Susan Senator

Do you feel cut off from a child simply because of his autism? I know I feel that way a lot. Well, perhaps you and I might want to take another look at that. Perhaps it’s not autism, or not just autism that makes it hard for you to know your child; perhaps it’s that he’s a boy. Perhaps it’s that she’s a girl. Perhaps it’s because they’re all just people and we never actually know the insides of another person’s head, do we?

I don’t know a whole lot more about what is in my teenage son Max’s head, either, and he certainly does not have autism. He is two years younger than his autistic brother Nat — almost 18. And he is a continual surprise to me — just like his older brother.

Today in the car on the way to high school drop-off — I ought to rename that little ten-minute period something like Time of Revelation With Max — I asked him nonchalantly if he was sure it was okay that I was driving him. Usually he walks with his friend Yaz, unless it is very late or very cold. Today was neither, yet he had directed me to drive him to school after we dropped off Benj, my eleven-year-old.

“Yeah, it’s good that I’m not meeting up with Yaz today because it’s February 12 and that’s Fight Day.”

“What?”

“Fight Day is the 12th of every month. We fight the whole way to school. All day.”

I laughed, which is amazing for me at 8a.m. most days. It feels like my face will just crack right off. “What? You fight?”

“Yeah. We, you know, rag on each other the whole time. And the 13th is Peace Day, when we make up. So it’s kind of funny that he’ll, like, be waiting for me and I won’t be there.” These are high school seniors. This may sound weird, but I haven’t really seen Max fight or insult anyone much. He’s really very well-behaved, at least around me. But, see? I don’t know everything about Max.

At first I just drove on, thinking back to my high school days. Fight Day? Would I ever have had something like that with Cynthia R, my best friend at the time? I know when we were in junior high we once in a while did fake fighting, and slow-motion fighting, but we never institutionalized it. And just a whole day of put-downs? Forget it. And by the way, I was way more of a bitch than Max. Sometimes I was really a Mean Girl, I am sorry to say. So when I think of Max being fight-y, it is just such a surprise.

I said, “Well, maybe it’s a guy thing.”

“Girls fight like that all the time, every day,” Max said, as we pulled up behind the headmaster’s car. “See ya,” he said.

I watched him lope up the steps, a tall beautiful young man, my darling child, who is also a mystery to me.