This was the view leaving Wood’s Hole for Martha’s Vineyard yesterday around 4 pm.  The sun, sky, clouds and sea were creating an elegant, spare choreography of light.

Island time according to the Urban Dictionary is, “The time vacuum created by the ocean’s presence. Similar to stoner’s time, everything moves nice and slow. This carefree aura even has the ability to travel with islanders and can engulf you in their presence.”  Not this time.  I am here to help with my autistic godson, Jacob.  His time zone is uncharted water.

Last night, he was wild – climbing, banging, shrieking – his lanky prepubescent body a commotion. It is humbling to arrive with a somatic therapist’s bag of skills and perspectives and realize that none of it may apply.  To be with Jacob is both quintessential improvisation and unrelenting repetition.

Jacob’s parents have done, learned, implemented, studied, applied, conjured every possible treatment and approach for their child.  Time is moving inexorably toward the need for bigger answers as Jacob grows bigger, stronger, faster.   Adolescence looms.  Time – both the long stretch of each day in Jacob’s world, and the fast moving need for solutions is here.  And yet, what Jacob teaches is the need for consummate attention to each moment – excruciating and beautiful all at once.

For more ideas about time, check out Brain Picking’s 7 must-read books on time.