closure
Of all the mommy blogs that Mer consults regularly, there was one that had a nice turn of phrase to describe what life is like with an autistic kid.
Before the child arrives in the world, it's as if you're planning to go on a group trip to Italy with your closest friends. There are all the things you do in anticipation of the trip, and you're openly salivating at the prospect of going to the market stalls in Florence, exploring the Vatican's catacombs or climbing the hills in Sicily. Then the child arrives and it's as if you suddenly find yourself alone in Holland.
Holland has its charms, to be sure -- tulips, windmills and Rembrandts -- but it's not the trip to Italy you've been planning so long for, and the one all of your friends are talking about.
Your life is always tinged with regret about missing out on Italy, but you can't let that regret consume you, or else you'll miss what Holland has to offer you.
All of the foregoing is basically a long, roundabout way of saying L's occupational therapist came today for an extended session, where M asked her many questions (through bleary eyes and plenty of sneezes, no doubt). The prognosis: very good. We were congratulated for having the presence of mind to get him checked out early (because the feds end the program once the kid turns 3): props to the Divine Miss M here. He will require lots of therapy, but our little boy will be just fine, just like other little boys, when he is around 3, maybe even earlier when he's around 2. In some areas, such as fine motor skills, he operates at around a 5- or 6-month level; in other areas he operates at an 8- or 9-month level.
All therapy is good therapy. I will be able to do two things with my son every dorky dad wants to do: play games with him (starting at around 3) and read Lord of the Rings to him (starting at around 5).
So we'll be going to Italy after all, but the airline's lost our luggage and we've lost our passports. We've got 1 credit card and some walking money, but our phrasebooks were in our luggage when it got lost.
But to me, travel is all about those times when you're arguing with some comically bored functionary in a government office in broken Italian, when night is falling and you're already on your 2nd day in Italy. (I've never been, but I imagine it's an EU law that any trip to an EU member country must contain this type of interaction with governmental agencies.)
Or it's when you're horribly jet-lagged in Avignon, France, stuck in a heroin-jag hotel next to a major highway, watching what seems like babies eating feces on TV at 4 in the morning. (Yes, this really happened.)
Or it's when you get falsely accused of dumping water on a cop, from 13 stories up in your Tokyo hotel. (This too.)
Sure, there's the temple to Poseidon at Sounion, the Hanoi open-air market, the old city walls and Arab market of Avignon, and the little Shinto shrine around the corner from the pachinko parlor that will change your life. But travel, just like life, is defined by the little setbacks along the way. Besides, the therapists (and me) will be roughhousing with him: fun in the name of therapy. Don't get me wrong: the therapy will be intensive and it will be hard, sometimes.
But I know that through it all, he'll be the happy boy he's always been, and he's got us to help him get through it.