Overly Compelling Diagnoses

A few weeks ago I attended my nephew's special education conference.  The team gathered there helped me see with new eyes that some of his quirky behavior is a manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder.  His need to walk a certain route in the halls, making him late to class daily.  His carrying his backpack to breakfast, and fastidiously returning it upstairs afterwards each day.  His  refusal to stay out of the street on a walk .... maybe the sidewalk was something he could not allow himself to touch.  Hmmmm.... knowing him as I do, the explanation of this thinking pattern made sense and answered a lot of questions that have had us stumped.

OCD.  Aren't we all a little OCD?

Take the kitchen at our house.  Each of the three of us has one stubborn OCD pitfall.  It gets us every time.  

Son will inspect every spoon for water spots before using one to eat.  If it has a spot, it's rejected.  Back into the drawer.  Sometimes he has to go through six or eight to find the one with flawless shine.  Hubby and I roll our eyes.  Son now has to set the table each day, because if he does not pick the spoons, the whole meal is delayed.

I don't care about water spots on my pretty spoons.  But I have my own offbeat tangent.  The IKEA tumblers come in the colors of the rainbow.  And they must be stacked in the order of those rainbow hues.  Indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink.  No one else seems to understand that this is necessary, so I constantly happen upon the stack done wrong.  And I must fix it.  People!  How can you live with yourselves, letting this slide?

Hubby smiles at spoon inspections, and may not even see the rainbow.  But he has his stumbling block too.  The utensil drawer has only one compartment for forks, and we have two kinds of forks:  salad and dinner.  Hubby maintains them in neat and separate stacks in that compartment,  straight as soldiers.  If Son or I empty the dishwasher, the forks are in wild disarray,  jumbled together catawampus.  Hubby patiently cleans them up.  It's as necessary as making the bed in the morning.

Yep.  I can understand that special walking route, and the backpack routine.  How could I not?

Well, it's time to go tighten the lightbulb and check the door latch.  52 times.  One for every year.

Paper

An elegy

Touch its gentle heft.  Breathe

Its smell of words.  Hear

Its powdery lament.

Stardust, house dust

Glitter, must

Do even diamonds

Turn to rust?

I like the weight

The pull of gravity

The charm

Of real books

In hand, in lap

In crook of arm.

The neon scream

Of ebook readers

Tablets, pads

Flags the spirit

Tires the heart

A wearing, tedious fad.

Some day on the eternal shore

The book of life

Will open

And no more

The flash of manmade light

And speeding streams of bits

To bear.

O hurry time

To find a resting there.

Autumn

A glorious summer with its long run of sun has given way to fall.  The temperatures have dropped.  I love the change. 

A new season comes along just in time.  Right when we had begun to yawn and glance at the clock. 

Frosty breath in the morning.  The familiar feel of my coat.  Darker days.  Longer nights. 

And the leaves scurrying out in every direction under the headlights' beam on slick streets.  They scatter like a flock of songbirds, startled into flight. 

Or a coven of tiny witches, racing into the shadows, cackling as they go.