The Extraordinary Goodness All Around Us
Hi.
My name is Carrie.
I have five kids, and my second son has autism. His name is Jack.
Jack is sixteen years old now.
Theoretically, he is a junior in high school.
Theoretically, he can drive a car.
Theoretically, he should be studying for the SAT’s and maybe looking at colleges and trying to decide what the next chapter of his life may hold.
There is nothing theoretical about autism though. That’s the thing.
Autism is a concrete set of symptoms that, like a set of parentheses around a sentence, firmly embrace my boy.
Regulation.
Executive functioning.
Anxiety.
Every morning, Jack wakes around 6:00 am. He showers, and shaves his sideburns with an electric razor, and makes his own breakfast.
He used to eat mostly waffles, but now he likes eggs sandwiches. They’re frozen, and he heats them up in the microwave.
He puts on his blue jacket, gathers up his lunch and his backpack, and stands by the door to wait for Eddie.
Eddie drives him to school, you see.
Ever since Jack could say the word yellow, he’s wanted to ride the big bus to school. He wanted to ride with his big brother and go to the big school on the hill and maybe join a club after school.
Autism, as it turns out, had other plans.
Autism often has other plans.
Instead, Jack goes to school in the town next to ours, in a one-story building that calls to mind an office park.
There is no bus. There is a small minivan that comes straight up the driveway.
He makes the best of it. Every morning Eddie lets Jack use his phone to call into the local radio station and play the daily contest. They talk about the weather, and politics, and try to guess vanity plates on the cars ahead of them.
His peers are starting to drive themselves to school. He notices. I know he does.
His is a quiet grief. It’s not nearly as colorful as mine, or cloudy like his father’s.
He holds his pain deep inside of his heart, in a space between the beats. But I know it is there. And I don’t know what to do about it.
I don’t know how to tell him there is no formula for a life filled with meaning, and purpose, and delight.
I don’t know how to explain that we are on autism’s timeline now—that the usual goals and milestones may come later, or never at all.
I don’t know how to explain these things, because I am still working to learn them myself.
So, I lieu of explanation, I just say the words for now a whole lot.
For now, the next chapter of his life is a little up in the air—the proverbial kite on the end of a long string.
For now, he is working to master skills related to occupational therapy and conversational patterns, rather than preparing for standardized tests.
For now, he rides to school in a van with the words Safe Wheels printed on the side.
One morning a few weeks ago was just like every other morning—the egg sandwich on a paper plate, and the packing, and the waiting.
About ten minutes after the van made its way back down the driveway, the phone rang.
“Mom. For WE WON. I won. The RADIO CONTEST.”
The thing is, sometimes I get so wrapped up in the milestones and the diagnosis, I forget to look up, and take in the extraordinary goodness all around me.
It’s there, every single day.
“Hi Mrs. Cariello? It’s Eddie. I drove to the radio station during lunch and picked up Jack’s prize. I want him to have it for the ride home.”
Written by, Carrie Cariello
Carrie Cariello is the author of What Color Is Monday, How Autism Changed One Family for the Better, and Someone I’m With Has Autism. She lives in Southern New Hampshire with her husband, Joe, and their five children. Carrie is a contributor to the Huffington Post, TODAY Parents, the TODAY Show, Parents.com. She has been interviewed by NBC Nightly News, and also has a TEDx talk.
She speaks regularly about autism, marriage, and motherhood, and writes a weekly blog at www.carriecariello.com. One of her essays, “I Know What Causes Autism,” was featured as one of the Huffington Post’s best of 2015, and her piece, “I Know Why He Has Autism,” was named one of the top blog posts of 2017 by the TODAY Show.
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