Last week was like the time my sister
and I caught a taxi from somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula to Eilat in Israel. With
rocky desert wastes as his backdrop, the driver kept turning around and
grinning at us, his eyes quite wild with euphoric hysteria. This was
terrifying. Mostly because leering at the backseat caused him to swerve into
oncoming traffic, and also because he had very few teeth. We thought we were
going to die. But afterwards we were rather glad we’d taken the ride because
the rush was unbelievable and we learned a bunch of things and there were
stories to tell.
Like I said, last week felt kind of like
that.
Death
The part where I thought I was going to die
was somewhere in the middle of the week, in the middle of the night, in the middle
of too many episodes of toddler diarrhoea.
Adrenalin
The rush came from somehow still doing
life and playing grownup-grownup amidst the poo and sleeplessness. A
conference. A dinner party. A charity walk. The rush also came from playing
kid-kid, like cardboard-skiing down a grass slope at a four-year-old’s party
(Ben, you rock!) and eating two massive chocolate croissants. In a row.
Learning
I met some people and learned some more about
the exhilarating independence technology gives to blind and VI people. The kind
of independence that lets you catch taxis across the Sinai. So much software. So
much hope. I learned some more about the astounding heightening of Cam’s other
senses – God’s glorious wiring of the compensating brain. Like, sometimes he
smells people (and Lola) before he sees them. And, riding his bike on Sunday
and yakking enthusiastically to Murray all the way, he stopped beneath a thorn
tree. To listen. Flap flap. A kite caught in the highest branches.
I learned that being a digital immigrant
has its challenges when you’re mom to two digital natives. Scott wails ‘iPad!’
with the same tired-hungry angst he uses to moan for ‘Juice!’, ‘Mama!’, ‘Dad!’,
‘Hat!’ (oh, how he loves his hat) or ‘Raaf!’ (his gi-raaf blankie). Plus, how do you explain to a twenty-two month old
that he cannot change channels by swiping his finger across the TV screen?
I also learned that not only can All
Gold tomato sauce be considered a vegetable, but like a good pair of jeans, it
goes with anything. Scott dipped his cornflakes, one by one, in the hallowed red
elixir, and Cam squirted a splodge atop his jelly for pudding.
Peter and Kathi Tarantal spent an
evening with our cell group. They reminded us not to let good things get in the
way of the best things. And to praise
character decisions more than achievements.
And to keep life simple. And not to
pretend we’ve got it all together. Wow. Lessons for the desert.
Stories
Taxi-in-the-desert weeks do produce
fabulous stories. Scott did his first amateurish sprinklings of wee-wee in (well,
near) the potty at bath time. I was elated. We shared what can only be
described as a Jabberwocky moment. As in, ‘Come
to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day!
Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy…’ He’s into kissing at the moment. He totally loves his
sandals – refuses any other footwear – and when I put them on the other day he
said ‘Yay!’, bent his foot up to his mouth (as nubile toddlers are wont to do)
and kissed a little Velcro strap. He tried to kiss Cam this morning. It was kind
of alarming. More like mouth-to-mouth.
Taxi-in-the-desert weeks even birth tender,
quiet stories, like how Cam was back to his soft-sweet-self. He found it
side-splittingly hilarious to pretend to take out Murray’s imaginary contact
lenses at bedtime and giggle and mutter ‘Ah flip!’ He turned anything climbable
into a fantastical world of high diving boards and deep pools. He was gentle
and super-happy to jabber to himself even when other kids didn’t get it or didn’t
include him, and he’s teaching his mom to be happy with that, too.
For
I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I
will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry
wasteland. – Isaiah 43:19
