Willie is HOME: Raising A Son With Special Needs

I wanted to write about Willie last night so badly. He just got home for his 6 week Summer Vacation.

I wanted to explain the meaning and heaviness of 5 years worth of his stuff on our Guest Bed. I wanted to talk about the horror of going to Bamboo, our Do-It-Yourself Yogurt Shop. I needed to write about how happy he was when he arrived home for Summer Vacation with no siblings home. I had to share the joy and beauty of his last Ceremony at The Camphill Special School. I needed to explain that the reason Willie bites his nails so brutally is because he just likes them smooth; no sharp edges allowed. (He finally told this to me after 21 years of constant biting.)

But Willie was on the Computer. Yes, we had just given him his first Macintosh laptop computer of his very own. (Not loud enough, he now tells me, for his YouTube surfing.) Sure there was an iPad around. But NO, Willie was on THIS computer with THIS keyboard where I write THIS BLOG and he WASN'T budging.

And things were already so tense and tricky that he wasn't moving and I certainly wasn't asking him to move. So as I was bursting to blog about Willie, I was frozen off the computer by him. The very episode at that yogurt store that I yearned to speak of was stuck in my head. It haunted me, paralyzed me, and kept me from doing anything at all for several hours until I went to sleep.

But today is better. Willie has processed the Yogurt incident and put it behind him. I was dramatically reminded to pick my battles very, very carefully.  (Yogurt is not worth it, ever!) Willie is definitely home and now the computer IS free.