Editor’s note: I wrote this piece from my son Jack’s point of view, based on many conversations he and I have shared. One time my mother told me about this movie she watched. It was by a man named Alfred Hitchcock. In the movie, a woman is lying in a hospital bed. Her face is covered […]
Today, I will remember my son did not ask for autism, any more than he asked for light brown hair or a lazy eye. If we have a rough morning and he says a swear word because he can’t get the lid off the peanut butter, I won’t get mad. I won’t grit my teeth […]
Did I tell you my son has autism? It’s usually one of the first things I mention, not because I want you to feel bad for him, or for us. I tell you about my him so you’ll know right away I don’t want to talk about nonsense. I don’t want to know about the […]
Hi. My name is Carrie. I have a son with autism. His name is Jack. He is almost fifteen years old. He has blue eyes. In case you were wondering, he is not a savant. He does not possess some exceptional skill in math. He doesn’t swirl colorful blobs of paint into masterpieces, and he’s […]
Hello. I have been thinking about you lately. We’ve never met. You live in West Virginia, and I live in New Hampshire. I have five kids. My second son, Jack, has autism. Jack told me West Virginia and New Hampshire are exactly five hundred and forty-six miles apart. He knows stuff like this. I bet […]
Can I tell you a secret? It’s a little embarrassing, to be honest. We always thought our son Jack would recover from autism. We thought he would “get over it,” or heal, or just morph into a regular old kid who likes to toss a baseball around and fly kites on windy days. For years, […]
Mama, how do you build a family? A family? Well, my child, a family is at once the easiest and the hardest thing to build. Think of it as a garden. Maybe you expected rows and rows of neat tulips, standing straight and tall in their church pews, eating organic apples […]
Editor’s note: I wrote this blog based on my son’s diagnosis on paper, and the color he brings to everyday life. Imagine I took away your memory. Not your memory, exactly. You could still remember things like the time you got stung by a bee, and how your family always ate hotdogs in the summer. But […]
I keep a small green box on my desk, and inside are all the letter tiles from an old game of Scrabble. When I sit at my laptop to write, and the words won’t come, I remind myself that inside this box is every sonnet, play, song, and story ever written. Romeo and Juliet. Little […]
