And Then It Hit Me

I don't get out much.  I have four kids.  Sometimes getting out of the house, and being alone for a few minutes means a simple trip to the grocery store, which is exactly what I did tonight.

Summer is winding down and next week school will start.  I've enjoyed this summer probably more than any other in a long time.  Logan is finally at a point where he is learning to control his screaming, and that has been a huge relief.  We still have days that are way off...but those days are becoming fewer and fewer.

Still, after being stuck in the house all day due to a busted whatever on our van, I had to get out. I drove over to Wal Mart (there's really not much else to do at 9 pm in this town) just to buy some stuff that we were out of.  It was uneventful until I got to the checkout.  Ahead of me was a man who appeared to be in his mid to late forties.  He looked like an average guy...thick around the waist, glasses, mustache.  The woman he was with was much older than him...she looked a little tired, but otherwise very sharp and mostly focused on paying for her groceries.  As they prepared to leave the man grabbed onto the cart and looked over at the woman and said, with a slight speech impediment, "Mama?  Mama?  Is that everything?" the same way that a child might ask.

And I froze.  I'm crying as I write this because it was so simple and so sweet...the man, by all outward appearances, was just an average man...but when I heard him talk I knew that he was challenged, and there was his mother, still taking care of him so late in life...and I'm crying because the one thought that hit me, that rose above all other thoughts was this:  That's me.  That's me, and my son, in thirty years, forty years.  I will still be taking care of him, he will still be with me, wherever I go.

Some people might think this kind of revelation is idiotic...my son has autism and is a three year old trapped in a nine year old body...of course he's going to be with me.  But let me tell you.  It's one thing to know that, and tell yourself that, every day, and be aware of it.  Because of course I know it, I've known it since Logan was small, that he would always be with us, that he would probably never go out on his own and live the life his brother and sisters will.  It's one thing to know that and tell yourself that.  It's another thing...quite another thing, for someone to hold a mirror up in front of you and say, Look.  This is you, in thirty years or so.  Look.

It made it real.

And I'm not sad.  Because that woman I saw in the store wasn't broken, and she wasn't sad, she wasn't angry, or bitter.  A friend of mine once told me that expectation is really what creates the most problems for people.  People expect their lives to be a certain way; they expect certain things to happen, or they expect a person in their life to BE a certain way...and when it doesn't happen, then they get upset.  They get depressed.  Angry.  I have no expectation of a perfect life.  I let go of that a long time ago.  What I feel, after seeing that woman, and seeing her son, is affirmation.  I saw her there, and she didn't know I was watching...but I saw her in the store, late at night, with her adult, mentally-challenged son, very matter-of-factly going on with her life and paying for her groceries, walking with him out to her car with two carts full of whatever it was they got...and all I thought, was Yes.  Of course. Now and in thirty years and all the years between, yes.

Changed, Not Wrecked

Today I stumbled across an article by Carol Sarler of dailymail.co.uk entitled "Why can't we face the truth?  Having an autistic child wrecks your life..."  Here is a link to the article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1116602/Why-face-truth-Having-autistic-child-wrecks-life-.html


She went on to detail the lives of  Cath and John, who have an autistic child named Tom.  She describes all the ways that Tom's condition has interrupted their lives, changed their plans, and in general, made life a living hell for his parents and grandparents, and concludes the article with this very jaded and cynical point of view:

"But looking on, as a relatively dispassionate observer; looking at the damage done, the absence of hope and the anguish of the poor child himself, do I think that everyone concerned would have been better off if Tom's had been a life unlived? Unequivocally, yes." 

As I read through the article, many of Tom's behaviors reminded me of my own son, Logan, and some of the struggles we faced early on with him.  We did feel despair.  We did feel hopeless.  Finding help for Logan was a challenge, and it still is.  We have a tough time going out together because our babysitters are limited.  Finances are in short supply...but I can't blame that entirely on Logan, because there are six people in my family, and two of them are tweens.  I suppose I could write a whole article on how having two tweens has wrecked my life with worry and depleted my grocery budget, but why would I do that?  I love them.  And it wouldn't be an honest article, anyhow, because it would leave out too many facts and focus only on the negative aspects of raising those children.

I can't look at my life, or the life of my family, and say that it has been wrecked by Logan's autism.  It's not the life I expected to have.  As Logan grows, I am delighted by the changes I see in him:  increased communication, increased affection, more willingness to learn, and great effort to communicate, just to name a few.  I know that all parents are not so blessed.  Buy saying that Tom's life would have been best unlived is like saying that any child that poses a struggle or a challenge to a family would have been better off as just a twinkle in their dad's eye and leave it at that.  

No life ever goes the way anyone expects it to.   Logan and his autism have not wrecked my life.  It has changed my life.  I have learned so much from him.  There are so many things that I was unaware of before Logan.  The other day I was speaking to my friend Caroline.  Her son has cerebral palsy and a host of other behavioral and mental complications.  At the age of almost twenty, he can finally go to the bathroom by himself.  Speaking with her about our respective situations, we both agreed that we would not want to go back to the way we were before we had our sons.  I cannot speak for Caroline, but for myself, I was very naive and judgmental towards other people.  I had compassion and charity, but I can honestly say that Logan has instilled in me a greater sense of patience and empathy than I had before. 

Sarler also mentioned the guilt that Cath struggled with...blaming herself for her son's autism, wondering if this thing or that thing she had done in pregnancy or when he was an infant had triggered his condition.  I did this too.  When Logan was first diagnosed with autism, I wondered if something I had done had caused it.  I have since concluded that it doesn't matter.  I do not blame myself for my son's condition, because there is no way to know what really caused it.  Being a parent is all about guilt, sometimes, anyway.  You do constantly question yourself, and sometimes berate yourself, because you feel you could have done better by your child.  And you constantly worry.  This is not exclusive to autism. 

I'm not perfect. There are many days when he is not at his best and I'm not either. I wish for a normal day when I could take him somewhere and not worry about a meltdown.   But this hasn't wrecked my life.  If anything it has made me more passionate...about life, about grabbing onto opportunities when they present themselves, and about being a parent.  Would I go back and do it all again?  Unequivocally.  Yes.