The story that won a national story-telling contest, inspired this blog and this father...
Everything is Au-some.
Life with an autistic kid is enlightening. My youngest boy, Calvin, 8, has serious communication problems, but an amazing view of the world that seems to heal the scars of cynicism I wear. The other day I gave him the choice to pick a restaurant to have lunch. Nearby are McDonald's, Wendy's, a Wawa (not a seat for lunch, but he loves the touch screen ordering), a few Pizza joints, and some other local places.
He heard me and was thinking about it.
A typical response a year ago might be no response at all. However, his language skills are improving. And he can communicate so much with so little.
He got a twinkle in his eye and asked to go to "five hundred fifty-five." His lips twisted into a half smile and he had a teen like expectation that he was the smartest one in this conversation.
He was right. I didn't know what he wanted. A terrible feeling parents of the autistic have are not being able to respond to their needs. When your child doesn't speak (much, for us), you are stuck in a morass of uncertainly, when your dearest is bawling or visibly scared. The other night our usually joyful kid cried himself to sleep while my wife was figuratively beating herself up because she could neither soothe him or understand his sadness.
This was not a gut-wrenching moment, it was a battle of wits and he knew I was losing. But having a competitive drive, I pushed my dormant brain into applied problem-solving mode.
To buy some time, I slowly reiterated "5-5-5" looked into his eyes and tried to think like my autistic wonder boy. Our last time in the car came to mind, where Calvin looks out the window studiously observing every passing site. He was calling out numbers.
"You want to go to Wendy's, right?" I asked.
"Yes!" he assured me, with his own style of punching out Y-E-S like cymbals crashing softly.
When riding in the car, Calvin often calls out address numbers. And somewhere in the back of my noodle, I remembered Wendy's was at 555 Lancaster Ave. I have passed this Wendy's over a thousand times, but NEVER paid attention to its address -- until I was taught by an Au-some boy to see more than I usually do.
We had a nice lunch. We didn't talk much, but I wondered what he would teach me next.