Reflections of Autism

 

 

I have been touched by the things people have said about my letter to Lael. I wrote it more for myself, I think. I have been obsessed with trying to figure out what made him tick. I am a person who needs to understand every aspect of something that is important to me. And Lael is absolutely in that category.

 

He's a marvelous little boy and the point I was trying to make is that he is more a gift to me than I am to him...that there's a very real beauty in the simplicity with which he sees his world. It is a simplicity I find far too complex to handle, I think.

 

In this image, the last I will file of him, he was with us at Fort Edmonton -- a local historical park featuring, oddly enough, a Fort and two "era themed" streets. We took a train back to the station at the end of a long and exhausting day and he was sitting there across from me, looking out the window with such intensity that I was taken aback. Usually, his attentions flit from subject to subject, like a bee chasing pollen.

 

It took me a long moment of careful study, until I realized he was looking at his own reflection in the glass. He was looking at the window, without seeing OUT of the window, if that makes any sense to you.

 

What he saw in the face that looked back at him is beyond anything I can grasp. I simply state with absolute conviction that he saw SOMETHING.

 

My heart is uncommonly full when I think of Lael, because for so long I have not understood where he was coming from. Don't misunderstand: I have WANTED to understand him...I have certainly loved him...I simply haven't been able to connect with him. It's been an ongoing source of guilt and frustration to me.

 

His parents left him and his four siblings with us for several days while they went to a wedding. I really wanted to use the time to break through the wall between Lael and me without really understanding HOW that would happen. I approached it with the intention of bulling through all opposition.

 

It was only when I realized that Lael speaks in silence...in sounds expressing pure emotion...in unbridled yet completely misunderstood delight...that I started to understand.

 

I needed to stop trying to stuff HIM into MY world context...and to step into his. Admittedly, my steps faltered and were more than a trifle uncertain. But I felt my heart magically grow and instantly, a place popped into existence with the clearly labeled name "LAEL" on it.

 

It is a grand relief.

 

So I am not posting this image in an effort to wring emotionalism out of the subject. On the contrary: I am posting it to celebrate a little boy -- a traveler through our world even though he is not precisely OF this world. I am posting it because of his decision (conscious or not) to celebrate his life in ways I can never understand...and not become some listless and tragic over medicated self-outcast.

 

The posting doesn't have anything to do with feedback...or comments...or Explore.

 

I am posting it because I am proud of Lael.

 

So meet my grandson. His name is Lael. He's autistic. Anyone who is uncomfortable with that will simply have to get over it...or find a place where their world will not be upset by the notion it contains people who see things in a radically different manner than they do.

 

He's not handicapped. He's just Lael. He is precisely who he has been made to be. And Lael fricking rocks.

 

And, in the words of that great philosopher Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."

 

Done