Dear Addie,
Our day started like any other day. Everyone got up and ready for school and then we set out to start our morning carpool journey with camp dad having big sister Clara in his car and camp mom having you and big brother Gabe in mine. Everyone buckled in, your headphones on, we backed out of the driveway, out of the neighborhood, and on our usual way. All was going as an ordinary day except on this morning I had yet to turn on the radio because Gabe and I were discussing some school stuff and family scheduling for the rest of the week of who needed to go where and for what and that’s when it all started…
“Change please! Change please!” you started frantically yelling from the backseat.
A phrase you’ve grown accustomed to saying when you don’t like what’s on the radio (which honestly is most everything really, even with headphones certain drumbeats and such can sound super loud and ear piercing with your hyper-sensitive auditory system, but I digress…). My natural reaction was just to reiterate to you that the radio was off and to continue my conversation with Gabe. Sometimes you need a reminder that things are actually how you prefer them. But today was different and you persistently continued…
“Change Please! Change Please!”
Confused at this point, I tried once again to reiterate myself, doing my best to remain calm and not feed into the drama of the fact the radio that you usually hate is off. Everything about your request made absolutely no sense to me or Gabe, like zero.
You continued but only louder, seemingly more distressed and now your not-so-little hand had made its way between Gabe and me, pointing with your “L-shaped” index finger and thumb towards the radio (that’s how you point to everything). I quickly turned the radio on and then off again to show you the radio wasn’t on, and there was in fact no sound that could hurt you! But you continued.
My heart was racing, Gabe and I could no longer even hear each other to speak, I felt every ounce of useless in helping you, my heart broke for Gabe who just resorted to looking on his phone trying to drown out the scene of chaos unfolding in our car, my heart broke for you because you were trying so hard to communicate something and I just wasn't getting it. Stopped at a red light I could see the driver in the car next to us looking with a lingering glance seemingly trying to examine what the heck was going on. I started to pray, seriously pray, beg, anything for this to stop before we got to the school when Gabe would have to open the door to get out of the car.
Teetering on the edge of meltdown at this point, I found myself faced with decisions, I had to get Gabe to school, and wasn’t in a suitable situation for pulling over to investigate further (Lord knows we’ve done that a time or ten before) so I turned the radio on to see if you’d be happy if you, in-fact actually had something to tell me to “change please!” I turned on literally the only station you’ll let us listen to – the 80’s channel on Sirius XM and proceeded to continue with our carpool routine waiting for your “change please” to shut it off or change the station.
…and just like that, you stopped.
Nothing. No more tears, no more yelling. You just wanted the radio ON. All of this drama for the radio. In a million years I never would’ve imagined that this is what was going on here. A seemingly simple thing for most turned into something that felt like being trapped in an escape room, deciphering clues while multitasking driving a car safely, and getting kids to school with the rest of the human race. Excuse us - Hot mess express coming through! Oye.
It’s moments like this that I feel like we are miles apart from understanding one another. Eleven years of anticipating your needs and learning to see the world through your eyes and suddenly after 7 minutes in the car I felt like I had jumped the Addie ship and was desperately treading water in the middle of the ocean – and we all know how I feel about the ocean… I felt my eyes filling with tears. There was no way of knowing you wanted the radio "on" with that request but somehow, I felt like I should’ve just known. I'm pretty sure we were all wiped out by this point and it was only 7:30 am.
Sometimes I think it’s hard to explain the mental exhaustion special needs parents, or families rather, go through, but It’s usually a series of 7-minute events like this (on a shockingly little amount of sleep) that can make you feel like you 1000% don’t have anything figured out. On another note, I kind of think a good defensive driving course could quite possibly be attempting to drive in morning rush hour with a passenger who has a hyper-sensitive auditory processing disorder and is emotionally struggling, all, while you're trying to problem-solve whatever auditory distress you think, is happening while staying in your lane – and go! But I digress.
We are constantly trying to keep it all together with endless schedules, responsibilities, and other people depending on us leaving no room for anyone to crack or fall apart. Events like this can, unfortunately, start one’s thoughts to spiral out of control on the numerous unknowns that are still ahead in this journey. But while I’m busy trying not to crack I’m not naïve to the fact that I also totally understand how frustrating that situation was for you. We all forget or can’t find our words or lose things sometimes Ad. Nobody has it all perfect and figured out completely. But if there is anything this journey has taught me and I am constantly having to remind myself of, is we need to offer ourselves grace in that it’s OK to not have it all together, because maybe falling apart and rearranging the pieces is perhaps in some strange way what we need in our lives every now and again no matter how much it might suck at the time. A hard reset if you will. I think these times are when we get a healthy dose of perspective in life - good or bad. A moment where literally all we can do is say, "well, that happened", and keep moving forward.
You couldn’t figure out how to tell me you apparently wanted to jam out to the 80’s station and that was clearly super frustrating for you (and us). You know what Addie, while I can communicate with my words, I get it. You see baby girl, I lose my keys more times than I'd like to admit and it’s never on a day when I decided to leave to be somewhere with a nice cushion of time, nope it’s almost always when I should’ve been somewhere 10 min ago! I’m running around frantically looking any and everywhere and they are always somewhere super obvious like my pocket or actually hanging up with the rest of the keys (what a concept right?!). You couldn’t find your words, I couldn’t find my keys both led us to a situation where our hearts starts racing, and nothing else mattered but the frantic frenzy we have spun ourselves into to find a means to the end result being what we want. It’s exhausting and quite frankly can be emotionally draining.
I’m happy that while this was certainly stressful for us all, it ended well and I now have a little extra insight into problem-solving some of our driving auditory issues for you. We can now add the command of needing the radio "on" to being requested by the phrase “change please.” But while I add that to my Addie knowledge file in my head, you and I will work on using the words "on" & "off" better, deal?
I’m sorry that camp mom threw us an anxiety curveball this week, but I promise no matter how hard and defeating our challenges seem to be in their moment, we will continue to find grace in these situations in that we are all human and can’t help but fall apart sometimes.
We’ll pick up our pieces together.
I love you Ad.
Mom
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