Wordless Wednesday is this meme where you post a picture of something or someone, that tells a story without words.
I’m not really good with rules. You know this.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Fall Festival at the big YMCA a few miles from home (because we like to spend ass-tons of money like that). It’s the Super Target of YMCA’s, because it has a lake, cabins, volleyball courts, and several acres. They also have a 40-foot climbing tower, and when we arrived, that was the first thing we saw. Connor was super excited about climbing it.
That's my kid, kicking that tower's ass!!!
What’s amazing about this, is that there was a live rock band performing on stage, about a hundred yards away. Talk about sensory overload!
He climbed and he climbed, and I cheered and I cheered. At almost the very top, he got scared and called down that he couldn’t do it.
“YES YOU CAN!!!! YOU’RE ALMOST THERE, YOU’RE AWWWWWESOME, YOU CAN DO IT!!!!”
Every molecule of my being was focused on him, urging him to the top, straining to push him up the last steps with the sheer force of my thoughts. I was sure I was going to stroke out.
He let go briefly and dangled, but then caught hold of the rope ladder in the middle, and finished the climb. Standing on the platform at the top, he called down, “I can see EVERYTHING from up here!”
And Oh. My. Gawd. did I cry like a baby. I was so goddamn proud, I thought I would bust open like a pinata.
It wasn’t just the tower.
It was the four months of daily desensitization it took to transition him from a bottle to a sippy cup. It was working slowly up to table food at the age of two. It was occupational therapy, and ABA therapy, and finally being potty trained at the age of four, and floor time therapy, and medication changes, and aggression management and social skills therapy.
It was a metaphor for every fucking mountain we’ve climbed, or, more appropriately, that I’ve had to drag him up kicking and screaming.
And it was hope for every other mountain that we still have to climb. Because we don’t always have a lot of that, do we? When we’re up to our elbows in shit, and we haven’t slept a full night in longer than we can remember, and we work ten times as hard for half the payoff, and we think “I don’t know how I’m ever going to get through this, it’s just too much.”
It was a good day; a day I will pull off the shelf and dust off, from time to time, when the going gets tough and the mountain too steep.
He needed this.
I needed this.
And I needed a vodkatini, after the $87 we spent on this outing.
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