Please Evacuate the Aircraft
“Good afternoon, everyone. I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask all the passengers to evacuate the aircraft. We have a security issue.”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. As I bent forward to get my bag, I heard shouting.
A man ran up through the aisle as though he’d been shot from a cannon. He was holding a backpack close to his chest. He was screaming obscenities.
I clasped hands with the woman next to me. We’d said maybe a dozen words to one another since she sat in her seat. Still, our movements were instinctual. Unspoken. We would see each other through this. Her hand was small and soft within my own ungainly palm.
I started shaking.
It was almost a non-event. He was escorted off the plane. Our need to deplane evaporated over the loudspeaker. He was gone. All was right again.
We looked at each other and shook our heads. The air filled with murmurs.
At the same time, my mind wandered to another young man with a backpack.
My son.
Jack.
What if he had been on the plane? How would he have reacted to the announcement and the screaming?
Would his nervous system have elevated as well?
Would he have wrung his hands together, or—even worse—tried to get up from his seat in a panic?
Autism.
This is the lens through which I see every angle of life’s prism.
I don’t choose to do this. Yet it is my default way of thinking.
Jack is eighteen now. He lives in a supported space and takes college classes. The prism feels brightly magnified.
When he left, we worried about many things. Bullies, speeding cars in the crosswalk, online predators.
Two weeks ago, one of our deep-seated fears came true. Jack connected with someone through social media. They agreed to meet in person, yet when he got there it turned out to be two men. They asked him for money.
How do you heal from this? How do you come back from it?
I catastrophize many situations. I jump straight to the worst possible scenario.
I think if I do this—if I prepare for the worst—then I will be relieved when it doesn’t happen.
When I’m not imagining all different unimaginable scenarios my son may find himself in, I am trying to decide how much of his edges I should smooth to fit his square corners into our round world.
Neuroscience tells us our brains become attached to an outcome or circumstance. Then it scouts for evidence to support it.
We have to actively choose to change our minds.
Desperately, I want to change my mind.
I want to stop the cycle of worry and fear.
There is every reason to believe he will be successful. Every reason to believe we will see our way out of this.
And many reasons to believe we will not.
If I told you I don’t know what I’m doing, would you blame me?
Don’t worry, you can’t blame me more than I blame myself.
At the same time, I feel ferociously defensive.
How could I know what to do?
Yet I hate myself. Every single day.
The man and the words were gone from the plane.
Where did he go?
One day I will be gone.
Where will he go?
I am haunted.
I am tired.
I am trying.
I am trying to balance edge-smoothing with the person he is.
Jack. World.
If only each could see themselves through my eyes.
It’s not enough to be kind.
We have to be curious.
We have to tell our stories.
Because if compassion is a house we build, then storytelling is the key to the front door.
It brings us inside the walls.
And slowly, like a prism with countless angles and light and rainbows, people see their own reflections in our words. They see tiny colorful bits of themselves and their families and their own spectrum journey.
Only then can we see each other through this, hands clasped, hearts racing.
Blue. That’s the color of Jack’s backpack.
May 1, 2023 @ 12:32 pm
We all worry what will have happen when we are gone. I worry what degree Evan is with autism and believe he’s in the middle. He goes to regular school and has good grades, hardest is not having friends. This breaks my heart as he is 13 and wants friends😢💦💦💦
May 1, 2023 @ 12:49 pm
Beautifully said, as always. Thank you for always sharing with such transparency 💙
May 2, 2023 @ 1:46 am
He is 18. He is doing well. You are doing well. The man has left the plane. Celebrate! P.S. A book that I found hugely helpful in managing my happiness: Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist.
May 2, 2023 @ 5:19 am
“I want to stop the cycle of worry and fear.” Me too, me too.