The Top Five "Big-O" Moments In Our Home

Tsk. Tsk. That naughty blogging group of mine!  It's topic week #100, and members have been challenged to be open with the world about personal experiences with "The Big-O".

Well...my goodness.

However, since it is week #100, a milestone for the group, I have accepted the challenge and will boldly admit to this:  My husband was out of town for four days this past weekend, and I experienced many "Big-O" moments.

In fact, "Big-O" moments happen to me all the time.  Most memorable moments in our house involve a "Big-O" moment.  I do believe that I can make a short list.  Giggle.


                                          The Top Five "Big-O" Moments In Our House


5.  Ornery

He who does not think that 'ornery' can rise to the level of a "Big-O" moment has not known the intense orneriness that comes from the active mind of a mentally intact, nonverbal autistic child. Our older son's orneriness can elevate the chaos in our lives in the blink of an eye.

Older Son:  Hm.  I don't really feel like bolting here in the mall, but...I'm kinda bored.  Let's have some fun with the talking non-autistic people.  I think that I'll run a few steps just to flip them out on 3...2...1..GO!  Snicker.  Should I really get them going and go out of sight and around a corner?

Older Son:  Attic.  Must unscrew every bolt to the attic stairs/ceiling fan/"obstructive" pieces of plywood that parents thought would keep me out of that wondrously, fascinating attic!

Older Son:  See this thing that turns on the light?  It's WAY FUN to unscrew all of them from every lamp in the house just before dusk!


4a. Oh No!

The first sign of trouble.  That first reaction to the realization that the climate around us is about to take a sharp turn.

The Whoosh! that is the flushing of the upstairs toilet.  OH NO! Older son has made a solo trip to the bathroom! His aim is not so great right now.  Has he urinated on the wall?

Older Son:  See this?  It is the Best toy in the world EVER!

This is where it is positioned on his bedroom rug. Always.  That is, of course, unless his bedroom floor is messy, or there is chaos, or someone is rushed or otherwise careless.  Then, the vacuum could be bumped.  Then, it could end up positioned here:

Or, here:

Or, here:

Gasp! OH NO! Whoever kicked it is surely thinking of this "Big-O" phrase, and I guarantee that our Big Guy is thinking of it also.  Up he will spring from bed as he settled into a string of OCD rituals aimed to moving the loving vacuum back to its precisely rightful spot on that carpet.  Back.  Forth.  Side.  Center.  Side.  Center.  Step away to observe.  Cock head.  Repeat a million painful times.

4b. OM(God)(Goodness)!

Take a pick based upon your own belief system.  I'm at the point where I'll admit to not being squeaky clean under stress.

Used when pressure settles in, sometimes laced with a dose of shock.

For example, upon examining the upstairs bathroom after hearing the Whoosh! of the flushing toilet, I learned that, yes, our son did, in fact urinate on the walls behind the commode...and the ones beside the commode...and the curtains...as well as the cabinet and sink behind him.  I guess the urine formed a nice big puddle on the floor in which he stood before leaving the room.  Across the bathroom floor and down the hallway carpet leading to the room was a trail of wet footprints.   OMG!!

4c. Oh Shazam!

Only, it isn't "Shazam" that I say.  I'll admit to it.  I'm human.  I have flaws, and one flaw happens to take the form of a potty mouth when the pressure of special needs in this house becomes intense.

I realized my problem when my older son learned to say...ahem..."Shazam"...before he learned to call me "Mamamommy".  He said it on the school bus.  Cringe.

3.  Octopus, Opossum, Osprey, Orangutan, Orca, Otter, Owl and Oyster.

I just asked our nine-year-old son to name every animal he could that started with the letter "O".  This was his list.  How could you do?

He additionally started spewing facts about various mating seasons, animal classifications, habitations, natural known predators and, frankly, I can't say what else.  By this point, #4b kicked in, and my left eyelid started to twitch.

His brain is at once lovely and relentless.

2.  Ouch!

Autism and gastric pain.  It often goes hand-in-hand.  Our older son does not know what it is like to live a day without pain, and it saddens me.

1. Oh Shazam! Part II

Absolutely, how I am spending most of my "Big-O" moments these days, because when our older son turned 11 years old, he decided to avoid using the toilet when going #2 as much as he possibly could.

'Nuff said.


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

Celebrating my name in print: Chicken Soup for the Soul, autism-style

It was a crisp winter day in upstate New York, and I emerged from my salon feeling like a new woman. I was as close to looking like a supermodel as I was going to get, and I yearned for a destination. I needed somewhere to go, somewhere to swoosh my hair and to walk with a spring in my step.  After all, I'd just had two hours out of my house.

Away from my kids.

:)

I listened to hip music.

I drank a cocktail.

:)

I wore high heel shoes.

Suffice it to say, I was feeling anything but a special needs mom, and it was simply wonderful!!!

I unlocked my car door, slipped into the driver's seat and simply sat. The keys to the car remained in my lap, and I drank in the silence. Oh, how I longed to go somewhere, anywhere; however, I simply couldn't. My time was up. I was expected at home.  Who knew what condition that house would be in when I returned?!

Just then, my phone sounded. I had received a text from home which read, "There is a large box waiting here for you from the publishers of Chicken Soup for the Soul."

Gasp!  EEEEEKKKKKKK!

The advance copies of the Chicken Soup for the Soul: Raising Kids on the Spectrum had arrived!!!  Suddenly, there was nowhere I wanted to be that moment other than in my home, and I raced there with great anticipation.  You can sure bet I had that spring in my step as I approached my house and placed my hand on that doorknob to our kitchen door. Turning the knob, I flung open that door and bound into the house, ready to tear into that box and celebrate this long-awaited day--the day I would first see my name in print!

But, it didn't happen that way at all.

I opened the door and was assaulted by the sound of my older son screaming in pain and anger from the downstairs bathroom. Our younger son was acting like a spastic animal playfully beating on a respite worker, and, somewhere in this auditory chaos I could also hear sounds of frustration from my husband, who was trying to work with our older son, who is notorious for withholding his bowel movements.

Bye-bye newly minted author. So long supermodel. Hello special needs mom.

I figured the respite worker could hold his own with our younger son, so I charged to the bathroom to find our older son naked and hovering over the toilet. Daddy needed a break--believe me, we all do at one point or another. I tagged him out, bent to my knees in order to be on eye level with our son so that I could better communicate with him. As soon as I did, I felt something squish between my bare toes.

