Susan Senator

Out of the corner of my eye, through the wobbly smudgy glass of the old dining room window, I see the small black Honda Civic speed away with Ned, Nat, and Max inside. A pang of regret, of course, and as usual I wonder fleetingly why I feel that. I walk into the little kitchen and the flash of silver aluminum foil catches my eye, and even more, what lies under it: brownies. Those brownies made me want to cry. Max and Hannah made them yesterday, while Nat looked on, head bent awkwardly a little to close to them, hoping.

Nat left for his Home after lunch today, and because he would be missing Ben’s birthday party, I impulsively threw some cookies into his hands as he was leaving, my effort to include him. Then I saw the brownies, after he was gone, and thought, “What if he wanted those?” Of course even if he did, he did not ask for them.

And it seems like no one else around here even worries about that, except me. I think I’m the only one of the three remaining family members who thinks this way. That makes me angry.

Nat sees so many things, and probably wants so many things, but he rarely tells anyone. I realized that, as he drove away, that I was tired and down as I so often am after he goes, and that a big reason was that I do thinking for both of us. I see brownies, I want brownies, and then I wonder if Nat does. If I don’t think to ask him, he doesn’t get them.

I get exhausted when I am around him because I am always on some level wondering what he wants, what he is thinking. Perhaps that is the sadness associated around autism. I am sorry to offend autistics when I say that, but it is truly there, and we all deal with it. 100 or so interviews can’t be wrong. Even though there is profound happiness and love with our children, there is also sadness. I call it my communication blindness. Mine. Ours. So much that he can’t tell me. For instance, I don’t know if he has bad dreams and just kind of sucks it up, whereas I get to scream and have Ned hold me. Maybe that’s irrelevant now that Nat’s a man. Or is it? Ben and Max used to climb into my bed, crowding me with their delicious, small, warm humid bodies. My clingable self nourished them until they felt safe again to go back to their formerly evil beds. It just breaks my heart that Nat could have had the same kind of need and never, ever got the need met. For lack of words. Stupid words.

With Nat I have to guess, imagine, experiment, live inside his brain — kind of. Sometimes I forget to, and he goes without.

So just as when he was growing inside me, a tiny little Nat-fetus, I am still in some ways living for two. Then he goes off, and who is living for him then?