The Bottle: Autistic Spectrum
Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 1:52AM | by Otter In the Otter's house is a special child. He sits alone and watches.
When the house is filled with dreams he lies awake and thinks of things he never tells. He prowls his mind on the feet of a cat, making no noise, disturbing nothing, noiseless in his solitude.
Photo Copyright 2010, Julia Lamphear. Used by kind permission. Click photo for photostream.When his restless eyes close in sleep he never makes a sound. His dreams, silent and pale, fall across his face when his eyes look up from the breakfast table. Deep and brown, they focus on empty space. When I turn to see what he sees, the spell seems to break, and he returns to his bran flakes and says nothing.
With his heart in his hand he makes friends, offers his name, tucks his shoulder against the onslaught he seems to expect. Friends come hard. They play games, but the rules are all in Greek, the methods impossibly hard, the blows of the ball to the knee or his eggshell bones seem to pain him with an agony that goes beyond tears, and his impassive face only shows a desire to understand.
Once upon a time I prayed for healing, and sacrificed my anger and agony to the gods who knit together the DNA in the mother's womb, who brought down the sins of the fathers on the children unto the seventh generation.
But that God stared long and hard at my child and grew first apathetic, then imaginary, and then vanished altogether.
I had to find new ones, who flowed through his veins.
Inside the bottle of his mind, my child stares out at us with a deep stare that I cannot call comprehension.
He has been surrounded by feeling that he cannot feel, ideas he cannot think, and thoughts he cannot speak, and he beats his wings against the clear walls of his body and the mind that, some say, betrayed him.
But, then, it occurs to me when the house falls silent and I can dimly catch the scent of some truth that hides in the daytime, I am not sure I know whether he is inside looking out at us and longing to be free, or inside looking at us in our prisons and offering the deep, brutal compassion of a god we will never really know.
Reader Comments (7)
Beautiful and haunting, Otter. This is what makes your blog special, laying it out, raw and poetic like this. I appreciate the "vignette factor", and fell like you've brought me a bit closer to yourself and your son with this.
I have three nephews with either autism or Aspergers.
Josh is in his thirties but probably has the mind of a 2 year old. Since he was a baby, I've tried to just be with him when he's around even if he doesn't seem to notice or care. And I've always shown him the same affection upon arriving and leaving that I would show any of my family, whether or not it was reciprocated. When my sister was getting him ready for the trip to Zapata for my mom's funeral, I'm told he asked, "See Shirley?". I guess he's been more aware than I've known.
Isaac is a teenager. He has a pretty hard time in social situations. Since he was very little, I've managed to connect with him through humor. Connecting with him is pretty precious. The last time I was around him was at his house for a baby shower. We ended up at the chocolate fountain daring one another to dip weird things like olives into the chocolate and taste them. Good times.
Liam is a little boy. He's got some pretty severe OCD things going on in addition to the social difficulties. When he arrived at Mom's house before her funeral, he went from person to person and held his hand out, introducing himself. You could tell it was hard for him. But he did it! I was proud of him. And a little sad that he felt he had to do that when the rest of the little boys weren't expected to.
When it came time to practice the song we would be singing at the funeral (Will the Circle Be Unbroken) I distributed chord sheets to the guitarists and word sheets to everyone else. Liam came up to me holding one of each.
"Excuse me. Which one should I use?"
"Which one do you like the best?"
"This one."
"Then you should just use that one."
So he walked away with a chord sheet.
After practice, he came up to me again.
"Excuse me. May I keep this?"
"Of course!"
"Thank you."
Whereas everyone else either left their sheets in a messy heap, Liam walked away carrying his like a treasure. I wonder what he did with it.
Strike that "either" in the last paragraph. ;)
See, I'm not OCD at all.
What you've written so beautifully here describes my son as well. I'm in tears reading it. It's just so true.
Wow. I've loved, shared with, hugged, laughed with & taught children with autism...but this is beyond any expereince a person who isn't a parent can have. Poetic and beautiful and oh so true.....
Beautiful! I, too, have a special child in my home.
We have our own special boy, with Atypical Autism/Asperger's. He's not quite yet 13, but soon, and still filled with an innocence I can't quite describe.. Your post was both beautiful & bittersweet, as I often wonder what his future holds for him.