sixty

Despite the fact that nineteen and a half years of stress, sleep deprivation, and frustration from raising Calvin has likely shaved a few years off of my life, in my mind, spirit, and most parts of my body I still feel thirty-six. Regardless, I woke up this morning entering my sixtieth year of life, and though the wee hours of my birthday began with a restless Calvin suffering from some sort of pain, from my perspective—one in which I try to practice gratitude, even for the mundane—life still looks decently rosy.

That fact is a testament that we humans are resilient as shit, most of us able to handle the nasty curveballs hurled our way at different times in our life. I don't believe in the notion that everything happens for a reason and/or that God doesn't give us more than we can handle (I don't believe in that kind of god, anyway) because I have seen pain and anguish push people I love over the brink. However, I do believe there is a lot of good most of us can glean from bad things that happen to us. We can find the generous pluses, for instance, amid the scores of miserable minuses that a disabled child brings in the form of loss, guilt, despair, anger, resentment, heartache, suffering, pain, sorrow, hopelessness, envy, frustration, doubt. My sweet Calvin has brought me joy, love, patience, empathy and the rare chance to witness a life that, if it weren't for his physical pain, is as close to nirvana as any human might hope to get.

I have learned from Calvin how trivial material desires can be, how petty some quarrels are, and I am getting better at understanding how little it matters that he can't run on a cross-country team, can't speak two languages—much less one—can't excel in math and science, can't work a computer, can't even trick-or-treat. Daily, I hear stories of children—and their parents—who deal with seizures or hunger or pain or disease far more heinous than Calvin's circumstance. And I feel so grateful that Calvin is simply warm and dry and safe and mostly happy and living with a forever-evolving sixty-year-old mom who feels twenty-plus years younger, and still feels up to taking on the world.