A New Dance

In a few days the blue light will be extinguished until next April.  Autism will still be with us but more people will be aware of the challenges this disease lays upon families who love someone with autism.  This week has been delivering a dose of autism's ways to Wee and me as we look after Mason and Tom while their folks are away for R & R and an anniversary celebration.

The rhythms of life are driven by circumstance and fate.  There are folks in Boston and West who had fate rearrange their lives in the length of time it takes an explosion to dissipate its energy.  Each conflagration visits destruction or injury on everyone and everything within the blast radius.   Autism is not akin to an explosive device.  Instead, autism drips its effects like a slow leaking spigot with the spout positioned right over the bridge of your nose.  Each droplet blurs your vision for a second or two, you blink, clear your eyes and move forward with one more insight into the mysterious world spinning inside the head of a grandson with autism.

By Wednesday we’ve established a pretty comfortable routine.  The boys are helpful and have adapted to the new rhythms brought by living under grandparents’ rules.  While it’s neither an explosion nor the drip, drip, drip of autism, the absence of parents, even for positive reasons, unleashes anxieties caused by a break in normalcy and fuzzing up the future.  The boys have adapted to us admirably.  Each one, in his own way, has focused on helping us with the daily routines of their family life.  What a joy it is for grandparents to be taught by grandsons.

Each day has moments.  "Moments" are instants when we look at each other as though the latest revelation about Mason dawns with newly clear vision.  Other instants happen too – when the look is confusion or the face of frustration.  The natural desire to fix things, to take away torments, or just to get a message through is thwarted by autism.  But then Mason comes, looks you right in the eye and giggles and sometimes gives hugs.  There is so much we don’t know but we do know that Mason has lots of ways to say, I love you.

The nation has marveled at Adrianne Haslet-Davis, the dance instructor, who lost her foot in the despicable Boston bombing.  She has accepted this event as one more circumstance of her life.  She sees the loss of a foot as one more challenge that is no more significant than any of life’s challenges.  She is dedicated and determined to rise up and overcome all obstacles in her way.  She has decided that she will dance again.  Dancing may look different than it did before – but she will dance.  She will find a new stride, influenced by circumstance, as she walks (or jogs, or runs) or dances through the rain or sunshine of every new day.

While the blue lamp has been lit, the hue of reflection has engulfed us.  The effects of autism are some of the circumstances of life.  Mason’s days unfold differently but each day includes joys, frustrations, successes and hugs.  Tom is a social being who longs for a brother to play but he adjusts to the circumstance of his life.  They are brothers.  He and his cousin, Finn, use Face Time to play games and torment each other like brothers.  Tom’s day rolls from discovery to energetic routine as he grows up and becomes more independent and responsible. 

 

Watching these brothers up close is like watching a new kind of dance.  Sometimes they dance together and sometimes on their own in opposite corners of their worlds.  Sometimes they are in the same room but can’t hear or see each other and sometimes they giggle, tickle and wrestle as if autism had left the premises.  Mason mimics the moves that Tom makes as he plays a game or moves to his music.  Life has given these brothers autism as an ever present circumstance.  They have decided they will dance in spite of the challenges.  Each of them will set goals to be reached and exceeded. 

Neither God nor Nature was mistaken when parenting was reserved to young adults.  The price of aging is paid in stamina and strength.  But there is nothing of comparable value than to see grandsons doing their dances in the bright days of childhood. 

--td