One Foot in Front of the Other

I was in a hotel gym recently, running on the treadmill. 

I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He was in town touring a college for his son. 

“He is very smart,” he remarked casually as he fiddled with his laces. “Like really smart.”

Sometimes comments like this mean nothing to me at all.

Sometimes they feel like a punch beneath the ribcage. They knock the wind right out of me. 

My son Jack has autism. This is lens through which I see things. I can’t help it. 

For months we searched for a post-high school program.

We narrowed it down by location, services, and outcome. In the entire nation, there were three options.

Three.

Within these three programs, there were a total of forty-six spots.

We excluded the ones who locked the kitchen at night, because they didn’t want kids to eat.

I’m no expert, but I don’t think mainstream colleges control how many Pop-Tarts students can consume.

Bitterness.

This is my go-to emotion.

This is an easy reach for me, even as I sweat on the treadmill.

Slowly, I am learning I cannot stay in this space. It does not serve me. 

Instead, I have to ask my brain to flex and bend.

The brain is rigid, you see. It is lazy. It reaches for emotions previously programmed by history.

It’s not like I haven’t been here before—poised on the precipice of sharing and listening. 

I’ve stood at cocktail parties and listened to complaints about how everyone has autism these days. 

I’ve munched on backyard burgers and heard how medication is the worst thing you can give a child.

I’ve endured holiday parties and been advised that discipline is what’s needed here. 

There is s point in these interactions when I have to decide how far I will take it.

My heart pounding, sweat running down my face, breath racing in my ribcage. 

Do I tell him how scared I am to die?

Do I tell him that this hour I spend running is more about speed, and endurance, and miles?

It is about outrunning a diagnosis, and making sure I live long enough to set this boy of mine afoot.

A college program. That’s what we call it. 

It is a combination of residential care, life skills coaching, and social pragmatics.

The cost is astronomical. There is no financial aid. There are no scholarships. There is an enormous pressure to make this succeed.

I remember when he was an infant, a toddler, and first grader.

He shrank from my touch.

I remember when he went through puberty. He raged and bit and shrieked and cried. He talked about knives and death. Every afternoon he curled up in my bathtub. Fully clothed and without water, he hid from the world.

We lit candles at dinner. I bought his favorite treats at the grocery store—avocadoes, Oreos, pretzels. I tried to make our house a safe place for him to land. 

It was all I could think of to do.

Avocadoes. 

Soft lighting.

Gentle words.

Did it help?

Maybe.

I’ll never know for sure. 

It’s easy to assume this is a story of an autism diagnosis, softly uttered words that belied the lifelong impact. 

It is the story of a family arranging and rearranging and arranging once more.

It is the story of the foreverness that is an autism diagnosis.

It is the story our radical grace, our reckless mercy, our tender, tender resilience.  

How to explain all of that, huffing and puffing in a hotel gym?

Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you just hope you planted a tiny seed in someone’s preconceived notion of your narrative and one day, they will look up and see color amidst the black and white. 

You hope that one day, he remembers your face and your story and your child. 

And he will realize. Things are not always as they seem.

But on this day, I decided to tell.

I decided to tell him about the puberty and the worry and the knives and the program.

I told of a different kind of hope for a different kind of life. 

How a life lived differently is not a life less lived. 

“He’s going to do great things,” he said, looking straight in my eyes as we put one foot on front of the other.

I nodded. I was unsure which boy we were talking about anymore. 

It didn’t matter.  

“He will,” I told him. “He is very smart.”