Gratitude

From Fatherhood 2.0, my blog for special needs fathers.

I was gone on Thanksgiving during my last deployment to Iraq. I remember it clearly. It was twelve years ago this week.

There’s something exceptionally miserable about Thanksgiving on deployment. It’s a holiday built around gathering together with family to be grateful for what you have. You’re not with your family there though. And most of the time of you’re engaged in the mental gymnastics of keeping your mind off what you don’t have.

Happy Fucking Thanksgiving.

If you’re lucky someone gives enough of a rip to try to cook something. That tour, we had a barrel-chested mechanic from the deep South who could cook anything. And so he took to the task to preparing the Thanksgiving feast in earnest. At least we had that.

I imagine it was pretty good. I have to imagine because I didn’t eat it. I was locked in my trailer in the dark. Two days earlier my wife told me our son had been diagnosed autistic over the phone. I wasn’t really in the mood for a feast. I didn’t want to feel good. I didn’t want to feel anything other than pain. I wanted to hunt insurgents and then lock myself in the dark to boil in quiet anger. Gratitude was the last thing on my mind. And it would be for tragically long. Too long.

There’s something in the human source code that responds to intentional thanks. When we recognize what’s positive in our lives, no matter how small, there’s an eye level change. And so the exercise of doing it, is something special needs fathers need to make time to do. What’s not great about our journey is in our face every day. What is, sometimes takes work to notice. But if we don’t, we’ve got no shot.

My time in the darkness in Iraq was real. But it was also metaphorical. Outside my door was a family waiting for me to join them. It didn’t matter that they weren’t my family. Inside that trailer was pain and bitterness. I chose pain. It was the easy path. Opening the door and turning toward the light was too hard. Pain plus time equals bitterness though. And once that bitterness sets in, there’s only one cure.

Gratitude.

In the physics of the human spirit gratitude and bitterness can’t occupy the same space at the same time. And so the exercise of giving thanks, breaks the cycle. In my darkest moments, I turn to irrational, uncompromising thanks. Special needs fathers, here me now. It’s the only shot you have.

Grab the dirt beneath your feet. Breathe the air around you. Catch the light that shines off of everything you see. And realize the infinite space and time it all had to travel to be here, for you to experience. The matter inside you was born in the heart of a dying star. Realize the millions of ways it could have been organized in order to not be you. In order to not be your child. And bath in the absurd unlikelihood that you are both here. Marvel in their smile. Hold their laughs in the front of your mind. And then realize that perhaps the deal you’ve been dealt, isn’t so bad. And give thanks.

In our worst moments, these miracle truths maintain.

Finding a way to hold on to them is one of the great secrets of life for special needs fathers. And for anyone really.