Send prayers or good thoughts our way Sunday morning, 8:45 a.m., as my son receives his First Communion. The First Communion part -- the actual receiving of the Host -- I'm not worried about. I'm worried about him making it through Mass with people watching. I'm worried about him standing up at the altar with the other children all during the long, long Eucharistic prayer, as we found out at today's rehearsal he's going to have to do. I'm worried about him wearing a suit without dissolving in a mass of tactile hypersensitivity. It's going to be a long morning.

 

To their credit, nobody at the church, neither the administrator of the First Communion program nor the parents whose children will be sharing the spotlight, has said anything about my son's behavior being inappropriate for a First Communicant. There seems to be a good understanding among the people and priests that my child has a neurological impairment, and that he requires more than the usual amounts of understanding and tolerance. After the horrible rehearsal, during which he was whooping and hollering and jumping and running and proclaiming loudly from the altar that he had to go to the bathroom, at about the time when I imagined all the other moms demanding that my son be pulled from the First Communion line-up so as not to disturb their children's big day, a woman who remembered my son from a long-ago gymnastics class she taught stopped us to say how happy she was that her daughter was having her First Communion during the same Mass as my son, and that it really made the day for her. I wanted to hug her.

 

It's true, I think, that my husband and I are more mortified by his behavior under these circumstances than other folks are -- even though, under general circumstances, we are extremely understanding and tolerant of his challenges. We know that the thing that works best for him is to keep him from situations where he is going to be unsuccessful, and when such situations are unavoidable -- like making your First Communion in front of God and everybody -- I think we panic a little. Okay, we panic a lot.

 

I'd like to think that praying on this will lead God to bring a little calmness to my boy's wild spirit and help him to behave. But you never know about God -- He may just feel that having a small boy running up and down the aisles or prattling merrily at the altar in a Scooby Doo voice is a fine way to wake people up. Perhaps what we need to pray for is a little calmness for ourselves. At any rate -- 8:45 a.m., people. Send us a little support.