Why is this year different from all other years? This year April 1st is not just April fool's and April does not have just another awareness title attached. This year April's Autism Awareness month matters to me because I now have a piece of the puzzle. A happy hug giving, look you in the eye and determined piece of it. Looking at him you would never know but the quirky signs are there. He has Aspergers. A word I thought I would never learn to spell. Everyone says I am fortunate because it could be much worse. I am fortunate because we live in a school district that has the need support for Autism, fortunate because his teachers worked before his diagnosis to help him and that a living women at childcare saw the signs cause she had just gone through testing for her child.
I started studying to become a herbalist and wholistic health. My son started school and the process for being diagnosed. The beginning March brought final word of his Aspergers. We suspected that is what it was but hearing the final word felt different. Looking for books I found several, I looked at the cover of one and ignored it even with the little girl on the cover being so precious. I picked a few books but this one book seemed to call to me so I got it on a whim.The first one I read pissed me off because it had a hard list of what they don't do and my son did those things. Then I read I read Children with high functioning Autism and it sounded more like my son. Mrs. Hughes-Lynch speaks of more than just high functioning Autism but also of the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) which Aspergers also falls under.
She spoke of a Poem called Welcome to Holland that compared Italy to the normal child and Holland to the learning disabled child. She used while Switzerland to describe the place where you where a little of both and fit fully into neither.
It gave me some relief and at times tears. Tears not of pity but of knowing I was not alone and that Switerland may be confusing as hell with no map to follow except the one you make it still has some breath taking sights. she referenced a poem called The Special Mother by Erma Bombeck that made me smile the day I sat looking out a window in tears.
After reading the poem and thinking of all of my children with there ADHD/ODD and now Aspergers I realized I had been in Switzerland the whole time. I had weathered storms and seen beauty from a different angle all the long and that for me this was just another unmapped router that I was now better equipped for with experience and age.
Some people say Autism needs to be cured others say accept me for my differences cause they make me who I am. I think we need to find what is causing or trigger Autism but, I also think we need to not be so blind in our fears and pain that we miss beautiful spots we pass on the journey. No matter how hard it maybe there are always those spots where you stop and look out at the horizon and stand in aww of its beauty.
Sometimes it's Holland and Switzerland that remind us how precious and beautiful even the smallest things in life can be.
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