Mama had knelt into a pile of poo that was now on the knees of my (dry clean only) pants--pants that only supermodels wear on salon days.  Said poo was now globbed in a mess that ran from my knee down to the tips of my feet. Super! Just super!  I'll also add that once the damage was done, I didn't scream or get up. That's the hallmark of parenting special needs style. Yep. I stayed in the pile of poo to attend to our child, who was still hovering over the toilet and screaming.   Happy Advance Book Day to me!

Turning my attention to our older son, I saw that the pile of poo had apparently traveled because he seemed to have sat in it. Our naked child had it all over his bum and legs. In fact, he, too, had stepped in it. Good gracious, if the toileting job had not been completed by this point, it wasn't about to be from where things stood. I decided clean us both and abandon the effort.  Toileting is a tough process lately in this house. I judged no one, but I also knew a failed situation when I saw one. Time to move forward.

"It's okay, Buddy," I soothed him.  "This whole thing was a disaster, wasn't it?" I hoped that the tone of my voice would calm him, but it didn't. As soon as he was clean. He stormed out of that bathroom, crying, and began to pace around the downstairs indignantly.

I remained behind with all the bleach products I could gather.

Once I had finished cleaning, I walked out of the bathroom, smelling of bleached hands, soapy feet and poo-stained knees.  Our older son was pacing and screaming, pacing and screaming. Was something more bothering him than a bruised ego? Was he in pain? I studied him.

"Don't worry about him," my husband told me. "Let the respite worker deal with it for the moment. Let's look at your books."

The books! Yes! Let's celebrate the books!!! We walked into the kitchen, and I heard, "Mama? Can you make me some food?" Ugh. Our younger son's medication had him always thinking of food. What could I fix him that was healthy? What could I make?

"Not now," my husband said to him. His voice interrupted my thoughts.  "Mom's books are here."

"Her books are here?!" our younger son asked. "I want to see! I want to see! I wanttoseeIwanttoseeIwanttoseeIwanttosee!!!"

He was all hands. Having no concept of personal space, he was up in my space grabbing where I grabbed, spewing words up my nose as loudly as he could. All the while, in the background, our older son cried and paced, cried and paced.

I finally released the packing tape on the outside of the box and found my way to the stack of books inside.  Our younger son reached for his first, but then my fingers touched one of my own. They were simply beautiful.

"Where's your name? How do you spell your name? I don't see it? Where is it? Where can I find it? Where? Where? Where?" our younger son was screaming below me. My husband worked with him while I opened to the Table of Contents.

However, before I found them, our younger son grabbed the book from my hands and asked to see the name of my entries. I smiled and decided to give into his excitement. There would be time for quiet contemplation later.

"Let's take pictures!" my husband suggested.

Oh my, I thought, remembering what I had been doing just minutes before. Yet beside me, our younger son was already posing and saying, "Cheese." Sigh. I asked my husband to please take pictures from the waist up.

So, here we are, our younger son and his mom with poo on her pants. With imagination, one can hear the sounds of our older son, pacing and screaming in the room to the left, angry about a failed toileting session.  It was a celebration special needs style, 'cause we don't roll any other way.

Escape

Our older son learned how to stand when he was seven months old. He walked three months later.  By one year of age, he was bolting at a full sprint into moving traffic. My child. My baby who did not answer to his name.

He was completely oblivious to the safety risks present in the world around him, preferring to play in windows rather than with toys, making a game out of getting the car door open while the vehicle was moving on the interstate.   My husband and I lived in a constant state of fear, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice should he fall, should he cut himself or should he escape.

He was five years old when he first escaped from our home.

Barefoot and armed only with his security blankets and a plush Barnie, he left our home, and we didn't even know it.  Earlier that day, we were in our car, returning to our house after running a typical Saturday morning errand.

"Mall," he said.

"No, Buddy," I told him.  "Not now. Lunch."

"Mall," he repeated.

"No," I firmly countered.  "Lunch time."

"Mall," he continued.

"Lunch first, then mall," I told him.  End of story, my little man!

He started to whine in protest, but I didn't care.  After all, I wasn't saying he could never go.  I was merely saying not now.  Our son had very little language at the time.  A tense discourse on the matter was out of the question, yet as his protests grew, the closer we came to our house, his feelings on the matter were quite clear to me.  He didn't need language to tell me that he was angry.  I didn't need the two-way conversation to say that, too bad, he'd have to wait until after lunch.

That's what I thought, anyway.

By the time we entered the house, our big guy was red-faced and crying.  I was immune to the tears and intent on finding a mental happy place as I set about making lunch.  The sooner we ate the sooner I'd get him to the mall, and we'd all be happy.

I locked the kitchen door, a dead bolt lock which we had installed up at the top of the door frame out of our son's immediate reach.  It was the newest in a progression of locks that we had placed on the doors of our house to keep him inside and safe.  After all, our guy was a bolter.  He was smart. He enjoyed locks ever-so-much, and he enjoyed beating those locks even more.

As I prepared the food in the kitchen, I could hear him screaming upstairs.  The screaming.  For some reason or another, this child had screamed simply so much in his lifetime.  And, frankly, the more I got to understand him and his autism--his sensory pain, his gastric pain, his trouble forming words and moving his body in general, his comorbid anxiety and depression as well--really, I couldn't blame him for the screaming.

I just wish that I could help him.  How could I help him?

I spent every waking minute of every day trying to figure out how I could help this child.  His brother, two years younger and born with a paralyzed arm due to a brachial plexus injury at birth, required therapy of his own.  Brother often took a back seat to autism.  Little did I know that it wouldn't be very long before he would receive a diagnosis as well.

Just how did we find ourselves here, and what could I do to crate some semblance of a joyful childhood for our two boys?

As I mulled over these thoughts and put the final touches on the lunch preparations, I realized that our older son's crying had stopped.  I felt relief that the tantrum was over; however, in the next moment, I realized that it was just too quiet.  Although he had very little language, our son actually made a good deal of noise, and at that moment, our house was dead silent.

I bolted toward his bedroom but didn't have to go far. For, as soon as I reached the front hallway, I saw that he had somehow reached the lock at the top of the door frame, beaten it for the first time.  Out the door he went, leaving it wide open for us to find.

He was gone.

He not only had a head start on us, he was simply GONE.  Our child who couldn't speak.  Our child who wouldn't look before crossing the road.  That child had run out the door, and I could not find him.

