“Does he cry a lot?”
Notes from Autism in the Wild
“Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut you more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few humans and even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need for God absolutely clear.”
–Hafez, 14th-century Persian poet
After dinner with friends in their charming townhouse in Virginia, the whole lot of us took a walk to the neighborhood playground. Between us were five children, their two girls with bouncy dark curls, and our three children: two electric girls and one happy boy. As we funneled out of the front door, we gathered on the lawn, enjoying the cool evening air of late summer.
My husband and I noticed a boy and his mother just across the street. They were enjoying the evening air too, the best way they could in their subtle distress. The boy, about my son’s age, wandered directionless through the street with only tangential awareness of his mother’s existence. The mother was probably my age, but fatigue aged her that night. She called her son relentlessly, trying to get his attention even though he was only a few feet away. My husband and I made scrunched-nose smiles at each other because we knew that this boy across the street from us was just like the boy under my arm: autistic.
A minute or two later, the boy across the street wandered toward us and pushed his slender body through our group without a word and seemingly without seeing us. His mother hurried toward us with the speed of a weary woman. Quietly she said, “I’m sorry. He’s…”
We interrupted her, not wanting her to expend her tapped energy explaining what we already knew.
“Don’t worry about him. Our son is like yours,” my husband said with a beaming smile.
Her body relaxed, but her eyes widened like she’d seen water in the Sahara. “Really?” Her eyes searched for our boy. She still had words she needed to give voice to.
Up until she said the following words, I felt a compassion for her and her son that was free-flowing because my own son had been in a good place: calm, alert, friendly. My own burdens were light. She projected her voice this time: “Does he cry a lot? My son cries all the time.”
With those words, I could feel a wound within me grow tender. I was no longer participating in the conversation. I was reliving the hundreds of times I had to console my own boy who spontaneously cried all the time—so much so the doctors and I thought he might be having seizures. I know my face remained pleasant because in this moment I can see myself from above, like a hovering spirit in a near-death experience. I wish I could have given her my full self. Instead, I became distant like her son.
My husband takes over, and I’m sure he said all the right things to make her feel seen in such a brief encounter, but I don’t hear him. We spent his sixth birthday at a large hospital, nodes on his head for an overnight EEG. Results? Inconclusive. The crying persisted in intensity for another six months or so and eventually lessened. I recently had a nightmare about it.
I share these notes on autism to give voice to the families for whom autism looms large—parents who are too tired to share their stories. I’ve read the stories of others and grown in grace, compassion, strength, and curiosity. I’ve cried with parents and rejoiced with them as I read their stories. Perhaps this is a way I pay it forward. Sadness, love, and connection are housed in all sorts of stories. My hope is that, whether you are affected by autism or not, you let that "something missing" in your heart make your need for God absolutely clear.