how I imagined the world saw me, too: an ineffective, irresponsible mother, inadequate to the job I had longed for for years. I knew in my heart that I was failing my son, and my daughter, the whole family structure I was supposed to have nurtured and shaped to perfection.
I feared society’s judgment, and wanted it to know it wasn’t my fault.
Can I admit this to myself? Can I write this in this blog? That at my most overwhelmed — lost and flailing and self-pitying — I offered up an excuse, an au courant disability to absolve me of who I’d become, to explain the wretched chaos of my world?
Because life was chaotic, chronically so. Nothing had prepared me for the sea change autism brought to our lives, the grief and anger and guilt; the turbulent days and endless nights; the exhaustion and unbroken fear for Daniel’s future, the trauma it was inflicting on his sister. As my son became an enigma I struggled to understand, I became a person I could barely tolerate, but felt powerless to change.
How much easier to seek absolution for my failings than do the hard work of modifying them; I was already working as hard as I could. I wanted a pass, forgiveness for my shortcomings: my petulance with store clerks when my patience was shot; my anxiety, which imbued so many occasions; my isolation from friends whose “normal” children brought heartache and resentment; my stubborn unwillingness to accept this thing I could not change, even as I was assured by well-meaning friends that I’d been specially chosen by God to embrace it.
There’s a reason I’m like this, I wanted to scream. This responsibility is devouring me, has reduced me to a snapping, cornered animal, fighting back the only way I know how.
I remember years ago asking a neighbor if she could pick up my daughter from a birthday party her daughter was also attending, dreading the ordeal of dragging Daniel into a noisy gymnastics center certain to provoke a scene.
She sighed pointedly before agreeing, and I recall bitching later to a friend, “Why couldn’t she have just done it cheerfully?” Did she have any idea how onerous such a simple task would be for me, how easy she had it by comparison? Couldn’t she see I was drowning here?
Why didn’t everyone understand that?
Harboring this attitude for years, of course, made me less tolerant myself, venting my accumulated angst at ill-placed, irrational targets. Years of angry defensiveness is pretty exhausting. And even in my self-centered misery I knew I wasn’t unique at all. Our world is awash with misfortune and heartbreak and setbacks, large and small. I had it no worse than millions of people, and in ways too numerous to count, I had it better.
Acknowledging this truth, however, doesn’t prevent my anger from lashing out sideways at the wrong mark entirely. It doesn’t stop me from being an ass in the mall parking lot.
While trying to examine this behavioral flaw I was blindsided. My son’s case manager called recently to warn us that Daniel’s funding for one-on-one care is at risk. He is doing so well in his new placement that the agency in control of funding thinks he no longer needs the personal aide assigned to him.
I was floored. Of course he’s doing well; he finally has the resources he’s needed all along to do so. It felt like hearing a doctor tell a patient with high blood pressure that since his condition is now under control, he no longer needs his medication. Even worse, loss of this funding would mean Daniel’s expulsion from the new group home where he is flourishing: one-on-one care for 15 hours a day was a condition of their accepting him.
The panic came flooding back once more, the “now what?” alarm that’s been sounding since we learned the word autism, the crippling uncertainty we’ve lived with for years, but which has never lost its power to stun, to paralyze, to corner.
Honestly? Acknowledging that I’m still responsible for my behavior regardless of the fear and difficulty I’m facing pisses me off all over again. Oh, I’m much better than I used to be, no longer the self-conscious, brittle woman convinced the world has nothing more pressing at hand than to observe me with fascinated disdain.
Despite accepting long ago that my son’s autism will bring a lifelong series of challenges, though, each new instance triggers the fervid need to protect him that I’ve felt since he was a child. I think I’ll always experience that snapping, cornered-animal defensiveness when it comes to his welfare.
But there are plenty of legitimate targets for my wrath. Maybe, someday, I’ll learn to come out of my corner swinging at the right ones.
“Cornered” image by StocksbyAnna