I don't think that I had ever felt true panic before then.

Fearing the worst, I screamed for my husband at the top of my voice and told him that our son had run out the door.  I had no idea how long he'd been gone.  I had no idea in what direction he ran.  I did not know where he was!!!

The fear of losing your child is greater than losing your own life.  The fear of losing your nonverbal, autistic child because you simply could not lock the doors enough, lock the windows enough, lock the car or garage or ANYTHING enough was unbearable.

My husband ran.  He simply ran.  He picked a direction and ran faster than I'd ever seen him run.  I grabbed our preschooler, tossed him into the van and set out in the opposite direction of my husband.  We lived on a main road.  I was scared.

"But, where is he?" our younger son asked innocently, not fully understanding the crazy life into which he'd been born.

"I don't know, honey," I said to him.  "Can you help me find him?  Tell me if you see your brother out the window!"  I requested of him.  My voice caught in my throat as I choked back a sob.  No mother should ever have to ask her three-year-old to help locate his older brother on the street.

I rolled down all the windows and started shouting his name.  I don't know why.  It wasn't as though he'd answer.  If he were about to run into the street, he would not stop if he heard my voice.  Still, I called out to him.

Then, I hear it.  It was my husband calling my name. He'd found him!

Thank you! Thank you Dear God!!! I started to sob.

Circling the streets, I finally came upon them, father and son, both with their heads hung low.  Our son, barefoot and with his blankies and Barney, had decided that he could walk the few miles to get to the mall.  Forget us.  Forget our schedule and forget lunch.

The look on my husband's face was one of sad resignation.  Our son was sorry to be going back home. They both got into the car, buckled, and from the back seat I hear, "Mall."

"Mall," he said, as if this whole traumatic event had never happened.

I sighed and said, "Lunch first," knowing that on that day, our little family had turned a corner along this journey.


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April is autism awareness month.

The Making of a Godmother to Autism

I remember a day when I was seventeen--a lifetime ago now--when my parents called me out of the sanctuary of my teenage bedroom and asked me to join them downstairs. Join them. In the family room.

I was nervous.

What did I do? I didn't think I had done anything wrong. I was basically a good girl. Well, even good girls find trouble some of the time. However, on the whole, I was a good girl, darn it!

Dutifully, I went downstairs.

My parents sat very seriously in their chairs. I stood before them because I had no idea what else I was supposed to do.

"An exchange student is in need of a home, " my mother told me.  "Your father and I would like for her to live with us. But before we agree to do so, we wanted to ask how you felt about it."

Avid Rotarians, my parents had always participated in the student exchange program. We housed many during my formative years. The exposure was normal to me and yet always felt a bit awkward.

I thought exchange students were dorks.

That year, my father was participating as the district governor, the highest position of office one can take within a given Rotary district.  If there were any programs that demonstrated needs, he was sure to hear about it.

Enter Hanna Suomalainin from Lohja, Finland.

Hanna needed a home, and my parents wanted to give her ours. It was my senior year in high school. It was supposed to be the best year of my life. Soon, I would be on an airplane myself to spend a year as an exchange student in Australia. Did I really have to spend my last few months in high school with an exchange student in tow?

Forever a people pleaser, I told my parents that I did not mind. Sure, another exchange student would be fine. It was all fine. I was FINE.

I was also a big, fat liar.

"Man! My parents just told me that we have to get an exchange student!" I complained to my BFF at the time.I had run to my room to call her as soon as the conversation with my parents was finished.

"Aw, man!" my friend responded.  "She doesn't have to hang out with us or anything, does she?"

We grumbled about our teenage angst for a while, and then I hung up the phone. I'll mix no words. All I could think was that this was going to suck.

Hanna came to our house looking shy and defeated. Her head hang low, and she didn't smile much. It was obvious that she was not enjoying her exchange. I wondered if she missed her home.

It was a genuine feeling of sympathy that I felt for her, but it was short-lived.  As soon as I could, I excused myself to my room. The youngest of four children, I was enjoying the absence of my siblings, who were in college or living and working away from home. The upstairs of the house was my domain. I had even lost the art of closing my bedroom door for privacy.

Enter once again Hanna Suomalainin from Lohja, Finland.

She just walked right into my room. What the heck? She walked right in and started talking. Phhht. This was small town America. People our age didn't really DO that sort of thing. I thought she was being awfully bold.

She walked into my bedroom that night, and in retrospect, that was the day that she officially walked into my life.  She opened my eyes to the world, and, most importantly, she believed in me. She liked me. She didn't judge me. She encouraged and supported me.

We spent our days in cold hard labor: aerobics and lying out by the pool at the Country Club. By night, we would enjoy the countless parties that high school seniors enjoy as they are about to embark on the world.

Those were the days of wine coolers, talking about boys and sneaking out on the roof of my home so that she could teach me to smoke (an experiment that did not stick with me but felt rebellious and fun).

 In a matter of weeks, Hanna Suomalainen from Lohja, Finland,  had become the most important person to me in the world. She had transformed me (I lost 30-40 pounds thanks to her support), and she had transformed my life.

When Hanna returned to Finland, my heart broke. To this day, I can say that I was more heartbroken over that than I had been by the breakup of any boyfriend in my youth. It was the day that I felt as though I had lost my sister.

Less than a month later, I was on an airplane, embarking on my year of Rotary Youth Exchange to Surfer's Paradise, Australia,  thus beginning my long distance relationship with the best friend I had ever known.

During the next ten years, we wrote to each other faithfully. Those were the days before e-mail. Before Facebook. All we had were pencils and air mail paper.
We wrote about school, life, casual boyfriends and serious boyfriends. There was even a moral discussion or two regarding what each thought officially constituted "cheating" on those boyfriends. (Oh, my!)

We talked about our wine coolers. We talked about parties. We talked about our philosophies on life. Always, we were plotting the next trip for us to see one another. Quickly, we grew up. The cursing and the partying died down. We experienced the divorce of her parents, death of various family members, weddings, pregnancies and life as mothers.

Autism entered my life painfully. And, while over the years I have learned the beauty that comes along with the disorder, I also experienced great pain to see both of my children become debilitated and disabled in life.  They are fantastic kids with bright futures, but, in the beginning, I couldn't see the future. All I saw were the young and untamed behaviors of two little boys. What would be her role as a Godmother to our older son?  I didn't even know what the autism rate was in Finland. Would she understand any of this--really, really understand?  How can it be that someone who was born and reared in another country with such a vastly different life from ours relate to a life of special needs?

