April is Autism Awareness Month, and it is a wonder that this year, 18 months after Sandis’s intial diagnosis whereupon I was so afraid…..It is a wonder that this year I am not afraid.
Why am I not afraid? Amidst all these murmurs, perhaps from one parent to the next, about the horrors of autism, why am I not afraid?
Sandis with his joyful heart , precipitous smile, and eager gait is a child with autism. It is hard to be afraid of autism when my boy is such joy.
It isn’t that things are never hard. It isn’t that I never wish things were different. It isn’t that I am not tired, and some days more than others.
Autism, in my child, in my beautiful boy, is the most beautiful parts of him in the most curious presentations. Even his outrages, pure in their simplicity, lend themselves to something that perhaps means more than just anger, but an anger with humanity as it is. An outrage at the box society has trapped him in.
It would sound pretentious to say I am grateful for autism. It would sound perhaps cliché to say that Sandis would cease to be Sandis if his autism were “cured.”
It would sound pretentious and perhaps cliché, but I can’t imagine my beautiful boy in any other way.
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1 comment:
This is beautiful.
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