Driving around from place to place has taken a central role in my life in the last few years. I don’t remember when I turned into the main driver for our family members, but realizing I will not be able to quit this in the foreseeable future turned these endless drives to be my regular place of thought on any possible subject. Since my daughter were born, I had the tendency to wrap them in this big safety net. Even today, when realizing this is not necessarily the right thing to do, I feel it is extremely hard for me to allow them to fall and stand back up on their feet on their own. Since their special brother was born, I had wanted to compensate them for coping with our complex family experience. My thoughts usually turn around to the million dollar questions: what will happen with them in the future? What will they choose to do? Who will be their partners? Where will they live? Will they manage to live a good, independent life with such a complex past?….
And then one morning, while I was driving, I got a message (I promise I pulled to the side to read it): “Mom, this is what we had today in school”. It was a Whatsapp message from my younger daughter. She attached to the message a short video of a basketball game in the school’s gym. The game was played by basketball players together with players on wheelchairs, and the school’s students were sitting in the crowd and cheering both teams. Even without being there, I could feel the positive energies of the players and spectators. I was so happy for her and for this moving experience. I could see at this moment how she is able to picture to herself her brother fitting into such an activity. Maybe she even believes that amongst this large crowd that surrounds her, there will be someone who will take care of him and accept him as he is. The daily situations she sometimes witnesses, in which a student with a difference or difficulty is socially outcast, hurt her and worry her.
A few evenings after that, my soldier girl updated me that “the commander asked for volunteers to lead an educational activity. The theme is free to choose and I want to explain what is autism.” I admit I was surprised. It was the first time I saw her need to explain her brother and his friends to the world, and I understood what significance this holds for her. After she was recruited to the army, the bond between her and her brother tightened even more. During basic training she found it hard to be without him and she used every chance to see him and hear his voice. He asked about her a few times a day. It was clear to me he misses her just as much. I was so proud!
That week of messages was a special week. I felt that my internal system of worries, going for me 24 hours a day, slowed down a notch. The need to ponder the existential questions has decreased, as if I took a sedative. The message I got from school could have been on any matter that could possibly have been more suitable to her young age, maybe on a more superficial topic. And the subject that was chosen during basic training could easily have been some item from the news, and she could as easily have chosen not to volunteer and to get additional rest as did most other girls in her group. I feel that something in their growing up process was pushed up compared to other kids. Something from their childish naivete was taken from them and I cannot be but sorry for that. The expectation from them, as little girls, to give up and live with the chaos in the house was not reasonable in my mind, and this led them to give up on quite a few things. In most cases we could not change the situation and that’s why, as hard as it was for us to meet the challenges thrown at us by the little man, challenges we faced alone, it was much harder to see them, on the side, needing us and we not being able to be there for them.
Each one of them, uniquely and without coordination, made it clear to me that my worries about their future seem to be ungrounded. Their ability to use the difficulties as a momentum for growth inspired me. It’s as if they were equipped with an additional portion of strength, as if someone knew their lives will not be easy and applied some kind of insurance to them. This optimism that safeguards me is fed to a great extent from them, and I have no doubt that whoever will be with them will win big time.
