I am again on Martha’s Vineyard with Jacob, my autistic godson and his family.  The story of this family is a series of miracles unfolding over the past fourteen years.  Besides Jacob and his parents Jo-Ann and Derrill, the house now holds Charlie, Jo-Ann’s 92 year-old father, and Mary Helen, her sister.

The sun around which we all orbit is Jo-Ann.  She is the lodestar, the gravitational force, the heat and the center of this system. The choreography of this complicated and extraordinary family is a little like what Twyla Tharp said about Bach: “”Everyone understands that there’s Bach, and then there’s most everybody else,”  citing the composer’s “architecture, righteousness, justice, control, possibilities — the richness and variety of his imagination. He encompasses all. I call his work ecumenical. No one has more range.”‘ Bach and Jo-Ann. Music and mothering.

What I would add to this list is devotion.  To an unendingly curious, determined, loving search for anything that will make Jacob’s life and his connection to his world as rich, varied and beautiful as it can possibly be.

Seeing this requires being with Jo-Ann, Jacob and Derrill long enough to move past the sheer overwhelming enormity of what she and they are doing daily, hourly. It is too much. We don’t want to let in how big the task is, how the entirety of a life can be taken up by this rigorous caring care. To witness this without looking away requires its own kind of bravery.

I don’t look away. I want to see and feel it all.  Maybe that is the best thing I can offer here.  A steady loving witness.  A willingness to keep looking and to be curious and soft. To see things anew each day, each moment.