{"id":3643,"date":"2014-01-16T09:06:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T14:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=3643"},"modified":"2014-01-16T09:06:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-16T14:06:11","slug":"what-if-nat-woke-up-cured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/what-if-nat-woke-up-cured\/","title":{"rendered":"What if Nat Woke Up, Cured?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote this more than ten years ago, and it can be found in my first book, <\/em>Making Peace With Autism: One Family’s Story of Struggle, Discovery, and Unexpected Gifts. <\/a>(Trumpeter\/Shambhala 2005 and 2006)\u00a0 I am posting it today because it still rings true for me, more or less.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From Making Peace With Autism,<\/em> Epilogue:<\/p>\n

I still find myself wondering, during my dark times, What if Nat woke up one morning to find that he wasn\u2019t autistic any <\/em>longer?<\/em> I see us all, gathered around his bed, the site of the miracle, eagerly listening to his every word. He speaks so clearly now, in full, effortless sentences. At last, we understand everything. It\u2019s as if he has woken up from a coma, or a deep, enchanted sleep. He will have to catch up for all the lost time.<\/p>\n

We tell him, \u201cAnd then you did . . . .Why was that?\u201d\u00a0 We have so many questions for him, as he does for us. And now he can tell us all his secrets: \u201cOh, I hated it when you would try to make me talk to you.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy?\u201d
\n\u201cBecause your words came at me too fast. If anything else was going on, I couldn\u2019t pay attention to whatever you were saying to me. The noise in a room overpowered everything else.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat were you saying with the silly talk? What was \u2018Feem\u2013sh?\u2019\u201d
\n\u201c\u2018Feem\u2019 just made me feel good. It was my word. Because you didn\u2019t know what it meant, you couldn\u2019t talk to me about it or make me talk about it. And \u2018ssh\u2019was just that,\u2018ssh.\u2019 I loved the feel of \u2018ssh.\u2019 I loved when people got quiet.\u201d
\n\u201cWhy did you hit? Why did you pinch?\u201d
\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I think that with the pinching,my fingers got carried away. It feels good to squeeze. And once I hit, it\u2019s hard to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then I have to ask the most important question, \u201cDo you love us?\u201d
\n\u201cYeah, but it\u2019s hard understanding all of your emotions.You can laugh, then cry, then sing, all in the same hour. How can
\nyou change moods so fast?\u201d
\n\u201cMaybe now you\u2019ll see,\u201dNed says.\u201cWhat do you want to do now, Nat?\u201d
\n\u201cI want to meet some girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wish for a miracle like this so badly that when I really think about it, I can barely breathe. So I close my eyes and let it pass through me. And the more I think about it, the more I come to realize that there are not many fifteen-year-old boys, autistic or not, who actually talk that way to their mothers. Anyway, I do<\/em> know Nat. I know why he does what he does, the \u201cfeem,\u201d the pinching, all of it. All in all, as my father once said, he\u2019s still our Nat.<\/p>\n

So I drop my miracle fantasy and open my eyes and go looking for him. There he is, pacing back and forth, living room, hallway, dining room,waiting for his video to rewind, his loud steps reverberating through the house, his hand opening and closing in time with the cadence of his soft silly talk. He notices me immediately, but he keeps moving, probably hoping I will not disturb his comfortable rhythm.
\n\u201cHold it, Nat,\u201d I say, stopping him between rooms.
\nHe turns and fixes on me with his wide blue eyes, waiting, silent now. He\u2019s taller than I am these days, but his hair is still bright blond, the same as it was when he was a baby. I say,\u201cI just want a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immediately, he leans in toward me, \u201cOK, yes,\u201d he says, so softly it is almost imperceptible.<\/p>\n

I kiss his cheek and breathe him in. His long arms are gingerly draped around me, bony and warm.We stand together for a moment, just like that, and my pain recedes, carried away with the tide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this more than ten years ago, and it can be found in my first book, Making Peace With Autism: One Family’s Story of Struggle, Discovery, and Unexpected Gifts. (Trumpeter\/Shambhala 2005 and 2006)\u00a0 I am posting it today because it still rings true for me, more or less.   From Making Peace With Autism, […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3643","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-WL","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643","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=3643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3644,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions\/3644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}