 As it turned out, I know that I could not have made a better choice.

 Just last week as  Hanna and I were texting each other when she said something that made me pause and think, truly, how many stages of life this friendship has seen!

There must be a book in this.

 An accomplished writer, herself, Hanna has just published a wildly successful BOOK in Finland on becoming the caretaker for her father the summer his life succomed to Alzheimer's.  She has a web page that can be found HERE.  This link to her blog displays a discussion on our friendship.
The text for all of this is in Finnish but can be plugged into any translating program (i.e. Google Translate) for a rough interpretation.

That's when I remembered it.

In my basement, I had a box that contained memories of my youth, and in that box was a notebook of every letter Hanna had written to me. The letters are dated from 1988-1995.  After that, e-mail became available to both of us. I have a couple letters in 1996 and our first few e-mails.

I ran down after our conversation and retrieved that folder.  Hanna did not know about it.

Is there a book in this? We think so. She suggested that we each post to our blogs about it; however, I'm feeling terribly inadequate. Her web page got 25,000 hits last month.  The Mom Cave gets 3,000 hits a month. Compared to us here in the Cave, she's a total rock star.

To me, she always has been.

Those letters are a look into her youth. She's not so sure about reading them. I've read them, and I have laughed until I cried.  And, I also think of the special sort of individual who we, as parents,  choose--and they accept--to play an integral role in the lives of our special needs children.

Did I know that day  when Hanna Suomalainen boldly walked into my teenage bedroom that she would one day be that person? No. Of course not. But, even at that young age, her spirit was so bright that I knew I could never let it go.

Today, we are asking our faithful readers:  What do you think we should do with ten years of letters? 

********************************************

Hanna Suomalainen Jensen, her husband, and  their two daughters live in Helsinki, Finland.

The Lesson I Learned From My Freezer

There they sat in the freezer, directly in plain view, carelessly stacked on top of popsicle boxes and bags of frozen vegetables.  They were works of art and scientific studies at the same time.

They were, all five of them, created by our then-8-year-old son.

There was nothing convenient about the placement of the cups that held his treasures.  Dangerously tipped to one side or the other, they threatened to fall with even the slightest movement from any one of the other items on those shelves.  I was unable to get to anything without risking the entire effort.

And so, in the middle of my day, with an impossibly long list of things to do, these ill-placed experiments stopped me along my path, forcing me to live in the moment.

I blinked and looked at the cups.

Filled to varying degrees with orange juice, water, and milk, some thickened with different kinds of flavored syrup, they were each so carefully constructed. I peeked over the edge of them all and found that just beneath the thin layer of ice on their surfaces was an array of marbles, Legos, chocolate chips and fruit--things so different in size, scale and density that they provided absolutely perfect

conditions with which to conduct a study regarding the freezing point of different matter.

I took a step back, looked to the counter that stood across from the items in the freezer and smiled. There, ready for duty, sat a digital timer and a hand made log which our Little Scientist planned to use in order to collect his findings.

Which cup's contents would freeze faster and why?

I turned again to gaze at the cups in the freezer and realized that they did have one thing in common.

Planted in the center of each experiment was one of his favorite Lego men, his special toys, their presence putting into perspective for me the entire scene.

This was his play.

He was a kid just being a kid...the only way that he knew how. This is what his brain naturally liked to do when left to its own devices. In many ways, he was so far ahead of his peers. In other ways, he struggled more than his outward appearance showed.


He was the child who, at four years old, told me that my dangling, wet strands of hair looked like cirrus stratus clouds.

He was our expert on natural disasters by the age of five.

He was someone who could tell you everything there was to know about the mating habits of leopard geckos.

He was the boy who said this week that his jar of slime looked like ectoplasm.


 At his age, I'm pretty sure that I compared my jar of slime to snot.

This child was a child unlike any I had ever known. Yet, as with many children diagnosed with developmental delays and disorders, much of his life until that point had been focused on what was going 'wrong' with him.

We needed to know this. I don't deny that.

However, why there exists some mental shift in those who approach children with needs--why the forefront becomes clouded by the problems and not the positives--I do not know.

I am guilty of it.

"Hey, Buddy," I called out to him. "This is some very impressive work here!"

"Yeah," he said as he casually shrugged his shoulders, "I just wondered what would happen to the liquid molecules if manipulated and then all put in the same temperature below freezing."

But, of course.

Wanting to talk to him about how brilliant I thought he was, I gingerly asked him, "If you were to explain to the world what autism was, what would you say?"

"Autism is like a remote control for the brain," he responded thoughtfully. "It disables a lot of things--like scissors cutting a wire." I found it interesting that his definition of autism explained how it prevented people from doing things.

Both practically and clinically speaking, yes, we also needed to know this. However, as impressive as I found his answer to be, I also wished that his life had shown him more of the positive things that can accompany autism.

"Very true," I told him in affirmation of his words. I knew that he was thinking of his older brother who was low-verbal had faced many challenges due to his autism. "And, did you know that autism can also enable you to some really cool stuff?"

He shook his head.

"The way that you can learn every single fact about any topic that interests you?" I suggested. "That is likely a trait of your autism.  Heck, let's also remember that you know everything about the Japanese railway system. What kid knows that?!"

 He smiled.

"And, the way that you can look at something,take a mental image of it and store that exact image in your brain as it was the first time you saw it?" I shot him a look of complete admiration. "How about how you remember the day and the date of just about practically everything?!" I reminded him. "Very impressive, my friend. That, too, is all likely due to autism. It is your autism. This is how autism looks in you.  Pretty cool, huh?"

That day I realized that I had an obligation to our children to not only continue to shape the way that society viewed autism but to also shape the way that the boys viewed themselves.  I guessed that, because life often seemed to be thrown to me at warp speed, I wasn't so great at taking a step back and planning a more deliberate attack.

It often seems that I am flying by the  seat of my pants.

I do not have autism, and I do not have to function in society with that label attached to me for the rest of my life. However, our boys do.  What mother would want to send her children into the world feeling that a label had made them any less important than any one else?

I leaned down and planted a kiss on our Little Scientist's head.

"Wow," he said to me. "I didn't know all of that. I wonder if anyone wishes that they had my kind of autism?"


Right there. Right then, in that very moment and in our little world, everything with this child seemed at peace.


