Doing the things my Mother asks me not to do.

Riding her bike down a caleche road with her shoes untied even though her mom told her not to.

Telling her parents she was going to her friends house when really she was going to spend her nightish hours with some boy that always told her she was beautiful.

Running after her true love even when the world tells her to slow down and wait and think and ponder and calculate.

Giving when she has nothing to give.

She is the one that stays up late on the phone with dying people when she needs sleep more than anyone else one earth.

She's the one riding down the caleche road when her mother told her not to.

For Sydney

"The mountains were listening to us sing to God. They were trying to peek in."

Her mind is jumbled...always.

She has a short pug nose and her hair is red and stringy and her fingers are stiff and stick out of her hands as if they have been broken before…all of them.

Others always stare. They don’t point with their fingers because they know that kind of action is not socially acceptable anymore but they point with the fingers in their minds and that’s worse I think. But she doesn’t think about that.

She doesn’t see them because she has no comprehension of what socially awkward means and she doesn’t hear them because there is a continual ballad of random thought and verse coursing through her brain like rain water through a ditch and crashing on stones. Smashing her barely coherent thoughts into tiny bits that are never to be recovered. Pieces that we take for granted everyday. Pieces that we store in the file cabinets in the back of our minds so that we can get ready for the next wave of memories and dreams to bombard us.

But for her…she can’t.

She is forced to live in the now…forced? Allowed to.

She is a dweller of the present in the most literal of terms. Her mind has nowhere else to go and further more it has no idea that there are even other places to visit.

And because of all this…because of all of this so called “disability”…we think that she is the lost cause and that she is the one who we will just have to put up with and that she is the crazy one who we should shower with pity. But it’s really us that need the pity.

How depraved are we.

She’s the one living in the moment and she’s the one who listens to the music too loudly and dances to a beat that no one else can hear and she’s the one who finds joy in running through the grass and she’s the one who wants to be social…even if it is to a fault in our eyes.

But you know what? I’m past worrying about the stares and her awkward fingers and her unbelievably abrasive personality because to be honest with you…and when I say honest I mean honest…she lives in grace more deeply than any of us can fathom. Trust me, we just can’t get there.

And please don’t argue or attempt to debate because I can’t remember the last time any of my capable, able-bodied friends ever uttered the words, “The Mountains were listening to us sing to God. They were trying to peek in.”

Through a door & down the stairs & under the awning.

The bag was filled to the brim & the zipper tines held on for dear life as they held in hiking boots & scarves and shirts with holes in them and jeans that had patches in places where you would not normally find patches.

He placed the big bulky oversized bag by the door in the nook of the entry way & stepped back & sat neatly in the wicker chair that his father had made for him when he was ten saying, "one day you'll sit in this and think of me." And he did, every time. Especially this time.

Her car would pull up in thirteen minutes & then he would have to either walk through that door & down those stairs & under that awning & into her car so that he could travel the 3.8 miles to the airport that would take him to a place he had never been to live with people that he had never met or...he would just...sit. He would just sit & stare at the bag that represented his life here on this earth.

He stared at the bag & thought of his dad & wondered what he would do but he didn't know what he would do. So he just sat there & remembered building tree forts & digging through the gardens in the back yard & then he realized that he was all grown up & that the dirt from under his finger nails was gone & that so was dad & mom & the childish things of that before time.

Her car pulled up & he grabbed his bag & walked out that door & down those stairs & under that awning & he got into her car. It was time to go.