{"id":1894,"date":"2011-02-18T22:40:51","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T03:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2011-02-18T22:40:51","modified_gmt":"2011-02-19T03:40:51","slug":"gift-of-god-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/gift-of-god-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift of God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathaniel means “gift of God,” from the Hebrew Natan-El.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 20 minutes ago I got the call that every mother dreads most:\u00a0 “We can’t find Nat at this moment.”\u00a0 I was out with my friend Lisa and I didn’t know what to do first.\u00a0 I called Ned at home.\u00a0 He hadn’t heard this.\u00a0 He got into the car immediately to drive to where the social group had been.<\/p>\n

My friend put me into a cab and I called the social group leader back.\u00a0 “YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME”\u00a0 I screamed.\u00a0 “Where is he?”\u00a0 The wine I’d had was going to come right up.\u00a0 My stomach lurched.\u00a0 My phone beeped.\u00a0 My friend was asking what was happening.\u00a0 I called Ned, and he was on his way.<\/p>\n

Where was Nat?\u00a0 They said that they got distracted for a moment when one of the social group kids got picked up by her dad to go home.\u00a0 They did a head count and it was only three.\u00a0 Nat was gone.<\/p>\n

I was sick to my stomach, screaming in the cab.\u00a0\u00a0 He’s gone.\u00a0 He’s gone?\u00a0 What are the chances you can find a young autistic man in a crowded hockey stadium?\u00a0 He’s gone.\u00a0 This is the worst thing that could happen to a person.\u00a0 If someone tells you that autism is the worst thing that could happen to a child, they don’t know anything.\u00a0 My darling, my Nat.<\/p>\n

And the weird thing was, when I dropped him off this evening, the group leader seemed kind of — tentative.\u00a0 Young.\u00a0 Nat was doing a wide circuit around him and I yelled out twice, “Nat, stay with the group!”\u00a0 I looked back to see where Nat was, and he was with the group, so I let him go, but there was a small tiny voice that was wondering… But he’s been doing this for years, don’t be silly, Susan.<\/p>\n

My phone rings a few seconds later, “We have Nat.\u00a0 We have him.\u00a0 He’s okay.”<\/p>\n

“Where was he?\u00a0 He’s okay?”<\/p>\n

“We are not sure where he was but I had checked all the bathrooms and had the entire stadium locked down.\u00a0 He’s okay.”<\/p>\n

She put him on the phone.\u00a0 “Hi,” he said.\u00a0 It was my darling’s voice.\u00a0\u00a0 God has now given me this gift, twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathaniel means “gift of God,” from the Hebrew Natan-El. About 20 minutes ago I got the call that every mother dreads most:\u00a0 “We can’t find Nat at this moment.”\u00a0 I was out with my friend Lisa and I didn’t know what to do first.\u00a0 I called Ned at home.\u00a0 He hadn’t heard this.\u00a0 He got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-uy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1896,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}