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This entry was written and submitted LATE in response to last week's writing prompt from the Group Blogging Experience 2 (GBE2): "In My Freezer".  Let's hope I don't earn detention for my late submission.

How Many Times Do You Smile In A Day?

Hands down, my favorite time of day is when my children are sleeping. There. I said it.

I'm free from responsibilities! I can sit! I love to sit. Phooey. I never get the chance to sit. Sitting on my couch in front of the TV while also Facebooking from my phone, to me, is pure bliss.

I was in that bliss last night when I heard a toothpaste commercial claiming that "Americans smile on average up to fifty times a day."  So...am I the only person who finds this data suspect?

I mentioned this on my Facebook page, laughing at the thought of how one would even go about authentically conducting such a study, and then I thought, well, where do I rank? Despite this insane life of special needs, I'm a happy person. I laugh and smile all day.

Is fifty a large number where smiles are concerned? I decided to find out by tracking my smiles today...'cause, I'm not a nerd or anything like that.

Most people begin their day some time around 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. However, that's not how special needs households typically roll. No sir! Well, at the very least, most houses with autism don't work that way.

We in our home usually start our day around 2:30 a.m. with a good bed-wetting in one room, a frat party in another, enough trips downstairs for water to fill an adult camel, one child losing toys--which simply must be found or else the world will end-- while the other child reaches panic mode about the fact that he is sitting in bed trying to sleep but sleep is not coming.

Night waking simply rocks.

Today, one hour into the day, I had easily logged not one smile; however, I had also not cursed nor yelled, so I considered this a win in my parenting book.  Therefore, I settled back into bed and listened to the sound of Boobahs coming from our older son's bedroom. He was playing the same ten-second portion of the introduction over and over and over again.

My husband had decided to comfort our anxious younger son by camping out on the floor of his bedroom  I reached for my phone, hoping to end the insanity,  quiet my brain and find fatigue once more. Ah, there was my toothpaste post from a few hours before!

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Additional responses to the posting yielded six smiles. :)  For me, social media is not a waste of time. it is a mental break from an otherwise mentally taxing life. Thank you, Friends. :)  {*Making a silent note to add this smile to my list. lol.}

"Mamamommy, I want potty, please!" I soon heard our older son call to me. It was 4 a.m.

He is not independent in the toilet.  So, I went to him, and we made our way to the bathroom where that child turned around and looked at me. He really, really looked at me. He pulled me down to his level, straightened my long hair, then looked back into my eyes and smiled.  His face, that face which was usually so overcome with sensory overload that it carried a far-off look, a look that caused him to seem disconnected, that face was so very clear. He looked. He smiled. And, I smiled back.

You can bet. I smiled back. There, in the bathroom at an obnoxious hour of the day, my child and I had a rare moment of staring into each others eyes clearly and affectionately, and we were smiling. :)

To my list, you can then add an additional four smiles over the next 30 minutes for kissing the skin off of him.

GAME ON, EVERYONE!!

How hard can this be? Who cares if our day began when, at one stage in life, it used to end? We're already off to a great start! So, let's count!!



1-6) Responses from FB friends.
7) Thankful for the reprieve that social media offers in my day.
8) A lingering moment of true clarity with our older son.
9-12) A mouthful of kisses for said moment.
13-16) Chatting with a FB friend once morning began.
17)Three words: upstairs coffee pot!!!! Every special needs parent needs one.
18) Extra smile for the genius and the joy the above brings to the morning.
19)Haha. Hahaha. Husband and I look like zombies.
20)Down in kitchen. Hello Halloween skeleton.

 
21) Best. Breakfast. Ever.
22) More coffee.
23)Hello dog who always wears a polite bow tie.

Medication duty with older son. No choice but to brave going into his bedroom, which I loath to do after the night of wakefulness. I stepped on a mound of Boobahs and tripped. Drat. Can't subtract smiles.

24)Missed the bus. Must drive to school. Toileting reluctant older son. Told him to sit and he flashed gorgeous smile to avoid. I'm a sucker.
25) Told son to sit again, and he sat in my lap. I'm still a sucker.
26) Son in my lap (still not toileting) reminded me that he has a song for the jiggly skin on my upper arm. Sings it as he flaps it away. Ugh. Humbling. But still smiling.
27)Older son out the door for school in father's car. Yippee!!
28)Shower at lightening speed before younger son's tutor arrived. Looked in the mirror to do hair and my image did NOT crack it! Woot!
29)A successful teaching moment in homeschool with younger son. Yay mom.
30)Back-to-back therapy for school phobic son complete. Ahhh.

Shoot! Private therapist appointment at her office in ten minutes!  Forget girlie clothes. Forced to wear the work out gear I had on. Almost out the door. Drat! Gecko must attend this session per son's orders. Slap gecko in travel case. Out the door.

Ten hours into this log, I've got 23 smiles. I think that's weak.

31) Hello, therapist.
32) Correction by younger son to therapist that the Geiko commercial has a Madagascan Day gecko, not his Leopard gecko. Psssh. C'mon, lady.
33) Good-bye, therapist.
34) Discussion in car on the way home with younger son about what I can do with the "balloons" that he is noticing under my t-shirt. Ahem.
35-37) Extra smiles for above conversation.
38) Greet older son on bus. He smiles when he sees me.
39)"I missed you today," I tell him with a smile as we walk into the house. "Welcome home."
40) Receiving a special invitation to partake in vacuum worship.

41)Hearing  older son singing, "I've Been Working On The Railroad", and also the theme song to "Barney".
42)Hearing, "All done!" when I pop into his room to tell him he did a great job singing. Translation: Get out, Mom.

Toileting accident. Don't we just love those?

42)Reading "Fox in Socks" with my reluctant reader.
43)It's Five o'clock!! It's Five o'clock!! It's Five o'clock!!
44)And my house is EMPTY! It's EMPTY! It's EMPTY!
45)SSShhhhh! Listen to the quiet! Ahhhhhhhh.
46)To the Mom Cave.

47)Inhale. Exhale.
48)Dog at my feet
49)14.5 hours into the work day, and I don't want to sell my kids. I actually still like them and am ready to face what fate this coming night brings.
50. Wine.

So, while I was able to hit fifty smiles, by a paltry 5p.m. I also see that my day started much earlier than most. And, while the day is still early, and I could easily continue this little experiment, I'd much rather consider this a learning experience complete. Fifty might just well be a good number, toothpaste commercial. And, as for me? Well, I hit that number just fine. Wouldn't you know the very things in life that are sure to drive me to insanity are the things that also bring me my daily joy?

