In the Fall, the Birds Come

In the Fall, the Birds Come

 

The coldest morning so far this Fall greets me, and I answer back with smoky breath coming from my hooded head.  Fingers stiff in the leather gloves frozen in the shape of clenched hands.  Trees stoic and creaking, a slow ratcheting in the wind. 

The 3 dogs follow me closely waiting to see which path we will take to the barns.  We go the middle route,  through the fenced garden, still hairy and unkempt from August’s heated and aggressive growth.  It is a monument to the struggle to keep up, this farmer slowing in the heat and the weeds seemingly sprinting ahead and lapping me.  The frost evens the race, both weeds and farmer slow.

the barn "door"

We turn the corner and see the 8 barn doors latched closed, hear the ducks complaining, demanding to be released.  Pushing the low loose cinderblock into the barn, our liability turned door, the chickens and ducks pour out as if in a pressurized system.   The ducks quack happily looking for puddles, or bugs, or both.  The chickens mill about, curious and blinking in the daylight.

I open the top toors of the chicken barn only to close them again after seeing the shifting wind battering the wood.  It  is then that the wind squawks and flaps a rhythmic beating.  Above, a wave of birds ebb and flow, swirling, climbing and falling; the sky eddies made visible.  Thousands of starlings overhead charge South blocking daylight and casting an eerie shadow.

At once, my Son’s Fall art project from 10 years prior flutters to memory.  It says at the top:  “In the Fall______.”  My son writes “the birds come.”  I see it in indents and broken erased lines.  Written over his erased work is the teacher’s handwriting, “The leaves fall.”  This one memory, still wounding.  He always sees things differently.  He was right.  In the Fall, the birds come.

I fight regret, casting it aside as unproductive, but my heart aches from the scrape.  That battered part of me unsettled; the years of fighting for my son, the years of being treated as if I wanted him to be different, the doubts that always surfaced.  Am I a good parent?  Do I love my child enough?  Why can’t I fix this?  Please God, help me fix him.  Over and over this mantra resounded.

My son is different.  School, and grades, and expectations that he could not meet (ours included) almost kept him in the pit of depression.  It laid us low too.  As we tried to pull him out of that pit, we’d get suck there as well.  Worse yet, trying to escape the pit in our angered struggle, we would lash out at the one clinging to our legs trying deliberately, it seemed, to pull us back down.

By age 9, our insightful, quiet, and exceptionally introverted boy was repeatedly telling us, “I hate myself.  I hate my life.”  He started to fixate on dying asking me repeatedly whether he could live with God if he killed himself.  I always assured him that God is merciful and would love him no matter what, but that I felt strongly that God wanted him to stay here with us.  

One cold Winter’s day, he locked himself in our minivan announcing that he would freeze himself so that he could die.  The pit so deep, and I completely unprepared for this small boy’s spiraling despair, I called the doctor.

Our pediatrician prescribes Prozac.  I cried angry tears.  How could I put my 9 year old on Prozac?  How could I not?  My own pit whispered “Bad mother” over and over so softly and steadily, another heartbeat, my self doubt alive.  The shadow of that time still so present, but I shake myself back to farm work.

The birds, their dark cloud once enveloping, lighted in the near orchard.  Their language happy and flitting. Urgency gone for only seconds, they leave in a whoosh as quickly as they descended.  The only evidence of their arrival and departure are these words.

I stand in awe, wiping away a tear and give thanks to the God of bright clouds, and bird clouds.  I thank Him that today, my son lives well and I don’t wonder at how I can fix him.  That deep pit he lived in is being remade.  Fluffy pillows of self-confidence raise him up enough so that he, himself can climb out.  We cheer him on!

It took 6 years of fighting, 2 years of homeschooling, and 1 diagnosis of Autism to get here.

Where is here?

 

Here is a place of thankfulness for every place we went and for every place we are going.  Here is a place where “Bad Mother” has been erased and overwritten by faithful mother, thankful mother, hopeful mother.  My son is different, there is no doubt.  Now, I am fortunate to be that mother that wants him to be so.

 Note:  My son no longer takes Prozac but is on Zoloft.  According to our doctor, Prozac is a stimulant and many people on the autism spectrum have mood swings when given a stimulant.  We definitely experienced mood swings, but now are sailing at a much more even keel.