We sit upright on the couch, listening to the news. Bullets raining hellfire on a sleepy town in Maine. A bowling alley, of all places. I take stock of my children. This what you do when tragedy strikes, no matter how near or far. College, basketball practice, upstairs doing homework. Down for his after-dinner snack, […]
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 […]
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 […]
It’s a chilly afternoon in November. The mall is quiet. A few people starting their holiday shopping. Two women walk into a store. It’s the kind that sells decorations for the home. Animals carved from wood, tapestries woven from silky strands. Although they don’t look alike, you can tell they are related. Mother, daughter. The […]
“Tell me about his diet. Does he eat a wide range of foods?” I hold the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I reach for a gallon of milk. “Oh, yes, he eats almost everything!” Another intake call. That’s what I find myself on in the middle of the grocery store. The young […]
Autism diagnosis day always brings us up short. We’re not made for it. No one is. Even those more prepared—those of us who had the words circling the back of our minds like wispy smoke at a campfire—well, our knees still buckle at the formal announcement. How could they not? Autism. The next day we […]
My son Jack has autism. He is eighteen. He was diagnosed when he was a little over a year. We were in a small room. The doctor was soft-spoken. Gentle. He wore a tie. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse of that room in my mind’s eye. The brown carpet. The silver […]
My son. Autism connected us together in the complicated ways. For eighteen years, we were a “we.” I spoke when you couldn’t find the words. My regulation was the barometer for your own. I fought. I sat in stuffy conference rooms and made a case for inclusion and behavior therapy. I wrote emails. I made phone […]
Dear Jack You probably don’t remember this, but when you were a little boy, I had a necklace I wore every day. It had the word believe spelled in silver script. Whenever you started to unravel in the way only a toddler with autism can unravel, I would hold the necklace up for you to see. […]