Cheers, everyone!

The Tics Are Coming Out of the Woodwork Around Here

Our older son is doing that penis-eyeball thing again.

Tap the tip of his finger to his penis.
Then tap the finger to the eyeball.
Tap penis.
Tap eyeball.

It is a product of his OCD.  I know that he can't help it.  In fact, this particular tic is one that happens when his gastric system is hurting. It's a sign of distress. He is trying to find calm in a world that is in chaos.

Whatever it is about that particular tic--

Tap penis.
Tap eyeball.
Tap penis.
Tap eyeball--

It soothes him.  And, yet, it is also problematic.

I love him, and I know that his tics are a sign of anxiety.  But, it is my job as his mother to find a common ground between his special abilities and mainstream society.

I tend to think that mainstream society would not appreciate the penis-eyeball thing, particularly when he is having a really bad day.  Those are the days when he drops his drawers in order to be more efficient with his penis-eyeball tapping.

In the spirit of honesty, I'll also admit that lately I've started to think that there might be something in the water around here, because Little Brother has started repeating himself.

It first started in his awesome moments, you know, those moments when he successfully talks some fourth-grade smack talk while karate chopping his Dad. He'd say something really great, and then he'd repeat it under his breath. I simply thought he was reliving his awesome-ness.

Far be it for me to take away his moment of glory.

However, the awesome moments soon spread to the mundane moments. And now, he repeats everything.

"So, buddy," I asked him last night, " you know that thing you do when you repeat your words?" 

"Oh, uh, um, I, uh, don't know what you are talking about," he stammered.

"Puh-leeze," I said sarcastically. "You do, too. I'm curious about it. Can you tell me if it is similar to the feeling you get when you have to take the same number of steps on each foot?"

"I, uh, don't know what you're talking about there, either," he said, embarrassed.  "I'm just going to deny everything. It makes me feel stupid."

I sat there, looking at my child, thinking of both of my children, and remembering the days when their OCD first walked into our lives. Both times the condition was a product of duress. Both times, I felt both scared and saddened.  Even today, six years into the journey, I still have moments when I feel overwhelmed and helpless.

Society always jokes that it takes a lifetime of parenting before eventually  children are driven to seek therapy for all of their parents' wrongdoings. Often, I am presented with a challenge by my children, and I wonder if I shouldn't just pre-pay that therapy bill. I feel doomed from the start.

I'm no expert in their various special needs. I don't fully understand the penis-eyeball thing or why Little Brother repeats himself. After opening that conversation with our younger son and seeing that it wasn't going as planned, I decided that I was going to leave the heavy lifting to the experts.

My job was to love and to accept.

"Buddy, if your gecko was to suddenly develop a twitch in one of her legs, would you look at her, laugh and say that she looked stupid?" I asked him.

"NO!" he answered, horrified. That gecko is his best friend in the world.

"That is how I feel about you." I said "I would never think anything about you is negative. You are the best thing on this planet. Did you know that."

He looked up at me, shook his head and smiled. But the best thing was that I could tell he believed me.

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"When?"

"So, what's your plan for tomorrow?" my husband asked me the Sunday night before Martin Luther King Day.

It was a simple question, wholly justified, and, yet, one gigantic bummer that sucked my head from the sandy hole of denial that I typically donned in preparation for breaks from school.

MLK Day. Our younger son, school phobic and receiving a combination of home education and IEP services in our house, would have no therapists visiting him the next day. His brother, a child who finds comfort in routine, would not have his school program.

I couldn't run. I couldn't hide. I couldn't avoid the fact that our two sons would be home all day and that their energy, their behaviors, their needs and their autism would be all mine.

Handling our two kids together at one time is enough to put a person in a straight jacket, and it has always been that way. In the early days, I felt guilt in recognizing that I simply could not watch both of our children alone and emerge with my sanity intact. These days, I own it. Unfortunately, owning it has never released me from the responsibility. 

With their needs and interests so diverse, we have had little success in finding organized activities that held the attention of both children. Therefore, most breaks, I've often found myself running after our older son as he sprinted up and down mall escalators.  Up and down. Up and down. All the while, Little Brother lagged dangerously behind complaining that he didn't want to be there.

Or, perhaps we moved in and out of the elevators. In and out. In and out. Older Brother usually tried to pry open the doors while the elevator was still moving. He would lie down on the floor and press his face into the crease of the doorway and breathe in deeply the smell of the grease.  If even for one second I let down my guard, you can bet that he would lunge for the alarm  on the control panel. He so loved feeling the elevator come to a jolting halt. He would laugh. I would scold. Little Brother would cover his ears to muffle the pain of the alarm's shrieking bell.

We also visited carousels, often riding them nine, ten and eleven times. Sometimes, Big Brother would lie on the ground to watch the mechanics.  He wanted so desperately to get into the center of the carousel. He knew that one day, just one day, the Mother Board would be under his control.

Quite regularly, we even visited this local mall that is closed. The carousel sits, dark and lonely.  We would watch it and remember days gone by.

"But, Mom," our younger son has complained about these outings, "I don't want to go on an autism trip today." He believed that they were an exhausting, senseless waste of time, and I understood.

"You're brother finds them comforting," I would tell him. "We're  a family. We need to support each other." That's the best I had to offer.  Frankly, at his age, I'm not sure that I would have been satisfied with that answer, myself.

And so, mid-morning on MLK Day this year, we piled into our van, intent on an autism trip simply to run down the clock and maintain at least a small level of peace in our day--a paltry goal by any other standards, an almost insurmountable effort from my perch in the driver's seat that morning.

Chugging the last of my coffee, I pulled out of the garage and to the end of the driveway. It was there that I stopped, turned to our older son and asked, "Where are we going to go today?"

Rarely would he give me an exact location for an answer. There were too many places in the world and not enough motor control in his facial muscles to say the words that he wanted to say. Simply, he said to me, "Right, please."

Well, drat. All the places I liked were off to the left.

Turning right out of the driveway, I became lost in a battle between two voices inside my head. Uuuugghhh! I do NOT want to do this!  We have no choice but to do this.  This is going to be hoorrriiibbblllee!  Maybe this won't be so bad.  I wish this day was ooovveerrr!  Perhaps the day will surprise me.

