The Tender Things

Mama, what is a family?

A family?

Well, my child

A family is at once

The easiest

And the hardest

Thing to build

Think of it as a garden

Maybe you expected rows and rows of neat tulips

Standing straight and tall in their church pews

Eating organic apples and placing the cores neatly in the trash can

Instead, you have a field full of wildflowers

Colorful, shrieking wildflowers

Who eat your leftovers with their fingers

And leave gum wrappers all over the house

It was not supposed to be this way

You might say to yourself

It was supposed to be the apples and the prayers

The quiet and the books and the order

Some days will be so hard

You can’t believe it

Play dough in the carpet

Stomach bug on the carpet

Glitter all over the carpet

There’s kind of a lot with the carpet, to be honest

Best to do hardwood floors if you can

And other days will be

Fly-a-kite easy

The problem is

You never know which one you’re going to get

Easy-hard-easy-hard

When you have a family

It is your job to figure out how to make the wildflowers stand straight and tall

Without dulling their color

It is your job

To tend to the one

Who may pass unnoticed

The one who repeats himself incessantly

And washes his hands obsessively

A diagnosis forever following him like a post-script

I am Jack

P.S. I have autism

There is no greater pain

Than the pain of watching your child

Struggle to breathe with croup

Or limp with a broken leg

Or try to piece together the words to make his needs known

Over time, your saplings

Will grow delicate green leaves

The flowers will open their soft, silky petals

And turn their heads to the sky

You will want the very best for each of them

Even when you don’t know what the very best is

So you wrap gifts at Christmas

And cook their favorite meals

And while you wrap and cook

You worry

When you build a family

The worry is a continuous vibration

Beneath your rib cage

Is she ready for a sleepover?

When should I get them a phone?

Who will take care of him when I’m gone?

Building a family can be demanding

I don’t want to mislead you about that

It can be exhausting

It is original, yet ordinary

It is a collection of small, commonplace acts

A band-aid across a scraped knee

A simple dinner of pork chops and potatoes

A hug at the end of a long day

And memories so imprinted and timeworn and fleeting

It’s almost as though they never happened at all

Shiny metal keys in the door

Cool lips against a fevered forehead

Candles lit atop a frosted cake

Make a wish!

My dear child

A family is

Babies

Toddlers

Elementary school

Middle school

It is

Marital discord

And fervent kisses

Once the kids are in bed

It is raw

It real

Building a family means falling love

With tiny baby ears shaped like seashells

And soft newborn sighs

It is holding your breath

And cutting tender pink fingernails

Holding your breath

And letting go of the back of the bike

As she sails down the hill

Holding your breath

The first time he puts the car in drive

And sails down the driveway.

It is a lot of holding your breath

And sailing

Best to get a flat driveway if you can

When you build a family with another person

It can be hard

It can feel like a road paved with

Broken promises and misunderstandings

Then there is forgiveness

There is hope

And at the end of the season

You stand in the waning light

And look over your garden

Maybe your knees creak

From all the times you spent tying shoelaces

Maybe your back aches

From all the times you bent to wipe tears from a sad face

Maybe your throat is hoarse 

From all the times you gave him a voice

The sun is low

The babies are too big to hold

The saplings have grown to tall oak trees

And your wildflowers have blossomed with color and light

As the sky turns orange and gold

You wish a quiet wish

You hope out of all the things you taught them

To throw away their wrappers, and eat more fruit

To put the parking brake on

And sit quietly in prayer

You hope they remember the most important thing there is to remember

In this life we hold so dear

Always tend to the tender things

Written by, Carrie Cariello

Carrie Cariello is the author of What Color Is Monday, How Autism Changed One Family for the Better, and Someone I’m With Has Autism. She lives in Southern New Hampshire with her husband, Joe, and their five children. Carrie is a contributor to the Huffington Post, TODAY Parents, the TODAY Show, Parents.com. She has been interviewed by NBC Nightly News, and also has a TEDx talk.

She speaks regularly about autism, marriage, and motherhood, and writes a weekly blog at www.carriecariello.com. One of her essays, “I Know What Causes Autism,” was featured as one of the Huffington Post’s best of 2015, and her piece, “I Know Why He Has Autism,” was named one of the top blog posts of 2017 by the TODAY Show.

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