Zen And The Art Of Caring: the swept path

The Anglo-Saxon name for an October moon isn’t Falling Leaf Moon without reason; for the last few weeks I’ve been meaning to sweep my front path. Dylan will slip on those leaves, I’ve kept telling myself.

Since Dylan started going to and from school on local authority transport at the age of five he has had the habit of hurtling at high speed into the house on his return. Without stopping to look or check for potential obstacles along the route he sprints like a German ICE or Japanese Bullet train to his destination. This habit has stayed with Dylan through 19 years of schooling and four different houses, three different schools and dozens of different drivers and escorts.

Although this behaviour may not appear unduly worrying it can be problematic. There are pedestrians, for example, who may be knocked to the ground by whirlwind Dilly. As the behaviour continues year round, unchecked by weather conditions, there is the danger that Dylan could fall badly in icy weather (or wet autumn leaves). And there is the possibility that in Dylan’s 50-250 yard sprint (depending on where the minibus has managed to park) he will encounter something to spook him – a dog say – and throw him catastrophically off his stride and into passing traffic. For in this brief time, Dylan is beyond any supervision or control; all a carer can do is stand back and watch, fingers crossed.

While the home sprint may be relatively low-risk, I worked with Dylan’s teachers and escorts periodically to try and re-shape the behaviour. We tried rebus symbols, rewards and changes to the drop-off routine but nothing made a difference. Eventually I gave up, thinking that perhaps once Dylan left school it would no longer be an issue, especially as the behaviour seemed to apply only to local authority transport (Dylan walks perfectly calmly into the house from cars and public transport). The behaviour appears, however, to be deeply embedded; Dylan has continued to sprint into the house from the minibus which now brings him home from his adult day centre.

I must sweep these leaves up, I said to Dylan as I locked the front door of the house one morning last week: I’ll do it tonight. I put Dylan on his minibus and raced to work. I am always rushing to and from work. I have perfected the art of being back in time for Dylan’s bus while wringing every last minute from the working day; I know the shortest time it takes from desk to front door and I almost always bank on it. It’s a vital calculation; get it wrong and the consequences are horrible. Dylan would not understand, if I wasn’t home, why he couldn’t get off the minibus. Having to wait for me to arrive would not only distress Dylan but would have knock-on effects on other service users and families.

When Dylan was at school I was aware that local authority transport was only allowed to wait for an absent parent for so long before taking the uncollected child to what I always thought of as ‘the pound’. While I never had had to retrieve Dylan from such a place, I did slip up a few times. Usually I was stuck in traffic within striking distance of home; over a 15 year period, given that I’m a single working parent, that’s not bad. I always cut it fine though and one thing my calculations never seem to adjust for is the sweeping of paths: I didn’t, of course, get home in time to do this last week.

The swept path

So when I got Dylan off the bus that night I hollered slow down, you’ll slip as he raced towards the house. The bus had had to park further away than usual that night due to workmen; as I had walked up the road to get Dylan I told them they might want to stand back a bit as in a moment my big boy would come tearing past at high speed – which is exactly what happened, with me in hot pursuit.

I don’t know what I expected to gain by chasing after Dylan like that. He is nearly 21 and in his physical prime. I wasn’t going to catch him. Even if I kept him within ear shot he wasn’t going to listen to my exhortation to walk. So haring after him, I now realise, was pointless and silly. But that is what I did and yes, you’ve guessed: I fell on the unswept path. And I went with such a bang and a crack on those wet leaves I lay dazed on the ground wondering what on earth I had done and what I would do next. When I limped into the house Dylan had his arms clamped around his ears, a sign that he was distressed. So instead of letting myself cry or peel off my clothes to inspect the damage I said ‘mummy fell’ then maintained our usual routine of reading and signing Dylan’s link file entry about his day. I would deal with the blood and bruises later.

Happily they turned out not to be so bad; a few days later and I am already mending. I could have done without that fall though; it has made caring for Dylan and myself, as well as working and doing things like driving, slow and difficult. The first night, struggling to cook, shave Dylan or type, I chided myself for not keeping a swept path. I need a more zen approach to caring, I told myself; taking a few moments for small tasks, like clearing leaves, could make a difference to my well-being.

So the next day I swept my path. It only took ten minutes but from that short time I took something valuable. And while I was sweeping I remembered a poem about a swept path. The poem, by Helen Farish, is not about autism; the narrator is learning to care for lavender, rather than for a child. The process Farish describes, however, and its impact on her sense of self, resonates with my experience in many ways. Farish reminds me to celebrate myself; this week the achievement I am most proud of is, indeed, my swept front path.

Programme
Helen Farish

She loves the radio, the freedom it gives
to listen out the back as she’s passing to and fro
or sitting in the half-house half-garden room

on a midsummer’s Sunday evening
listening to a three-hour programme on the monsoon,
and the front door is open and the back,

and every now and then the setting light
coming past the lavender she’s recently started caring for
and the honeysuckle she never used to notice nor those roses

hidden till she chopped back the buddleia – the light
coming past the flowering jasmine and the hanging basket
she’s so pleased with stops her,

makes her see how much of her life
has been lived in this house,
that she’s become who she is here

and what she will remember of these years is not
the times when living alone seemed a problem to solve
but the peace:

looking at a house she has done her best in,
loving small successes, the hanging basket, the picture in the half-
house half-garden room, that repotted plant,

and her larger successes – allowing herself the pleasure
of a three-hour programme on the monsoon
sorting through a box of postcards with a green glass of gin,

seeing all those places she’s been to: but her journey
to this programme, her swept front path, this is
the one she’s most proud of.

Reference:

Helen Farish, ‘Programme’ in Intimates (Cape, 2005)