I lingered over this last thought when I heard our older son ask me to drive him to a location I used to take him for therapy eight years ago. It is no longer in business.

"I'm sorry, Buddy," I told him, "that place is closed."

He the then named an area school complex where his summer services have been held.

"No, you can't go there, " I said. "It's a holiday today. The building is closed."

He asked for the local amusement park, which, of course, was closed for the winter months. And, he asked for the mall with the lonely, neglected carousel in hopes for a walk.

"No, we can't walk inside that mall," I sadly responded. "It is closed."

The same questions. He always asked me the same questions. I just did not understand why a child as intelligent as he had to ask the same questions repeatedly. And yet, here we were, running through the same script about the same places and how they were not open. They were, in fact, closed.  All of them were closed.

"When open?" he asked, only his articulation was way off.

Where? Where open? I looked at him through the rear view mirror, quickly scanning his face for clues. Traditionally, I've been his caretaker, his person. I'm the one who has known his wants and needs instinctively. Yet, as he's grown, my understanding of him has become less instinctive and more a result of study.

I watched him a lot.

"When open?" he asked me once more.

He did not use any of the "w" words conversationally--who, what, where, when and why. Whether he could not say them or if he lacked the social connectivity to have that two-way conversation with another person I did not know. All I did know was that using those words would involve a level of conversation we just did not have with this child. And yet, what else could he be saying?

"When open?" he inquired once more with such patience. It was almost as if he knew I was working so hard to understand him.

And then I did.

"Buddy, are you asking me when they will be open?" I asked him incredulously.

"Open!" he said, excited that I understood. "When. When open?"

Those questions! He was continually asking me the same questions because he wasn't getting the answers that he wanted. I had unknowingly fallen into a trap by thinking that my preteen, the one who could not ask "w" questions, for some reason did not want to know the information those questions provided.

While a toddler might be satiated knowing a favored destination is "closed", our growing 11-year-old surely was not.  His abandoned mall was once open. Would ever open again? How about the place where he attended therapy? Will it be closed forever? When is opening day for the amusement park? And, will he be attending summer school again in that school complex he liked? If so, when will that start?

When, mom? When, open?

It was brilliant, his first expression of an original thought outside of a basic need. It went beyond wanting a drink or needing help with something. He was asking a question about something that was on his mind for the first time ever.

Ever.

 I was called to remember to warring voices inside my head from earlier. I wonder if they will keep me company in my senile years? If so, and if I have a say about any of it, I do hope that The Whiner can make other arrangements. Her friend, however, was quite intuitive. I was surprised that day, and suddenly, my outlook was completely changed.

"Let's go visit some carousels, Buddy!" I readily agreed  when he asked me to take him to his abandoned mall. The weather outside was frigid, but there was no place I would rather be than standing with him, staring at that quiet carousel, and talking to him about all the things he might be thinking.

Drawing a Crowd

A few years ago, one cold, early December night, our little family bravely decided to shop for a Christmas tree.  It was a bold move, that endeavor.  All four of us, joined together in one car, intent on enjoying a singular activity.  In our household, that simply is not done.

While both of our sons are on the spectrum, there is very little about their autism that is similar.  Their needs, their behaviors, their anxiety, their interests and their levels of tolerance are complete opposites.  When they were very young, we would attend events as a family, bringing impossibly large bags of tricks for each child, just to say that we did it. We simply hoped to conquer the task.  Forget about enjoyment.  Our goal was to survive the event with all four of us still there by the end.

As the children grew, this became increasingly more difficult to do.  One event would be too loud.  Another had far too many people.  Perhaps one was not accepting to the pacing of an anxious child or the nervous incessant chattering of another.  Obsessions grew in them both, which took them in different directions and pulled my husband and me with them.

We became a family divided.

"Mom?" our younger son asked that day in December, "Can we get our Christmas tree today?"


Thunk!  I felt as though a chunk of the moon had fallen from the sky and landed onto my shoulders just as I had already grasped the weight of responsibilities that I was to carry for the rest of the day. Ugh. Another thing.  I looked into the face of that child, bright and bursting with excitement for the holiday season, and yet all I felt was dread and guilt.  He had no idea that I was ever on the brink of buckling under the demands of caring for the two of them.

He was just a child wanting what any other child would want, and I wanted so desperately to fill his life with memories other than autism.

That was how we found ourselves in the parking lot of an area farmer's market that crisp December evening.  A familiar and happy destination for our family during the entire autumn season, the market had always been a place where our children had felt at home. That night, less crowded and missing its usual fall festivities, it was quiet and peaceful in the cold night air. Soft music was playing, and an army of pines stood proudly about, just waiting for our inspection.

Our younger son was into the cold weather and the task of picking a tree. He ran from the car with enthusiasm into the selection of pines and screamed with delight. Older Brother, however, was not excited about the weather or the activity.  He made that quite clear to us on the ride to the market.

"Mall," he said.

"No mall," we countered. "We're getting a Christmas tree."

"Mall!" he insisted.

"No. First tree. Then mall," we told him.

We were not giving in.  This time, he had to take a hit for the team. He was old enough, and despite the fact that he had more needs than his brother which required our attention, our older son did not have more wants that would rank in importance over his brother's.

The whining started as soon as he got out of the car. In an attempt to give my husband a rare opportunity to enjoy time with Little Brother, I signaled that I would stay with Big Brother.  A family divided at the same destination, I decided, was not so abnormal.

"Mall!" our son spat at me.

"Tree first," I told him.

He tried to push past me in an attempt to run back to the car. Using physical force was a common tactic he used in place of the verbal communication that he lacked.

"Listen here!" I said sternly as I stopped him in his path. "We do not always get our choice. However, today, your choice will be second. Tree first. Mall second."

He didn't like this. He whined as we walked hand-in-hand over to the trees. He began to scream as we wound our way in and out among the selections.  He tried to twist my arm so that I would release his hand in reaction to the pain. The small crowd began to watch.

"I know that you don't like this," I told him, "but I know that you can do this." I encouraged.

He responded by biting his finger.  It was the special needs version of a protest. He was being an ugly version of himself. I could certainly tell. Could those watching us understand? I didn't know, and I had long since stopped caring.  The challenge before me required my full attention.

Changing tactics, I decided to redirect him into the general store, something he usually liked. However, when he saw that his actions had not won him a golden ticket to the mall, he stopped in the doorway, refusing to walk another step. As customers walked in and out of the doors,  the small crowd inside looked up at us, unsure how to react.

