Spell

"I'm sending you a book," my friend from Finland texted to me a few years ago. She is our older son's Godmother. "Honestly, you simply have to read it."

Sigh. Oh boy. A book? Really?

This woman is my heart. But, geez, how the heck am I expected to read something while running after these kids with my pants on fire?

The book arrived in no time. Drat. Shouldn't international mail still use boats or something?

I opened the envelope, and my heart actually sank. Ugh. It was about autism. Every day, I live autism. Every day, my kids live autism. In our best moments, we have triumphed over autism. In our proud moments, we are celebrating autism. In our worst moments, we are living through autism. Autism keeps us from sleeping. Day and night I look to the Internet to help me with something about autism.

How can I find any more energy in me to devote to autism? Why would I want to? Putting trust in my friend, I explored the cover, and it beckoned to me. Opening the first few pages, I was hooked.

I saw our older son in this book.

So far, in my journey as this child's mother, I'm sad to say that he has always been the extreme, the inigma, the most complex. He's always been the trickiest, the one that was the hardest to handle. My husband and I had no idea what we were facing. Was this good or bad? Did this mean we had more raw material to work with or less? Was our son in there? We'd never really seen any signs.

I read the book voraciously.

Two mothers, two countries, joined together by their sons and autism. One mother, self taught and living overseas, found a way to communicate with her child. The other was creative in finding outside resources for her son. One of those resources was this mom in another country.

It was a journey of friendship, of bonding together for a cause, of autism and of education. It was a story of hope. In this day where not much is known about autism, there are so many theories floating around about causes and treatments. So many methods of education. So many MONEY SUCKERS. It's very easy to lose hope. I was weary from the daily battles and the large attempts to find our magic bullet.

I was weary but not beaten.

And, so, when I read in this book about how a mom started communicating with her child by writing the alphabet down on a sheet of paper and teaching him to spell words...I was intrigued.

When I learned that the sheet of paper then progressed to a computer keyboard, I was hopeful.

When I read the poetry that this nonverbal child was able to express through the use of his computer, I was overcome with emotion.

Quickly, I pulled out a piece of plain, white paper and scribbled a rough rendering of the alphabet, and I took it to our son.

"Spell your name," I said to him.

He pointed, and..he..spelled...his...name! Then, for good measure, he spelled it backwards.

"Spell 'rice'," I said.

And he did.

"Spell 'mall'," I said.

And he did.

I set down the sheet of paper and looked into the eyes of our child, knowing we had yet to scratch the surface of who he really is.



For more information about the book mentioned in the post, click HERE

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This entry was written in response to the letter prompt "S" in the Blogging A to Z April 2012.