kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- National Autism Awareness Day My nephew has autism. He wasn't my nephew when he was born, but his mother and I became friends over the internet and when I was going through a rather rough time coinciding with cheap airfares, his mom invited me down to The Deep South (at least, to my Yankee Brain. I've been since informed that that wasn't the deep south.) I was nervous about this. I was flying all the way down the east coast to meet up with someone I'd never met in real life, and to make things that much more interesting, she had A Child. I'm not a kid person. I know and enjoy several kids, but on an individual level, not as a category. This is why I don't have children--as a category, I really don't like them. They're shrill and emit effluvia (also true of my puppy, come to that. Some days I don't like her, either, and at least I don't have to start a college fund for her.) At any rate, with all of these unknowns, I also knew that Crash had language difficulties, which made me even more nervous. I live on language--I love to talk, love to hear stories--so here I was, going to spend time with A Kid Who Can't Really Talk. I had no idea how to deal with this sort of thing. How would I even understand him? Nonetheless, I adored his mother and life was pretty rough right then, so on the plane I got. The part of the Deep South I went to was utterly beautiful. My friend had a little rental house, and sitting on her front porch gave you a rollaway view over misty blue mountains. It was a lovely drive from the airport, and my friend and I clicked just as soon as we saw each other. And there was Crash. I'm sure he and I circled eachother as mutually warily as alleycats at first, me thinking "Kid! Small one! Eeek!" and him thinking "Stranger! Eeek!" So the weekend progressed, with the two of us circling closer and closer. Crash asked me questions ("Dis is?") and listened intently to my answers. I tried to follow his discussions as well, but as a childless person, some of it was lost on me. But we both wrote. So one morning I was out on the porch having a cigarette. Crash wandered out and pointed to a weed near the porch. "Dis is?" he said to me? I said to him "Weed, Crash." He had a little magnadoodle board, and since I knew he was more visual than aural, I wrote it out on the board. W-E-E-D. Just to make sure he got it. He read off each letter, and then sounded out the word. Crash gave me a disgusted look. "Weed", he mumbled at me. "Weed," I said affirmingly. He decisively took the magnadoodle out of my hands and blanked it. W-H-E-A-T, he spelled, you know, just to make sure I got it. I realized that his verbal skills weren't up to "wheat", but darn it all...the weed did have a little bushy head and looked like a miniature wheat stalk. Yup. I knew the wheels were turning in that head for sure, then; I'd had inklings before, and that just clinched it. And as some years passed, Crash passed from being diagnosed as hyperlexic to autistic, and the little boy in my head still spells things out so the stupid adult can get it. Even though I've had little conversations with him on the phone, since, and I know he's older and talks in full sentences now, not just "Dis is?" In actuality, I suspect that Crash has a lot more on the ball than most people I know. It was certainly a revelation to go home, and find that my husband actually carried along most of the same verbal traits, leading to some fascinating discussions with Crash's mom about what Crash's future might be like. (Not that I want to doom the kid to being Just Like my husband--there's only room in the world for one of them, and occasionally it seems...overfull...already.) But Crash's world--and imagination--and fascinating outlook--has colored a lot of my perceptions since of people that I had known for much longer, and now feel that I understand slightly better. I taught Crash how to climb trees, the day I left. That only required a universal language--giggling. We understood just fine. And by the time I left that day, he was my nephew. 8:51 p.m. - 2009-04-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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