In our house, this is a motto. It comes from one of my favorite movies, The Family Stone. Fly Your Freak Flag. In the movie, Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) is an uptight New York overachiever about to marry the wrong man. She travels to meet her intended's family, which escalates to a 'get-me-out-of-the-house' holiday gathering. She escapes, courtesy of her impending bro-in-law (Luke Wilson, yes...he's damn cute. Carry on) and goes a bit cray cray and unbuttons her nun-like couture to let 'er rip. You know...drunken bar dancing a la Elaine on Seinfeld.
My point? Leading up to that moment is one of my favorite lines ever. "You have a freak flag. You just don't fly it." (Thanks, Luke).
This movie came out a year after Ben was born. I had no idea of the effect of that particular line, but I liked it. What impacted me more was the relationship of the grown children in the movie with their dying mother. Now, at this point, my own mother would wait another five years to die of cancer and a related cardiac arrest, but at this point in our lives, she's just pulled out of a burst aortic aneurysm, that led to emergency open heart surgery, which she miraculously survived.
My long-winded point is, that motto sort of saved me many times. Ben remembered it. We'd be in public places, movies, parks, events, etc, and if the music moved him, he'd just get up and dance. And I LOVED it. I relished it. I joined in it.
His older brother was mortified at times. He'd yell at me and be embarrassed, but I kept reminding him that some day, although there is now way he can see it now at age 12, he'd laugh and feel love and happiness at these silly, unconscious moments we all we wish we had more of. I'm guilty...I thrive on routine for the sake of gettin' it done on time. But in reality, I love to let my freak flag fly. Caretakers, this doesn't mean, go get high or drunk and relieve yourself of the sometime burdens of having a kid on the spectrum. It means...find a way to relate. Find a way to let their freak flag fly and never, ever be ashamed of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment