Spaghetti With Meatballs

“I would like spaghetti. With meatballs.”

I saw you glance at him. 

It happens a lot. People often glance at my son. Then they look away, unsure of what to make of him. 

They don’t know what to make of his movements, his downcast eyes, his curtailed speech.

My son.  

He was dressed a little too casually for the restaurant. I forgot to pack him a button-down shirt. 

He made a big list of what we should bring—his weighted blanket, his three-in-one breakfast toaster, his skis. 

He lives here now, in this city with fancy restaurants and busy streets. 

We haven’t seen him in nearly two months. I wanted today to be perfect.

Hours earlier, we bustled into his dorm room, all blankets and ski helmet. Autumn leaves crunched beneath our feet with each trip inside the building. 

He seemed a little frantic, as though he was caught between his new world and ours. We left early for dinner, unsure of how to fill the time. 

There was an issue with the reservation. We stood to the side while the hostess sorted it out. 

I couldn’t get a table anywhere else, what with all the parents in town visiting their college kids. The restaurants were booked.

By the time we sat down, I felt it all slipping away. The perfect reunion. The ideal family moment. A familiar pit in my stomach returned.

Jack looked over the menu and announced he wanted spaghetti and meatballs. 

The menu had things like duck leg confit and orecchiette con fricone. There was an inslata rustica and something called tagliatelle con funghi. 

No spaghetti and meatballs.

For years, that’s what I made.

I made it on long days and cold days and bad days.

When anxiety crushed his 6-year-old spirit, I boiled water in a big pot on the stove.

When puberty descended and threatened to steal him from me, I added tomatoes to garlic and olive oil.

When he sat at the counter and raged about homework, I drained pasta in the sink. 

It was all I could think of to do.

Did it help?

I don’t know.

Maybe.

Autism does this. It forces me to consider the past. It makes me terrified of the future.

When he was a toddler, he rolled the meatballs between his fingers. He had to feel his food before he could taste it.

Over and over again, we put a fork in his hand. Over and over again, he threw it down in a rage. 

But slowly, he began to hold onto it. He clasped it against his palm. He attempted to pick up food with the tines. 

That’s autism for you. 

Sometimes it’s a mess. 

Sometimes it’s good. 

Mostly it’s baby steps forward, lots of reckless hope, and forks on the floor.

Maybe you were having a tough day. Maybe the kitchen was backed up or you ran late for your shift and your manager was annoyed. 

When it comes to my son and his autism, I have to consider everyone’s point of view. I have to look at things from every angle. I search for color and light within the glass prism that is the spectrum.

We were visiting Jack for Parents’ Weekend.

If you’d told me two years ago I’d be saying these words, I never would have believed you.

For the longest time, I thought this boy may sit in our house forever—an exotic bird in a gilded cage of his own choosing.

Now, he lives hundreds of miles away, in a residential space with other kids like him.

My worry runs so deep, it’s as though it’s hardly there at all. 

The world has much to learn.

So does this boy Jack.

Can each learn it in time?

I believe in him. 

I believe in second chances, and smiles of goodwill, and parmesan cheese on top pf pasta.

I believe because I have to believe. I have no other choice.        

I have no other choice because one day I will die. And as much as this idea stops me in my tracks, it is true.

This is me, small and afraid. 

For now, I live bravely. 

Bravely, I live.

I have no choice but to look to the sky and see sun instead of storms.

I hear notes of music and listen for birds gone free.

I smell incoming autumn with dusky red leaves. They are dying, floating, drifting, landing. Yet come springtime the branches will be green with newness. 

Newness. This is the light to which I hold tightly. There is always newness—even in the familiar pit, the messed up reservation, the line by the hostess stand, the glances, the forks.

“You’d like spaghetti and meatballs? Let me see what we can do.”

Thank you.