Journal Excerpts - Week 4.2

I have been attempting to write about my final week with Blake for over a week now but my rehearsal schedule has kept me quite busy and/or exhausted. This is the best kind of exhaustion though, when you come out of rehearsal feeling like you’ve had an incredible work out. You’re finding abundant delight in the creative work that God began at the start of It all and boy, It Is Good. But that’s not what you’re here for. You’re here for week 4.2. so I’m allowing my fingers to finally type out the last of my time with Blake.

Monday, I woke up with the feeling that my throat might be caving in on my spine and I could barely talk, so I called in and whispered that I may come in at 11:30… or not. After sleeping in another two hours and enjoying a bowl of oatmeal and a mug of green tea with honey, I decided to go on in. When I walked in the room Blake looked at me like “Oh there you are, I thought I had gotten rid of you.” I smiled and told him to put his shoes away.

We had P.E. on both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and have been learning to play kickball. Blake is pretty good in the outfield. By good, of course I mean stands there watching the ball roll right by his feet and yells high pitched unintelligible phrases into the echoing chaos that is an elementary school gymnasium. Wednesday, I decided, was the day Blake would become the best deaf/autistic/kick-ball-playing/child in the whole school… if not the county. We waited in line on the boy’s bench for our turn. I rubbed his arm when he got antsy. He calmed down and would smell my elbow (something about that scent he enjoyed… I can’t get my elbow up to my nose to figure it out… ha ha, I see you, you’re trying to smell your elbow too. You can’t do it can you?). Finally, the moment arrived. Mrs. Coach told the pitcher to roll it slowly for him.

Rolling, rolling, rooooooolling. Kick. rrrrrrroooooooolllllllliiiiiiiinnnnng.

He missed.

We tried again. Slower.

Rolllllling, rooooolllllliiing, rrrrrrooooolllllliiiiiinnnnng. Kiccck. Rooolllliiiiiing ssttiillll roooolllliinggggggg

Finally I said to the overly anxious and dramatic catcher girl “why don’t we just put it in front of him and let him kick?” She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and put the green ball in front of the ever-pendulating foot and backed away.

WHAM.

There it goes. And there goes Blake, chasing the ball. I grab his arm and make the sign for run (which is difficult because it requires two hands but I need to keep him with me with one of them). I point to first base. “Please Blake” I’m thinking, “just run to that one.” We make it to first base where I have to hold him still until the next kicker punts the ball. The kids are nice to him. They don’t tag him out and he makes it back to home. Even though I know the kids are being nice, I am still very proud. And excited. And extactic. And jumping up and down and throwing high fives. And much much much more smiley than Blake is. He touches home base and then looks around like “what uselessness will she indulge me in next?” On his way back to the bench, Blake unintentionally gets hit in the head with the ball and starts’ making the most pitiful crying sounds. I hold his head to me and he hugs me the best he knows how. We put his shoes on and walk back to room 7 with our arms around each other while he makes crying sounds or smells my elbow. It was a good day. I was proud.

Pride comes before the fall. Blake was very restless on Thursday. By 10:00 he was ready to go swing. The other teachers said to go ahead and take him, so we went outside for about half an hour. Now, generally we go outside at 11:30ish, come back in at 12 and that’s his lunch time. So when we were back inside at 10:30 he was ready to head to the cafeteria. I knew exactly where he was going when he started for the door but I signed “where are you going?” to make him practice telling me what he wants or where he wants to go. He signs “Lunch” with a right handed “L” to his chin.

Oh boy.

I suppose Blake doesn’t have much of a concept of time, so explaining to him why it’s not time for lunch yet doesn’t do much good. After having him clean up what he has thrown on the floor I get him mostly contained in a chair in the middle of the room away from any object besides himself and myself. I tell him I’m going to get his pack of crackers and he needs to stay right where he is. My eye is on him the whole time. I’m walking to the refrigerator, watching him, reaching on top to get the crackers, watching him, walking back to the chair, watching him, almost to the chair, watching him leap up and throw a huge file of papers and markers and glue all over the floor. I watched myself grab his arm and S T A R E him in the eye. Ten minutes later after he had put it all back by himself I sat him back in the chair and gave him his crackers one at a time.

My favorite part of Friday and this week and maybe this whole experience was P.E. The second graders with whom he usually goes to P.E. had gone on a field trip of which we were unaware. We walked into the empty gym and I racked my brain of how to keep him from throwing a tantrum over the fact that there was no one in the gym when I had told him there would be. We sat out on the bench in the hall. I think he was waiting for the other kids to show up. He sat there and took his shoes off. Then he lay down on the floor for about 10 minutes. I tried to keep him close to the bench so he wouldn’t get stepped on. I finally had an idea. I lugged him up and through the gymnasium doors to the back corner where the big green ball was. By big, I mean one of those huge exercise balls for giants. He bounced on it for a while as I watched. Then, in between bounces, I snatched the ball out from under him and started rolling it towards the other side of the gym. He started chasing me. Anytime he got near it I would kick it in another direction.

I have never heard him laugh like that.

Back and forth we ran, giggling and panting and making funny faces. Sometimes I would let him take it from me and he would bounce his back on it. I would sign “MY BALL!!!!” and make BIG eyes at him. He giggles. I snatch the ball and shoot it to the other side of the gym. This went on for probably half an hour before we were exhausted and sitting on the mats on the floor. I don’t think he threw anything the rest of the day. He didn’t have the energy left to do it.

The next Monday was my very last day with Blake. There was no way to make him understand that. We walked down to the water and jumped on the benches and threw prickly things down the current. They bobbed and floated down the stream and were gone. We stood there left only briefly with an image in our minds of them and soon that too was gone. I tried to tell him “I am leaving today. Tomorrow I will not be here.” He either didn’t understand or had no emotional connection to it. I tried to give him my angry eyes on the playground when he took his shoes off but what would be the use of that today? He knows he’s supposed to leave his shoes on. He knows it makes me sad when he does that. He knows he’ll have to walk miserably barefooted to get his shoes. He just does it anyway and I’ll never understand why.

Blake was more clingy than usual today. He held onto my arm almost constantly in the hallways.

In art we made collages on white paper with National Geographic. Rather than flipping through all the pages and finding the pictures he liked best, Blake tore out the 2^nd page and cut it into strips and triangles and rectangles then glued (with a LOT of glue) each piece to his paper. They overlapped and some pieces hung over the edge and a couple went on the back. I tried to get him to look at some other pages but he just cut the one page up. When he was finished, he was finished. He tried to throw his collage away on his way out but I made him keep it and we walked back, him pulling on my arm.

That afternoon we walked to the bus and I stepped up the stairs behind him and made sure he was sitting in his seat. I waved goodbye and he waved goodbye and I waved goodbye and he waved goodbye and I waved goodbye and he started playing with his beads. He slapped them on his shoulder over and over and over again and I watched as the bus took a right out of the parking lot. Beads slapping.

And then...

The End