My Very Important Job
Filed Under (Adam, Joy, To Get To The Other Side) by Estee on 02-04-2010
I had a very important job today. One that surpasses all administration, bills, and the like. My mandate for the day? Make Adam giggle… a LOT. I realized that he hasn’t been giggling as much as he used to. Adam, who is about to turn eight, is becoming a much more serious little boy, but he is also a little boy who is experiencing so many changes.
Adam is on vacation and as usual, we head to his home away from home: Miami. I haven’t been away with Adam since December and we are both having a really good time. Adam looks up at me often and smiles, hugs me, grabs my leg and is a lot more verbal down here. He seems glad to be spending lots of one-on-one time with his mother who is not otherwise distracted getting our lives back on track. I realized, while walking along the edge of the ocean hand-in-hand with a contented little boy, that in between school and programs and the big move, we have been drifting through our days trying to survive all of the changes of separation and divorce. While it’s a part of living, may it only be temporary! Adam sure likes his mother happy (and so it goes, mother likes Adam happy too).
Sometimes we just keep doing things day-after-day and we forget about the sun, the ocean and the importance of doing very little in order to make room for all of the possibilities. In the sea of change, we try so hard to find the lifeboat forgetting that all of this too is what life is about. Change is the only thing certain — so goes the saying. With change, opportunities.
When the sun shines and Adam smiles, there seem to be so many more of them.





ESTÉE KLAR
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
Writer.Curator of Art. Founder of The Autism Acceptance Project. Mother of Adam. I like to write about our journey, musings, attitudes towards autism.












My favorite thing to do is tickle Ben, not literally but figuratively. It’s hard work, but somebody’s got to do it. Their lives can be so full of stressors, to just let it all go is sublime.
I hope that the sun shines more often for you in these troubled waters.
As Dory the fish would say. ‘Hey there grumpy gills! Wanna know what to do when the world gets you down? Just keep swimming.’ :D
What a beautiful smile!!