GBE2: Snapshot

I sat on the floor of our small family room, snapshots spread all around me. Pictures of our older son's past. I was trying desperately to find answers.

He was just two years old at that time, a large boy with a head of white blonde hair. Doctors told us that he had autism, and while we had struggled with this child every minute of every day of his life, we had no understanding of what autism was.

Autism, that man told us. Mental retardation. Limited social interaction. A life of permanent dependence and disability.

What cold words that man used to describe my baby.

Every cold thing he said to us during the day our son was diagnosed shattered my heart into pieces, and yet I would look at that child and hear a voice inside my head that said to me, "Keep moving forward."

Forward? Where was forward?

This was over ten years ago. Even less was known about autism then than is known now. I didn't know which way forward was.

By day, I chased the child who never stopped. I tried to soothe the toddler who could not be soothed, and I fed him food which I later learned he could not digest. Then, at night, I would put him in bed with the false hope that he would go to sleep.

While he was wakeful in that bed upstairs into the wee hours of the night, I poured over every website I could find about autism in our downstairs home office.

I needed answers.

How did we end up in this awful place? Where did we go wrong?

"Look at these pictures," I remember calling to my husband one day as I sat amidst a pile of snapshots. I was trying to find a clue--any clue--as to when this autism struck our lives. "He looks so normal in all of these." My husband came into the room as I picked up picture after picture, eying each one carefully. "I never remember him being normal." My eyes filled with tears.

"I know," my husband said. "I was very careful with those shots." He hung his head. "They were brief moments captured very quickly so that we could have something normal to remember."

I looked down at a picture of our smiling boy. No pain on his face. No blank stare. He was so handsome.

I guess that is when my obsession with the perfect snapshot began, the quest to capture him doing what any other child would do, the desire to see him looking like any other child---normal.

The annual Christmas card.
School pictures.
Group photographs.

For years---absolutely for years---I would return those school pictures or dump those cards and photos if there was a hint of anything "special" visible. I thought that he deserved better. I thought that he deserved, at least on the face of a snapshot, to look normal.

Last week, I took our sons to throw rocks into a nearby canal. We are currently in our final few weeks of summer break from services before school starts in September. Breaks are hard on all of us, and I noticed our older son as he walked off alone with his hands in his ears. I followed him.

He made his way under a bridge where he could take a moment to collect himself. I stayed back, watching him be...himself.

I thought he looked adorable...

...but he's eleven so don't tell him that I used that word.

This is our son.

Years ago, I would have never taken those snapshots. Now, I love them. They have captured who he is. Years ago, I would have cringed at the sight of them and those like them because they did not look exactly normal.

Just when did I come to understand that this is his normal?

This child is one of the strongest people I know. I only hope that he can survive his mother.



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This entry was written in response to a word prompt issued by the Group Blogging Experience 2 (GBE2).