An Accolade For Isaac

Firstly, I would like to point out my appearance at the moment, you know, keeping it personal and…stuff.

Anyway, it’s come the time to salute my dear son, Isaac in his turning five and in his being amazing and in his extreme cuteness that I will never, ever ,ever get enough of.

Isaac is one of those things that you never had planned on, but it turned out saving you.  The little gaffer had burrowed his little zygote self into my uterus at an extremely inappropriate time.  You see, Silas was only 9 months old.  I hadn’t yet gotten over the horrors of what was Silas’ delivery and,  since it WAS so horrific, I’d only been 6 months physically healed from it.  I was looking forward to stopping nursing and all the fun things that come along with it.  Like not sleeping in a lake of my own mammary juice and drinking alcohol – in larger quantities.

Yet his little zygote grew into an embryo and the embryo to a fetus and soon the spawn sprung forth from my loins and we were four.  It had been a hard time in our lives.  MANY things had gone wrong that year and it all seemed to begin with me looking at the faint plus sign on that stick.  But I knew I would love him and I knew he would be special and despite my, well lets be honest, extreme bitterness towards the situation.  I welcomed him into the world with tears and kisses.

I’m one of those mothers who runs only upon natural instinct for the first month.  I am saturated with nasty hormones at the time and I simply don’t love anything, nothing at all, not even puppies.  I do kiss my children and love on them and do all my motherly duties, but I am just so anxious and wiggity wack.  So it took me a while, but when the slurry of hormones dissipated, I saw my son through clear eyes and I was, indeed, madly in love.

I know, now, that if my dear Isaac wasn’t brought into the world the exact way he was, I would indeed be lost.  We were planning on having a another child around the time Silas had turned three.  And if we were ever very good at planning, and had stuck to it, we would still only have one child.  Right before Silas’ third birthday came, we found out that he had autism and from then on I have deemed my genes unfit for reproduction and my self extremely irresponsible as a person if I were to be bringing more children into this.

Isaac is my prince, he is my knight in shinning armor.  I am madly in love with him.  No more and no less than Silas, but without Isaac, I wouldn’t have known the deep connectedness a mother and son can have.  Silas does express his love but, because of the autism, doesn’t seem able to carry out the same depth of connectedness, the relational side, the one we are working on teaching him because every human needs it.

I think back to times where all I could do was run upstairs with Isaac in my arms and shut the door behind us, holding the door shut with my body as Silas screamed on the other side and as Isaac and I held each other and wept.  I felt so bad for my darling, I wouldn’t have wanted a young one to go through this type of ordeal…ever.  But we had no choice and I did my best to make him feel like he was wholly loved.

As much as I was there for Isaac, he seemed there for me too.  I remember bawling, feeling like the worst loser of a mother ever.  Isaac was hardly talking at the time but he took my face in his hands, looked deeply into my eyes and said “s’okay….s’okay”.  I’ll never remember that moment.

This boy has grown and grown and grown and things have gotten much easier around the home.  As I’ve gotten to know how to better parent him, and since taking that course that gave me that extra push, our relationship has gotten even deeper. He is light and joy and love and happiness.  I was doing it a bit wrong, you see, he needs patience and gentleness far more than scolding and expressions of annoyance.  He, in fact, gets worse if I am impatient with him.  I’m sure that goes with a lot of children, but the change in him has been rather dramatic.  There is so much peace.

He’s so wonderful, I cannot even express it.  I feel as though I learn from him, he is a better person than I am.  He’s the one who tells me when we are out of milk or will be walking behind me out the door with the purse I forgot to bring along with me.  He is very romantic with me, he has made me feel more loved these past few months than I think I’ve ever felt in my life.  Perhaps it’s because the amount that I feel for him is incredibly intense, like any healthy mother should feel.

I dunno where I would be without my Ikey.  I feel as though my life would be darker.  It would be 100000 times easier to parent Silas through his darkest times if it were only him and I.  My heart wouldn’t be so broken if I hadn’t seen the horrible things that had happened to Isaac at times, and my guilt wouldn’t be so strong.  But I wouldn’t have had someone with me through all that, someone to tell me it’s all okay, someone who brought me peace.  I would have been more convinced that my husband and I weren’t compatible for making typical children and that we, for sure, shouldn’t chance combining our genes again.  We’d, most likely, be a one-child family.

I guess I cannot owe it to Isaac for coming into existence.  I can owe that to too much wine and a misunderstanding of what day it was on the calendar.  But I owe it to him for being my angel, for being so lovely, for feeling so deeply, for loving so fully, for being so sweet, for being so cute.  My heart is absolutely brimming with fullness and love and I owe a lot of that to him.

Happy 5th birthday Isaac.  You are amazing.  You little bike riding, car drawing, Lego building, stuffed puppy snuggling, burp forcing, angry bird playing bundle of sunshine and goodness.  He who bring his hockey stick to the bathroom just in case there’s a monster in there that he needs to beat down.  The boy who is deeply saddened if he happens upon a dead bug, who sleeps with a soft, pink blanky every night.  The child who sings so loud at preschool that he turns red in the face and loves his preschool because he gets to dance.  You’re amazing at sports, you have a killer throw, you rode your two-wheel bike before all the older kids in the neighbourhood.  You’re amazing, now stop growing up!!

The day of his birthday was his day, so first he wanted to ride his bike.  We do have a nicer bike for him but he only wants this one and he rides it too well.  He looks too small to be popping wheelies!

He spotted this bobcat in the mall parking lot and my sister, Jennie, was able to find the man in charge of it so Ikey could sit there 🙂

He biked all the way around a lake, not without a little rest on Auntie Jennie though.

Before picking up Silas from school, we snuck to Dairy Queen (a peanut allergy nightmare so we, as a family, never get to go) and the lady at the counter gave him sprinkles because it was his birthday 🙂  Look at his eyes, they’re too much.

And a baby photo just to solidify the cuteness