Fall is here and it doesn't seem like we had a summer does it?

The fall is here and we didn’t have much of a summer, however, I am reminded it is still summer by the movement of a bee hive right outside my office window.
Special hua?
I have repeatedly told my husband about the bee problem and how tired I am of fending them off in my house. I'm really not trying not to kill them, however, they are stupid and don’t get the whole “Hey, go to the door! I can let you out the door!” thing.
He says he is waiting for a frost to slow them down and then he can get them off the house….
I have a picture in my head of my research scientist dad standing outside my house, in a lab coat and rubber gloves and safety glasses, with a jar of something viscous, swirling it around and telling me to “Get back, this can freeze your hand right off!”
This is why I love my dad.
Nothing more fun, now that I’m adult, as remembering my dad as a semi-mad scientist.

However, to continue….

Booga was very hilarious the other day, actually he’s been pinging them off lately over and over.
This does happen and it’s odd.
It happens when I think I can’t handle him being Autistic even just ONE MORE DAY!
I know I am supposed to patient and I am supposed to understand. But sometimes you would love to get through “Heroes” without having to tell him that if he needs to “‘stim’ or talk to himself, he can go downstairs or go into the backyard or in his room. Or at least tone it down so I can hear one of the few shows on television I really look forward to watching every week. Okay?”

There are days….

Anyway, one particular moment, I had gone into the bathroom the other day and I noticed that the penny that covered the lost dowel on our towel rack was gone.
This penny has been there for time in memoriam. So it was odd that it was gone. I mean this because it would be no mean feat to take this penny off. It’s been glued there like -forever.
So, I called Booga upstairs.
“Booga? Did you take the penny off?”
He sighed deeply. “Yes mom.”
I smiled, “Why did you take that off?”
I was also wondering how he took it off, but you can’t ask Booga a series of questions and expect him to answer all of them. You ask him one at a time.
“Because I want it for food mart.”
He likes to go to the gas station/food mart because he can buy pop and chips because I don’t buy sugared pop….Naughty mom that I am. It just so happened that he had brought a soda home the other day and when I looked at him with the unapproved glare mothers have, he said to me, “Mom, trust me, I’m a doctor.”
“Oh?”
“Dr. Pepper.”
“Oh…I see.”
Booga does chores and gets money to spend for his chores and apparently, like congress and some in the senate- insurance companies, banks, car manufacturers and etc. for some reason, he just wasn’t getting that money fast enough…So he will go and pull it off the wall, out of concrete, out of the car and the cushions….
Uh hua.
I laughed and replaced the penny with some wondercrap that I had bought at Menards to fill holes in with, and attach "would-be" dowels with….Then I put a long screw in where the dowel used to be. I figure, the bathroom will be renovated soon enough and we will loose the towel rack with all the dowels, which my father made for me.

Later we were watching “The Emmy’s” because there was nothing else on television.
And when a certain actor/actress said, “Thank you!” exuberantly, Booga replied, “You’re welcome!”
He then later announced that he would the magical age of twenty this year.
"Cool!" I told him.
And I didn't think much of it.

Then itt really hit home with me while I was talking to one of his workers about if Booga would want to work with other intellectually disabled people next year in the summer?
Next summer in a facility that uses intellectually disabled people to assemble things for companies that sell them to the public.
This would be a step towards his independence from his father and me.

It was a bitter sweet moment.

In one way, I want this. I want him to have purpose. He’s a person and should feel that his life has purpose and meaning. And it would be nice if he could know others in the community with disabilities besides his classmates. It would be nice if he could be part of a bigger world.

But, like the sad tune from a violin, it hit me, that this would also start that movement away from me and he has been a HUGE part of my life, I gave up a lot to stay home with Booga because he needs me- and this child that has been a baby longer than most children are ever babies and a child longer than most children are ever children, and it is going to be hard for me to deal with the idea that he is going to someday move away from me. Maybe into a group home, maybe he’ll see us every weekend but its still away from me.

And even though I want this, it’s like closing a really good book whose story has been a unique and interesting mellow-drama.

Part of me doesn’t want that book to end. And part of me knows it must.

Fall is here isn’t it? It somehow didn’t seem like we had a summer to prepare for it. But then, our lives have always been different than other people’s lives and our experiences have always been a lesson in learning.

There’s a reason God gave us Booga.

He wanted to bless us.