I was getting frustrated with him. Forget expectations of a happy family outing. I'd given that up in the parking lot. He was being so stubborn!

"Listen," I hissed, "we are here to get a Christmas tree whether you like it or not. Your brother wants to do it so deal with it! That's what families do!! Now you march your behind inside while they get that tree and, if you are lucky, then we will take you to the mall!"

"MALL!" he screamed.

"TREE FIRST THEN MALL!" I screamed said to him with force.

He didn't move. So...I helped him. The small crowed inside pretended not to look at us. Our son was whining and stomping and bucking around like a wild bronco until finally, he decided to sit down on the floor in protest.

"Fine by me, kid," I told him, "we'll just sit here calmly until they are done shopping."

Why did I have to get sassy with him? Why? Couldn't I have let my inner voice take care of that? As soon as I pointed out his tactical error, he switched gears. Suddenly, he jumped up and bolted for the door. I grabbed him, and we both landed on the floor in a big pile.

It hurt--but not so much as the kicks and bites he gave me next. We had found ourselves in a war. There. In the middle of a crowd. I was positive that he was so mad that he was in flight mode, not even fully understanding that he was hurting me as he tried to run away in order to get to the object of his obsession--that mall.

Absolutely everybody in the crowd was staring, and I really did not mind. Let them see what they would see. Let them learn what they would learn. Let them take away what they chose to take away. Our family outing had taken a completely different path, and I found myself in the position of teaching our son a lesson in public. I could not back down, for doing so would risk teaching him that it was okay to scream, bite, kick and yell his way to get what he wanted.

If I allowed it then, at eight years old, imagine how much more difficult it would have been to break it at age eighteen.

We were still tangled on the ground, there, barely in the entrance to the general store, both breathing heavily from our struggle.

"I love you," I said to him, holding him tightly. "This is NOT okay. You will NOT get what you want by pushing and hurting people. If you continue to do this, you could find other people pushing and hurting you in response to you. They could do it when I'm not around. You simply must stop."

We sat for a while. The crowd began to move.

"When you are calm, we can stand, walk around the store once and then return to the car." I told him.

And that is what we did.

As I approached the car, our younger son ran up to me and said with excitement, "Mama! We got a tree!!"

"Wow! I see it, honey!" I said with more feigned excitement than I cared to admit. "It's the best one we've had!"

The boys climbed in the car as I wiped away tears that had begun to roll down my cheeks. I cried for happiness that our younger son managed to have a normal experience. I cried because I was bruised and bitten. I cried because it was my own child who inflicted those wounds on me. I cried for relief that the event was over.

But most of all, I cried because there are parts of our sons' disabilities, ones that are ugly and ones that draw crowds, which we must endure for the greater good. That night, our older son experienced some growing pains. Because of his disability, those pains took on a different form than would the pains of a typical child. In that moment, my heart was heavy for his struggle.

We started down the road with our new Christmas tree tied to the roof of the car. From the back seat, I hear a voice quietly say, "Mall."

I looked out the window and let my mind take me to a far away place.


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

Photos courtesy of Morguefile


Sending love and strength to my fellow special needs parents who live in the trenches with me every day. 

Hug

"Mammamommy," I heard in the dark of night.  It was my call that the second shift of parenting duty was about to begin.  With neither of our sons able to sleep through the night, life in this house ran nearly around the clock.  While I didn't embrace it, lately, I had stopped fighting it.

Dutifully, I climbed out of bed and shuffled the few steps that ran in between our room and our older son's.  Oh, how many times I had walked into his room in the middle of the night!

As I stood in the doorway looking into the face of our growing 11-year-old son, for a moment, the faces of yesteryear flashed before me.  But for a second, in my mind's eye, I greeted the infant, the two-year-old, the pre-schooler and early-grade schooler, too.  Life is different now yet still the same.

Tonight, I greeted our son, who reached out to me when he saw me.

"Hello!" I said to him. I crossed the room and approached his bed.

"Potty," he told me.

At eleven, he is not night time toiled trained.
At eleven, he still wears a diaper to bed.
At eleven, he is still not independent in the bathroom.

He looked me in the eyes, smiled and held out his hand. At eleven, he does this with regularity, however, it is not something he did in his younger years.  Reaching out to me, something I wanted desperately for him to do when he was a mushy ball of a slobbery baby.  I wanted him to coo, to squeal with delight when I walked near him.  I wanted him to instantly reach out to me so that I would swoop him into my arms for a hug.

Our baby never did that--nor did our toddler, preschooler, kindergartener or early-gradeschooler.

That night, our son placed his hand in mine, and we walked together to the bathroom.  I was tired. I situated him where he needed to be, and, as he took care of his business, I sat down on the edge of the tub. I stared at the wall, looking at nothing in particular and letting my mind wander.

How does a mother explain what it feels like to have never had her child grab her hand, look her squarely in the eye or assign her a name? Oh, sure, we learn to move on. We learn to work with what we are given. We all say that it is okay. But, the truth is that we all want it. We feel the void in our hearts.

I was given the gift of my name by our older son two years ago when he was nine. Shortly thereafter, he started holding my hand, reaching for me and kissing me with true love.  The contact had to be on his terms. I was never allowed to initiate it or I would scare him away. However, I welcomed it always.

Finally, finally, our son was coming home to me!

I was shaken back to reality by the sound of our son flushing the toilet. With the bathroom duties soon complete, I turned to guide our Big Guy out of the room, but he stopped me and gestured for me to sit back down on my perch at the side of the tub.  For a moment, he held my cheeks in his hands, studied my face and smiled.

"Hi, baby," I said, returning his smile. Our eye contact was a gift.

Then, he crawled into my lap, this child who is just shy of five feet tall. Somehow, he curled himself up just like a little boy in his mom's lap.  He wrapped his arms around me as he placed his head on my shoulder and buried his face in my neck.

He hugged me.

The entire gesture from position to act was his and his alone.  A first.  Yet, there he was, this child of ours who was unable to show love for the first many years of his life no matter how I yearned.  There he was curling his giant body on my lap with his head on my shoulder so that we could hug.

I didn't care how big he was, I'd waited too long for this.  My lap would take him as long as he wanted it.  And, I would sit on the edge of that tub in the dead of night for as long as my child asked it of me.

This hug, this act of love from our child, a decade in the making, was priceless.  No, I wasn't going anywhere.