Sweating the details

Before the sun warms the red rocks in our canyon, the temps are stuck at twenty two degrees.  A glance south, towards Crystal Park, reveals the snow dusting the dark side of the canyon, but the clear blue backdrop means that the temps will rise.

On the bike an hour later and I’m thinking about my son Johann.  Our annual Individual Educational Plan meeting is tomorrow and, as a I ride, I let the conversations Janet and I have been having bubble up.  For some reason, the movement and external stimuli on the bike have a freeing effect; sweat, breath, toxins, thoughts float up and out and into the cold, dry air.  Soon the clutter of the road, buildings and signs, cars and people, fall back and I’m heading into the high plain country east of Colorado Springs.

Brown and dead grass, rolling hills stretching out with no trees, the wind’s desiccating effect empties my soul of detail. 

What was it Janet said?  my son is on a continuum, moving from mere presence, to tolerance, to pity, to acceptance.  Where is he now?  That is the question for the group tomorrow.

Maybe because it’s cold and I have leggings and a coat on, I’m removed from the immediacy of the climb to Curtis Road from Highway 94.  I move back and forth on the bars, feel the wind on the right side of the tights, soaking through the seams, but it doesn’t seem so real.

What future does my son have?  I think about this and notice the top of the climb is past already.  When Johann was born and the lab in Madison later identified the Down’s syndrome that had distorted one of his chromosomes, I grieved.  A while later I wondered what it was that made the tears flow and I realized that I was grieving for any number of lost futures that would no longer be possible for him. 

The road turns south and the rolling ground is a carpet running all of the way to the foothills.  The granite above the tree line is dusted with snow.  The wind is on my face, but I’m still numb to it.

My insight thirteen years ago, sitting in a hospital in Dubuque, was that my father grieved as well for me.  The test results had simply accelerated the process.  Instead of grieving for my lost future as a basketball player or a manager in the same factory he worked at, when I was much older, I was suddenly in the position of knowing my son would never be a doctor only a week into his life.

Or so I thought thirteen years ago.  What is possible?  And what is it we all need?  Now forty six instead of thirty three, I understand my identity is not my job.  What is necessary is to belong and that is what erases the tears.

I smile as Curtis Road rounds into Powers and there’s a tailwind as I roll north.  Everyone needs a tailwind once in a while.