The late afternoon sun dances across my desk. It’s more orange than yellow. Here in New Hampshire, autumn is well on its way. I lean back in my chair, a Word Document open on my laptop. It’s blank. I feel first-day-of-school nervous. Going-into-labor nervous. Except instead balancing on the ledge of newly sharpened pencils or […]
He is always screaming. But sometimes he’s quiet. I can’t find a way to soothe him. He squirms when I hold him. He cries all the time. He’s not talking. He has no words. He won’t look at me. I don’t know what he wants. All day long he cries and I don’t know what […]
My son Jack is diagnosed with autism. He is nineteen. Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of explanations for autism. Autism is caused by mercury. Autism is caused by lead. Autism begins with poor maternal bonding. Pesticides may trigger autism. Plastics. Gluten aggravates autism spectrum disorder. People with autism should eat more strawberries. The […]
There are five kids in my family. I am the middle child. My older brother Jack has autism. All my life I waited for a chance to stand up for Jack, to fight for him. It wasn’t until he moved out, I realized I never needed to protect him. Instead, I will always learn from […]
I have never once sat in the bleachers and rooted for you to hit a homerun. I have never sat in a stuffy middle-school gym and rooted for you to spell the word paragraph into a microphone. That’s the tricky thing about autism. It makes me consider how we don’t root for the same things as most. […]
I write a lot about marriage. I write about when our voices grow loud and jagged. I write about what it may feel like to be a Forever Father. I write about how I try to notice the small gestures that make life lovely. This week, join us for an exclusive interview and Q&A with […]
I have the son who couldn’t sit still for circle time. I have the son who whirled around the doctor’s office, all moving limbs and screeching sound. I have the son with autism. I have the son who shrieked and clawed his way through puberty. I have the son who bit the teacher. He left […]
The first thing she notices are the bushes. They reach over the sidewalk, forming an arch of green. Ducking beneath them, she thinks of her mother, reduced to ashes in a box. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Yet here, at this house, she is everywhere. Every corner hosts a memory. Tomatoes, plump and red […]
There is a tinge of autism in the air. We load the last of your bags in the car. I look to the sky. I think of newborns wrapped in blue. I think of spring. I think of sandcastles. I read somewhere that it’s easy to trap bees in a jar. This is because they […]
I. We are hands clasped on a sunlit campus, autumn’s confetti beneath our feet. We are possibility. II. The swish of white. A dash of black tie. Silhouettes before the priest, posed family photos, all stiff smiles and jangled nerves. Who will we be? What have we done? III. This first pregnancy. It’s like watching […]
