I wondered if I had failed. Were we not interesting? Had we not made them feel welcome enough? Was our relationship losing steam?

 

Then I caught myself. When we began this idea I gave a flowery speech to beginning mentors about how one meeting by itself may feel incomplete. Plain. Like a single quilt block. But when you put them together they create something that keeps you warm. I remembered that now and it slowed the runaway train of self flagellation. 

 

I say it, and on some level I believe it. But I still see doubts coming through the cracks. 

 

The other day I took Benjamin to a basketball clinic for special needs kids. I did not ask him first. How could he choose when he has never to my knowledge dribbled a ball? I took him and he willingly followed one of the many "normal" kids who were there helping. He tried to listen. The teacher asked the helpers to stoop down, so she could see how they were dispersed in amongst the disabled ones. Ben stooped too. I have often called him a good helper. Later she wanted the balls to be still so she could be heard and asked everyone who had a ball to put it between their legs. Benjamin carefully balanced his between his knees, unable to spare any concentration on listening while he kept that ball in place. Eventually one of the assistants explained that it could rest on the floor between his feet.

 

The teacher wanted to sprinkle brief spurts of social skills between hoop time, and invited every kid to say their name and where they like to go on vacation. Early on a child named the beach. The majority of kids following said the beach too, maybe because they really like it or maybe because that's what autistic kids do.

 

I felt a pang of guilt. Benjamin has only been to the beach a couple of times in his fifteen years. He has had a boring life. What will he say? This past spring break the only splurging we did was to have seconds on ice cream. 

 

When she got to him I wondered how he would answer. Vacation? What's that?

 

"Florida." Well, yes we did go there once back in 2009. "And California." He remembered! We went for Lukas' wedding in 2011, though we never touched sand. She thanked him and tried to move on but he kept going. "New Jersey." That was at least four years ago, and it was a great week. "Chicago." he was counting on his fingers now, and she tried to listen, knowing the attention span of twenty kids of various diagnoses is minimal. "Jacob's Creek, and Laurel." He tacked on the two church camps we have been to, while the teacher was trying to coax a response from a girl in a wheel chair. 

 

I smiled. Maybe his life isn't so mundane after all. Apparently he didn't think so. Perhaps in another decade when someone asks our mentor couple if their time with us was worthwhile they will have selective memory too. 

 

 

 

Photo by Andy Sullivan

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