An Ode: Parental Madness

When you hear your child’s laughter.

It is the most beautiful song

Joy fills your heart as nothing else could matter

The world is perfect and nothing is wrong.

But when you hear your child’s cries

Summon the troops and destroy anything that creates sadness.

You are desperate to make things right.

As with each sob, pieces of your soul dies.

What can you do to bring your child delight?

Let your child adjust and recognize as a parent you suffer from madness.

I briefly studied odes and I gave it the old college try. I understand the mechanics of them but I am not real comfortable with this type of poetry. I am publishing so you know that I did follow this challenge. But I am looking forward to finishing my studies and moving back into free form poetry.

I was not particular wild about the rhyming of the word laughter and matter but it was in the rhyming dictionary and so I used it.

Every parent in the world who feels it when their child cries or when exquisite joy when their child laughs. I am one of these parents. And I am not alone in my plight of loving my son. He is a wonderful guy. I remember the first time another child picked on my who has autism, I could have killed the child. I had never felt the instinct to kill before but when someone makes my child unhappy I would be enraged. It took me until my son was four to recognize I might be a little bit over protective of him. And when he was hurt as a child with a disability by the cruelty of children who were perfectly normal, he cried. And I died a bit each time I saw people stare at him, talk about him or be mean to him.

One time we were in a grocery store and literally typical children were not supervised by there parents and knocking down displays and the parent went over and beat each of the children. Neither management nor anyone else said anything. My son cried out because he had never seen a person being beaten by their parent with such rage. The parent stopped beating her children and grabbed them and said, “Come on” and then called my son a freak and walked away. And to this the store manager looked at my and said, “You need to get your child under control.” It is a very well know corporation in America in which this happened. And I would tell all of you but I try not to hold a grudge. It took me years to walk back into that store.

America is still a very discriminator country against children with Autism especially. There is a special discrimination parents of children with Autism have to go through each and every day.

But even parents of typically developing children must go through this wit the exception of the woman who didn’t watch her children in the grocery store and then beat them publicly.

I love to hear my son laugh and his joy restores my faith in the world. Every time he wants to be president and takes out his presidential history books and studies I marvel at how much love he has in his heart for a country that ignores him. I can’t imagine why his country ignores his plight and his suffering.

But this is our plight and I am certain every parent also has theirs as well. And so those who have joined me in parental madness welcome to the club of loving your children.

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