Update, day number 16 in the household

This is day number 16 inside the household that James and Sol traveled 1100 miles, 33 days through the early winter cold, to arrive at to see if they could be of some help. Why? James some bleeding heart. Help anybody? If he ever was, he's not now. Triage. He sees barely a soul with enough life to be helped. It's horrible, it's tragedy, but that's how he sees it. But the parent in this household, incredibly wounded he thinks from lifelong series of abusers, and some self-inflicted wounds, is

impossibly strong able lovely healthy intelligent of the Soul James thinks, because of that same abuse probably. Somehow it hasn't killed this individual, and oh man have they grown. At least this is what James thought From afar, and his 16 days in the house has only confirmed that. Oh my goodness what a soul. Impossible potential.

Maybe 10 days ago James saw something on Facebook, I mean, and it said something like like, if you love someone exactly where they are, they can grow from there. It was much more poetic than that but that was the idea. And James has always believed that, and he's always lived that, though his understanding increases by the hour.

This is a household that has been on Extreme covid lockdown because according to Medical experts all three in the house, the two children and the parent have a variety of extremely compromised immune and physical systems extremely vulnerable to not only covid-19. To food contaminants, and certain types of food. Fatal stuff if not avoided. And whereas the house has been a hive of one or two or three or four outside technicians working with the child 11 years old, non-verbal autistic on grade level in some functions and toddler in others, for the last 6 or 9 months it has been just the three of them, so what an adjustment for the children, for all three, to have a fourth individual in the house now! 

Like a bull in a china shop James was somewhat unwitting Catalyst for, and accepted, huge amounts of time from the parent in terms of training both before he arrived and once he entered. And James is so dense, such a slow learner, and the parent has extremely strict procedures entirely foreign to James throughout his life, that it actually took the parent huge dangerous painful experiences to learn about the needs of all three. They say the fish is the last one to discover water, and some of that may apply to this parent, James, I said strict standards, what don't you understand about that? LOL. But then finally the parent listed out paragraphs and paragraphs of the horrors they had encountered and finally James understood and began to come apply effectively though he had never resisted it. And he has documented into a manual type of thing pretty much everything he's learned so that the next person that enters might consume almost no time to get where it took James huge amounts of the parents time to get him there.

But mercifully, 5 out 6 days ago James learned enough to begin a completely unfun, he's not capable of being fun, but completely unfun mrs. Doubtfire, lifting at least the weight of the housework, and a bit more, off the shoulders of this parent so that the parent could have at least a couple, maybe 4 5 6, hours per day, for desperately needed rest, recovery, reflection, or at least free of the housework responsibilities. 

With what expected result? With the thought that this parent needs, as we all do, and therefore deserves, as we all do, space to find themselves, to breathe, and to find firmer ground to walk out on. For a year James has been perceiving that this was needed, that things were unsustainable for the parent and these children, and about six days ago finally began to deliver a bit. And that's where we are.

But not just with the parent, secondarily with the children, because if it turns out that a constructive relationship can develop between James and the children then James can begin bearing some of that weight as well. The parent is adorable, infinitely preferable to James understates the matter, and on top of that the children have had the parent captive for all these months. Who wants to eat sand when they can have are delicious gourmet meal? Not James.

Well, James has had a strategy and tactics of being the sort of the background, doing housework, available, but not intrusive, hoping that the children one or both would discover that, well, it doesn't seem like he's going to do any harm, maybe it's something worth exploring? Maybe he can do something useful for me? Whatever.

This relatively brief post could be a novel by now, but this will be it for now.

And this is what James found himself writing to the parent this morning:

James to beloved parent: I'm certainly not trying to talk behind child13yo back.... Oh man, James can die happy now. Really. Ch13 and I just had the most spectacular Exchange!! 💥💥💥💥 Some of the elements: Who was your favorite in your life James, who was the empath in your life? Well, ch13, I try really hard not to have favorites, but I know what you're saying, my dad oh, he's the one that got James, he's the one where, well, James was sort of inside him, just like his hand was inside him. And James was just an unbelievably unperforming child, in school, in everything. And his dad was the most highest performing person. And I don't know why my dad didn't put me out for adoption. Really. But I think he must have seen some goodness in me, and I think he was right, when I turned 20 I started to Blossoming. Parent, I thought all that might bore ch13 to tears, and ch13 just started bubbling over. James, you're just kind of this electrical wizard, I mean look at what you've done with that vehicle, that electrical thing, you've gone all across the country, and you came all across the country to be with us. I mean you've gone through the world. Ch13 I said, it's interesting you think of it that way, the number one guy in the world in Vancouver Canada on ebike electronics designed my stuff, and when I told him recently that we've done 36,000 miles he said, James, you've gone around the world about 1 1/2 times, or something like that! Ch13 said, I wonder if people are writing articles about what you do, or something like that. And ch13 was politely walking back to bedroom at that point and I said, ch13, a guy with tattoos on his face that doesn't like money, when they find out that stuff they don't want to write articles. And ch13 came back into the room right in front of me. James, I see on your cheek it says love. Yeah, ch13, I really hate tattoos, I don't like them. But I was on hunger strike in front of the Sudanese embassy many years ago 50 days no food trying to channel my horror into the soul of someone else over the extermination of people in the country of Sudan. Genocide. And my soul said, James, write what's in your soul on your forehead, that you want starving to stop, you want killing to stop, you want people to be loving, and I told my soul, I don't like tattoos! And my soul said, James, does it matter what you like? It might help your work, okay, James said. And it just went on like that another minute or so. Tremendously joyful exciting Mutual discovery. Two Souls connecting for a moment. At least that's what I think.

And as if that wasn't Miracle enough, then this re ch11:

* Guess who just got invited to help with a diaper? This is quite the morning.

And then moments later for the first time with James:

To parent: And ch11, much smaller Exchange, 30 seconds, but significant I think. Ch11 came out of the room, doubtless tummy is feeling a lot better, came over, gave me the curly cookie sign, I get out of the way, and as I did I uncharacteristically stroked his back, showing my affection, he didn't seem to mind, comfortably climb the stepstool, saw not a cookie box but Pop-Tarts, got it down off the counter, took one out, small rapper went on the floor, without any prompting ch11 pick that up, and went back into the room. You can see what ch11 didn't do but I am just trying to establish a comfortable relationship first and turn into an ogre later. LOL.

I have my stuff such that on moment's notice I could be heading south through the cold or even the snow the instant that the three decide that I'm not a help. I'm ready for that, I'm willing for that, I'm hoping it doesn't happen. We'll see.