How I’ve Found Strength in My Autistic Son
He is teaching me a remarkable lesson about survival during the pandemic
The sky over my house is gray. The continuous fires just over the mountain leave a thin layer of ash to sweep away in the mornings. Like just about everything else, the fires have been bad this year.
On my morning walks, my mask pulls double duty against the virus and the smoke. It’s hard, literally, to pause, take a deep breath, and appreciate the beauty of small moments. There don’t seem to be many small moments these days. They’ve all gone out with the cruel tide that’s been 2020.
It’s been a hard year for us. For all of us. It’s been particularly hard for parents of kids with autism and other disorders and disabilities.
Our kids have been without the network of support they rely on since March. And we’ve been without the network of help that gets us through the day for just as long. By now, many of us are running on fumes with no finish line in sight. Distance learning for our kids is mostly useless. And while the world urges us to “buckle down,” we’ve got nothing left to buckle. Our souls are weary. We’re looking in places we never thought of for strength. Some are healthy. Others aren’t. But we’re searching. So I thought I’d share what I found. It’s the last place I thought I’d find strength.
My son Aidan was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder two months before his third birthday when I was deployed to Iraq. I fell into a dark hole that day. The climb out of it was the fight of my life. Most parents of autistic kids will tell you the same thing. And they’ll also tell you how often they revisit that hole. And how often they have to pull themselves back out. One of the things that gets me out is trying to see the world the way my son sees it.
The world in my head is a complicated place. It’s full of the future and the past. It’s full of worry about what could go wrong. And it’s full of the want for something better. The pressures of today’s spiraling reality bear down me. They travel with me through my phone in my pocket. They’re on my television. They live in the pressure of a job I’m grateful to have but scared more than ever to lose. I drag the weight of mostly invisible, abstract, but…
