"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
- spoken by Atticus Finch, written by Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Autism entered my life and everything changed.
I’m not sure how it impacted my son because he can’t talk. He can’t tell me if he felt a change. If what I saw happening to him is what really happened.
I saw a happy, bright boy disappear before my eyes to be replaced by a withdrawn, disconnected, hidden boy. I don’t know if that’s what really happened but that’s how it felt to me. I don’t know if the impact of that was as devastating to Harrison as it was to me because he can’t tell me.
I don’t know if he misses something he never really had in not being able to talk. I don’t know if he feels angry that he can’t play the way the other kids can. I don’t know if he feels sad that Christmas and birthdays are celebrated differently to other kids. I don’t know if he is scared that he is nearly eight and still wears nappies. I don’t know if he hates having to go to a different school to his sister.
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
My son and children like him are seen as unanswerable questions. Mysteries too hard to solve. Society in its disdain for not having the answer resolves to put them to the side because the awkwardness of the unknown is too overwhelming. The result is families left in isolation with children being treated as objects placed where someone decides they fit best.
It hurts to be his Mum, his “person” and to not know. How can I fix it if I don’t know?
How can I not?
I am his Mum. I am his “person”.
Because I call him “Son” I honour him. Because he was created to live in this time at this place by a Creator God that sacrificed all for him, I honour him.
I walk in his shoes. I get down on my knees and see the world from his view. I think how it would feel to be looked at that way. I hear how it is to be spoken to that way.
Above all the unanswered questions there is my son. A boy. A person with purpose and destiny. Not a mistake. Not an accident. He is not my “lot in life” that I have to carry.
And there it is. My life is again made richer and my place in this world more defined because of what he is teaching me.
