What This Picture Doesn’t Say

My son Jack.

My husband Joe.

I took this picture of them over the weekend. 

If I viewed it through a stranger’s eyes, I might believe it is nothing more than an 18-year old boy sitting next to his father. Both are relaxed. Happy.

Yet there is so much this picture doesn’t say.

Jack never walked. He crawled early, then spent months pulling up on everything around him—kitchen chairs, side tables, the big tan couch that dominated the room. For months, we waited for the first wobbly step. Then one day, he let go, and ran.

From that point on, we chased him.

Down the driveway, through parking lots, in the grocery store. 

In the doctor’s office, in the library, in the parking lot, in the mall.

His first word was ball. He spoke it nearly two years to the day after the doctor delivered an autism diagnosis, all black and white letters splashed across a white page. 

I’d never seen him touch a ball once.

Jack and his father are very different.

One, a man whose love language is food and affection.

The other, a boy who resists an embrace. He loathes anything chewy, mixed together, or spicy.

A man with an easy smile, the boy who rarely laughs at all.

They are very different, yes, but also similar. 

They share the same furrowed brow, a fondness for cookies, a tendency to keep their head down when they walk.

For as long as I can remember, they have a unique tendency to elevate each other. One gets loud and agitated, and the other follows—a nervous system game of cat-and-mouse.

It makes me anxious. I hate it. In the beginning, I tried to manage them both. Their moods, interactions, arguments, and opinions.

See, when you have a diagnosed child, there is a triangle of sorts: mother, father, boy. Firmly we sit in our angled corners, convinced we know the best way. Our way.

Then one day I simply let go. I stopped trying to be the safety net upon which they fell, breathless and irritated and divided.

I remember the exact moment. Jack was fourteen. We were at a middle school concert with plans to go out for dinner afterwards. It was early March. The metal sky spit a cold rain.

Jack didn’t want to be there. He fidgeted while the singers performed. At one point, he looked straight at his father and shouted the worst swear word he could. Joe stood up angrily and steered him toward the door. A folding chair clattered to the floor as they moved. 

My inclination was to follow—to soothe and mediate.

But I didn’t. I stayed and watched the next song, then the next. I was tired of being in the middle. 

That was four years ago.

At times, watching them is like a watching a most chaotic dance. They seem out of sync, out of rhythm. 

But I can only play observer to their most intense moments. As much as I hate it, it is this downshifted role that helped them establish and re-establish who they are to one another. 

Chasing father, racing son.

In other words, I was standing in the way of this beautifully messy relationship. 

Slowly, like a painting under the artist’s brush, they emerged vibrant with color. They found each other. The sharp angles didn’t disappear altogether, but they became smoother. Softer. Something closer to circle than triangle.

This photo doesn’t tell you the hours upon hours this father spent teaching Jack life lessons about anything and everything. 

How to change a lightbulb, carry a wallet, tie a tie, shave.

How to shake a hand, cross the street, be wary of strangers.

It doesn’t give a glimpse into the Saturday mornings spent at the bank so Jack could deposit his weekly check and update the balance in his checkbook.

Jack is in a college program now. 

Joe Is doing his very best to stand back and let the world pick up the threads of his nurturing. He fervently hopes he’s done enough.

I know his heart even without words, without conversation.

I know it by the way he reaches for Jack’s shoulder in the crosswalk, then pulls back at the last minute to let his son navigate the traffic on his own. 

I know it by the causal tone his voice takes when he reminds him not to walk alone in the dark.

I know it by watching him hold the phone in his hands long after their nightly college call has ended. 

This photo doesn’t explain that when it comes to autism, there is no best way.

It doesn’t show a memory so vivid in my mind, it’s as though it happened yesterday.

Outside a middle school, two silhouettes stand beneath a raw March sky. They sway together in the dusky light, as if to music only they can hear.

Tender father.

And the boy who ran before he walked. 

Ball was his first word.

Daddy was his second.