Photo: Jo-Ann Eccher
I am on Martha’s Vineyard this week visiting Jacob, my autistic godson, and his wonderful parents, Jo-Ann and Derrill. I have not seen them since April. I am as interested in what has changed in me as what has changed in Jacob. He is taller, I am not.
Perhaps it is the Body-Mind Centering dvd’s that I have been watching – soaking in and relishing Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s brilliance and insight. Or maybe that it is the ragged end of summer, and I am so happily relaxed to be on the island – walking down to the sea at least once a day. Maybe it is some fuller acceptance of the limits of my understanding (at least the cerebral cortex variety) or some deeper relaxation around my role in Jacob’s life.
I have let go of a lot of doing, let go of any kind of outer directed goal. I am doing a lot of listening and more than that, a lot of feeling. Here is what I am finding this time: when I hold the thread of my own engagement and curiosity, my time with Jacob has an ease and flow that I have never experienced before. When I am more outer directed – that is, looking to do something, fix, change or improve something, things can get sticky.
Jacob’s predominant autism “ism” is his spinning of a ball. Sometimes it is close to his mouth – a tiny spinning involving the third and fourth fingers of his right hand- complex, fast, rhythmic. Sometimes it is tossing the ball in the air repeatedly. Taking a page from the brilliant work of Phoebe Caldwell, I have my own ball, and when we are together, I play with my own ball – sometimes directly echoing and duplicating his rhythms, dynamics, sometimes introducing some other movement of rhythm that catches my attention. What I am doing mostly is enjoying myself being with him, engaging in my own play. Sometimes that “with-ness” is direct, other times, more indirect – maybe we are facing roughly the same direction, sometimes side by side, sometimes farther apart, echoing each other’s sounds, movements, balls.
In one of Bonnie’s dvd’s on the fluid system, while talking about the fluid structure (marrow) of the bone, she mentioned finding and returning to one’s own “drone.” In music there’s the rhythm, the melody and the drone, like the harmonium in Indian music. The drone is your own balance, your own connection to the deepest sense of yourself, the core of your being.
I think that is what I am finding this time with Jacob. Instead of becoming unbalanced, which could look like distraction, frustration, confusion or uncertainty, I am feeling balanced and happy, as if the core of me connects to the center of the earth and to the galaxies above. And I am finding Jacob there, in his drone, his center, his clarity about who he is and what he needs. Not in language, or touch, but in delight, curiosity and the moment.