When you read today’s quote on the Chalkboard you will either recognize it or Google it because it sounded familiar. I never really listened to the words until my daughter Hazel was born.
The first line is “Rows and flows of angel hair, and ice cream castles in the air.” I would grab a blanket and put it out on the grass the first spring that Hazel and I spent together. We’d lay there and look at the sky. She’d put her head on dada’s biwg bewly and look at clouds for the first time.
The memories of seeing spring and eventually summer through her new eyes made me fall in love with her deeply. From then on I heard that Joni Mitchell song differently.
As the whales and kitty cats slowly formed across the western suburb skies I realized how beautiful time can be. Hazel probably doesn’t remember when she was ten months old feeling her first spring turn into summer, but I do.
Sure I laid on a blanket with Fritz and George, but they didn’t see how the world was forming around them. They wanted to put grass in my shirt and poke me with twigs.
George walked by the Christmas tree yesterday and pointed out how horrible I placed the lights, but that’s how his mind sees things on the Autistic Spectrum.
Fritz walked by our tree and said that it seems smaller this year. I looked at him standing next to it and realized this is the last Christmas our tree will be taller than my redheaded boy.
Hazel looked at the tree and marveled in the glow of the lights. “Oh Daddy, the star looks like we pulled it down from the sky.” She had a memory for almost every ornament she placed on the tree. What could have taken fifteen minutes took almost an hour as my baby girl reminisced.
Each Shepkid saw the Christmas tree differently. They see cloud’s differently and snow and trees through their beautiful blue eyes.
Last night when Hazel and Fritz got in the car they both stopped for a moment.
“What did you forget? Come on I gotta get you to your mother!”
They didn’t forget anything. They stopped to look at the moon hanging over the western suburbs. At that moment I fell more deeply in love with my redheads.
…. Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels!
