An Extra Inning
Please, take care of him. Five words I never wanted to write.
You step up to the mound, ball in hand. Watching you, I realize.
In three short weeks, you will leave. Except this time, instead of a college campus, you’re headed abroad for the semester. You’ll welcome autumn in another country, surrounded by unfamiliar streets and buildings.
You think I’d be used to it by now. After all, I’ve done before, and I’ll do it again. Yet a mother never gets used to the way her family’s landscape shrinks and contracts, like a sweater left in the dryer too long. You might say I want an extra inning.
My middle son.
Charlie.
Charlie-bear to us.
Sitting here in the bleachers, I am flooded with memories.
The first day of preschool, bright blue backpack and wide grin.
Standing in the hallway, shaking from a nightmare about Big Foot coming into your room.
The new driver – walking confidently from the parking lot to announce passing the test on the first try.
Boy more akin to a kite, chasing the wind as I wave from the ground and hold tightly to the strings.
The time your heart broke the way only a teenage heart could break. I was desperate to keep you afloat. We had lunch at a local café so often that the manager pressed giant cookies into your palm while we ate. I wondered where my easy child went.
You are an autism brother. You shoulder a burden few kids your age can understand. Carefully, you keep one eye focused in your own future and one eye on his.
Please, take care of him.
These are five words I never wanted to write. Yet here we are.
I don’t mean financially. We have arrangements for that.
Visit him.
Make him laugh.
Buy the cookies that he likes and remind him to be careful of strangers.
In other words, do all the things you already do.
There is no such thing as an easy child. That’s the problem. There is a child who figures out how to fly under the radar – how to reduce his own needs in the face of autism’s storms. A child who stands alone, shivering in the hallway, afraid something bigger than all of us might swallow him whole.
It’s been a good summer. I hope it’s one you look back on fondly.
After all, how do you measure the warmth and the sun?
For ours is hardly a Facebook summer, as they say, but rather a combination of ordinary moments.
Chipotle on the front porch, late-night movies, an afternoon wedding under a blue sky.
Yet some moments are meant to be remembered forever. Even if you only see them through your mind’s eye because you weren’t there yourself. Autism and motherhood had worn you down for the day.
I wasn’t there.
Another game, a different field. The middle of June.
Pitch after pitch. Curveballs, change-ups, sliders. Out after out.
A no-hitter.
My son. I am sorry.
If I could traverse back in time, I would.
Today, I am here.
The first batter approaches the plate. Your gaze shifts.
Through your eyes, life is new.
This, my son, is your gift.
Three weeks.
Please, take care of him.
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