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Jude is excited as we move along the sidewalk, towards the underpass and the lakefront. I am glad we live near the lake. Trails and trees, beaches and sailboats right there whenever we want them. It’s a blessing.
I have been counting the blessings lately, cataloging them, sorting through them and admiring them like favorites in a rock collection. Any little joy is a reason to stop and focus. Mindfulness, my friend calls it. I am mindful.
We were cautiously thrilled when Jude started getting better. Migraines, the swelling, the vomiting, it all seemed to vanish into thin air. I told my friends I was scared to feel hopeful, but I was almost ready to let myself feel just the teeniest bit hopeful.
We just had one more doctors appointment, to try and figure out why Jude was limping.
I push the wheelchair up over the sidewalk and on to the walking path. Jude is in awe of the bridge that goes over it, and we wheel beneath it. It is dank and smelly and we can hear water dripping. ”It’s beautiful,” he says, in a hushed voice. I stand very still and try to see what he sees. After a while I push the wheelchair towards the lake.
Our favorite spot is right above the dog beach. We park at the top of the cement wall that runs along it and watch the dogs and the kids and the sailboats and the waves. Jude used to run up and down this beach, so fast I couldn’t catch him. I used to live in terror that he would get away from me, and sometimes he did. He used to be so fast.
I watch a father trying to teach his son to ride a bike, and I can see he is frustrated at his son’s lack of coordination. I stop watching.
Jude talks to me in his backwards haiku speak about the waves, the dogs, the sky. We look at the clouds. I watch the kids running with their parents, and feel a fleeting twinge of jealousy. Jude makes some flapping movements with his hands and I recognize that movement as happiness on its way out of his body, and it occurs to me that I have moments and joys and sweetness those parents could never dream of, things they have no idea they are missing.
I push Jude back along the path towards home, smelling smoke from fireplaces and crunching through leaves. When we get home he and his dad and his brothers and I will stay close to one another, as we have been doing the last few weeks. Jude, and pain, and life has taught us that each moment, each comfort, each joy is precious, a perfection and an answer in itself.
I could have gone a lifetime without ever knowing the exquisite awe of a bubble, or a leaf, or a speck of dust sparkling and writhing in the sun.
My teacher, my guru, my son, waves his hands at the sky as we roll down the sidewalk, almost home. Soon it will be winter, and I am not sure how well the wheelchair will work when the ground is wet and slushy. I am almost content with not knowing, because I have a feeling we will know what to do when the snow begins to fall.
