Day Program

 We had a meeting - an intake meeting, they call it - at a Day Program place near us recently and it went well.  Anthony had to sit there for a long time and he was so, so good.  Perfect, really.  Someone is always asking me at meetings like this about our hopes and dreams for Anthony, they ask us our hopes and dreams for him and also they ask us what are his strengths and both of those questions make me cry when I am answering them.  He will be 20 years old next month and I will never not cry at those meetings! I'm not even sad about it, I'm not even wistful, it just makes me cry.  It's such a combination of pride and worry and love and fear, literally my body's only response is tears.  

We want him to be more independent, of course.  We want them all to be more independent, that is having children, right? But everyone else's independence looks different than his, we want him to have more independence using the bathroom, for example.  Last night Felicity was in the kitchen and I was watching her see Anthony come downstairs and she thrust her glance to the ceiling and I knew the next thing I'd see was Anthony, carrying his pants and looking for someone to help him get them back on.  That's what we mean by independence, not taking your pants off and then wandering around holding them in your hands and looking for someone to hold them out for you.  You just came from a seated position, I want to say, it would be so much easier to just leave them on at your ankles and then just pull them back up! But anyway, he doesn't do what's easier and we are working on it.  But what I don't say is we want him to be happy.  We want him to enjoy his life.  That's a lot to put on a day program, I guess.  

His strengths, by the way, are that he is tenacious and smart, and people like him.  He has a good sense of humor.  It's weird to talk about his good sense of humor but he does have one.  His former speech therapist told me she always would ask him how are you feeling, and he was supposed to respond by using his iPad. She said sometimes he would respond, I'm angry and then she'd look at him and he'd laugh and laugh, making a joke! That's pretty good, right? It requires a way of thinking that makes me want to say that another one of his strengths is that he's smart but ... I mean, he is smart.  He is, he's just not smart in the way that is of any use to anyone in this godforsaken world.  

I felt very optimistic after this meeting, which probably means we will never hear from them again.  I tried to set up another meeting at a different place and that woman there was so cold I felt the chill from her even over email.  I pictured my monitor freezing over like the floor in the ballroom when Elsa goes crazy in Frozen and creates an immediate winter.  Having Anthony in my life has taught me a lot about people and not much of it is good!