Rage Has No Place Here

Hi.

I’m not sure if you remember me. You were standing behind my son Jack and I in Panera this afternoon.

He had just finished ordering his macaroni and cheese in a bread bowl with a side of bread. As we were walking over to get our drinks, you reached out and touched my arm and asked if maybe he shouldn’t get something a little healthier.

Right away, these little Technicolor images of Jack popped into my head.

Age three, sitting in a corner, tracing an imaginary line on the floor wit his finger.

Age eight, struggling to finish a math worksheet.

Age eleven, running across a green, green field in the middle of autumn.

Rage has no place here.

Jack loves food. He loves to plan food, and make food, and eat food.

His specialty is a rich chocolate cake that tastes like a piece of heaven.

Every night he sets the table for dinner. He seems to enjoy counting out the plates and the napkins, and reminding me when its time to light the candles. I like to think he anticipates this time—the familial conclusion at the end of the day.

But who knows? I mean, it’s not like he can tell me that eating dinner together makes him feel safe and warm and happy and included. He doesn’t have those kinds of words.

He has a language delay, you see.

He also has low muscle tone, severe anxiety, and very little working memory.

He has autism.

And yet. Rage has no place here.

The other day I caught myself wondering who he might have been if it weren’t for autism.

Who would he be, if he weren’t shackled by the spectrum’s ceaseless demands and anxiety’s golden handcuffs?

A shadowy figure crossing the soccer field to announce he scored the winning goal?

A bookworm, begging for trips to the library every week?

Class clown?

Student Council president?

National Honor Society?

I guess we’ll never know.

That’s not true.

I know we’ll never know.

I don’t long for those things that much anymore. I want you to understand that. I don’t wish for the things I cannot have. But every now and then, I can’t help myself. I wonder.

For now, he is a 14-year old boy with autism.

His favorite pastimes include writing out grocery lists, looking up movie times, and cooking popcorn after dinner.

He talks to himself all day long.

For Christmas he wants a package of  lightbulbs.

He has autism spectrum disorder and maybe a little obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lately, we’re considering throwing attention deficit disorder into the pile as well.

Disorder.

Disorder.

Disorder.

Disorder, disorder, disorder.

Please. Lady. Let him have his macaroni and cheese in a bread bowl with a side of bread. Let him have the simple things which make bring him joy. He has so little joy.

All of this is okay.

Rage has no place here.

I tell him I love him five, six, seven times a day.

He never says it back.

This is okay.

Rage has no place here.

He is obsessed with the garbage compactor in the kitchen. He pushes it five, six, seven times an hour just to hear the grinding sound.

It drives me nuts.

This is okay.

Rage has no place here.

Every night after he washes down his medicine with a Dixie cup full of water and brushes his teeth and climbs into bed, he comes back down the stairs to find me.

He does this five, six, seven times a night.

This is okay.

Rage has no place here.

See, we autism parents, we’re used to this. We’re used to boxing up our anger and closing the lid and putting it away—shiny shards of glass nestled in velvet.

We clench our teeth and grip the steering wheel and listen to the same song ninety-million times in a row and we wonder if life will always be this goddamn hard.

Silently, we scream into the dark, desolate nights.

We turn on our spouses—the very people we are clinging to like life rafts in the stormy sea. We criticize them, and alienate them, and grieve with them.

But still, rage has no place here.

It has no place in the middle of Panera, underneath the bright lights and the hot stares. I have learned this.

I mean, it would be so easy to get angry and to sneer at you to mind your business and jump onto the Facebook app on my phone and complain how people are so unbelievable rude.

Easy.

I can’t do the easy way. I have to do the hard stuff.

I have to be his voice and talk about the soccer and the velvet and the glass. I have to hope that one day, someone will hear me.

Can you hear me?

Can anyone hear me?

I know you would be sorry, if I told you all this.

I don’t need you to be sorry.

I need you to be his voice. I need you to tell.

Tell.

Tell someone today that you saw a boy in Panera—a boy who had a half day at school and planned lunch with his mother and couldn’t wait to order for himself.

Tell one person about his small, upturned smile.

Tell them about his glasses, and his light brown hair that he styled just so, and the way he balanced his tray carefully in both hands.

You will never meet another person like him in your whole entire life.

Rage has no place here.

I know the sound of his footsteps better than I know my own.