Love and Shelter
By Ashley Lynch
My New Hampshire Colonial-style house sat at the edge of a cul-de-sac, and this is the house we still live in today. Despite regular renovations and repairs, I sometimes feel the house has aged more than I have in tangible years, and attempts to fix the house have resulted in an altered-kind-of Botox look after a few too many surgeries—different from the original, fixed but in an unfamiliar way. When I was younger, the cul-de-sac seemed expansive, and to leave the end of my street was not something I pondered without the presence of my family.
When I was young, my mom was my only caretaker and main source of comfort, to the point where even being close to her could serve as a security blanket. As a shy kid, I would sometimes attempt to escape meeting new people or interacting with strangers by hiding near my mom's feet, covering myself with the bottom of her summer dress as a makeshift disguise. Her wardrobe rotated through a few calf-length, heavily-worn dresses, some I recognized as purchases from Walmart and others I knew to be gifts from the maternity section from my aunt. My mom struggled with holding weight around her midsection, and I remember her initial offense and later realization that these clothes helped to shape her form a bit more nicely.
As a toddler, I can recall I would only venture to leave the house on my own if I could not immediately find my mom. One hazy, humid summer morning, my twin and I heaved open the front door because we did not see mom and were met with the feeling of insecurity, of momentary anxious abandonment. It was early enough that clouds still covered the promise of sunlight. My bare feet were instantly chilled by the cool nighttime still clutched by our stone front steps. I leaped to the neighboring grass for temperature relief and decided I preferred the slightly more pleasant feeling of sticky, damp grass; the layer of dew provided the grass with increased shear force for the blades to get stuck between my stubby toes.
Mom was talking with an unfamiliar technician, and Sarah and I were relieved to have found her. “Uppie,” Sarah repeated our familial, conditioned word in asking to be picked up, to be comforted after a few moments of lostness without Mom’s presence. Our gray house was the most familiar physical place I knew, but this familiarity lost its relief when our emotional source of comfort was not there, making us cinnamon toast or joining us to watch cartoons. Sarah outstretched her arms; even though Sarah was asking for this affection, mom’s physical comfort was not a question, and she was swept up before I could fully raise my arms as well.
“Uppie,” I repeated in turn. I was the second twin to be delivered and sometimes still following in Sarah’s footsteps. “No,” my mom looked down for a moment, still in conversation with the stranger, “I can’t pick you both up anymore. You’re too heavy. Sarah needs this more.”
Sarah’s autism diagnosis was recent, and one that I would not fully understand for many years to come. As a toddler, it was implanted in my brain as a lesson, as essential as the alphabet and number line, that Sarah faced extra difficulties and needed more attention and support. By the age of four, mom told me I was old enough to get dressed on my own, but I still found it hard to differentiate the neck and arm holes or feel confident in deciding which clothes matched. We are twins, and eighteen years later Sarah receives help getting dressed to this day.
Growing up with Sarah requiring an institutionalized level of care for years, I was frozen in this yearning, young pose, with my arms still reaching up. I found myself reasserting my need for attention as we grew up. Sarah required more care on all levels, and simple communication with my mom could seem unfathomable. My arms attempted to stretch a distance of a thousand miles, and this distance grew even when my mom and I existed in the same home.
In our kitchen, there used to be a bar-top counter attached to the longest wall, with two wooden chairs placed beneath the pale counter, one stool uneven and rickety in its balance. Covering this wall was a large mirror that made the kitchen seem larger than it actually was; some of the repairmen who entered into the house would express their initial confusion, thinking the mirror represented the other half of the room or an open table instead of a sheltered countertop. My mom spent the majority of her time home typing at this space. Although this mirror is no longer in the kitchen, I can still envision my mom’s reflection here: her slightly-bent posture, how the wrinkles on her forehead and typing hands were less noticeable in this image than face-to-face, and her utter concentration on the screen. When I would attempt to speak to her while she was here, she would look back at me through the mirror, or answer without shifting her gaze from the laptop. Over time, I longed for eye contact that didn’t take place through a reflection.
I know now that this stretching of distance between us was unpreventable, and due to Sarah’s circumstances, my mom was truly not available. I am not sure whether she was aware of this.
After her initial diagnosis, Sarah was assigned to work full time with an in-house behavioral management specialist, who operated with support from a larger behavior management team. Despite the continued efforts of this support system, over the years two of our car windshields were shattered, one storm door was destroyed, and more holes than I can recall appeared on the wall from the force of Sarah’s fist or head. Sometimes the holes would be patched up in a timely manner, but other marks of chaos lingered, and I struggled to shuffle visiting friends past these damages. I found myself arranging cafe coffee dates or simply agreeing to hang-outs I did not have to host. Growing up, the physical shape of my house felt like a part of my identity, like the clothes I chose to wear or food I selected to eat.
Now that I am in college, I am not home often, but one week in the summer when I stayed in New Hampshire, I woke to screaming downstairs. In the past few months, Sarah had been experiencing psychosis, a personality shift, and tested highly positive for Lyme disease. The latter can result in neurological damage. In the process of trying out various antipsychotic medications, Sarah experienced hallucinations as a side effect. Mom had gone out for a quick trip to the grocery store, and when I found Sarah, I discovered she believed that a truck had crashed into our living room. Since moving out, I sometimes find it startling how out of touch I have become to Sarah’s ongoing daily needs that mom provides.
College has also given me space to reflect on my upbringing, and when I return home, I can better understand the choices my mom made as a parent as well as the tension she carried and her constant closed-off nature.
During that most recent trip home, I saw a large hole in the wall of the upstairs hallway, which I had learned via text a few weeks before occurred during a challenging time with Sarah’s hallucinations. Viewing the picture of the wall via text, I was initially upset that the hole appeared next to my bedroom door. Seeing the contortion of the wall in person, my heart sank, as I was able to fully make the connection that Sarah’s emotional distress, confusion, and images originating from her mind caused her to hit her head against the wall in frustration.
I no longer associate the physical structure I grew up with as strongly with my identity. It is still a large part of me and my early memories, but the broken facets of this location serve as indicators of endurance rather than of irreparable damage. I know that this hole in the wall has still not been plastered, but I have come to accept both the dynamics of my family and to recognize some things are not an easy fix.
Ashley is a junior at Northeastern University studying bioengineering with a concentration in cell and tissue engineering, and a minor in writing. In her free time, she is a member of Biomedical Engineering Society and enjoys yoga and watching cooking shows.