The Race of Autism

Dearest Jacob,  today you caught me off guard, the way a sleeping soldier, snoozing against his wall in peacetime is suddenly jolted awake with horns and the rushing tide of the shouts of fear and unpreparedness.  There I was watching the beginning of my sports show that comes from the UK.  As usual, I only focus on the first 12 or so minutes, once it gets to rugby, golf and cricket it's already been deleted.  There you were, slumped on the couch, I was casting my eye and ears between something 'terribly important' on the internet and half taking in the initial headlines of said sport show.

The commentators spat the headlines and updates out like a fiery geyser, attempting to rev up their unknown audience.  I paid minimal attention as I awaited to hear of my football team (soccer you irreverent lot ;).  Liverpool had battered Everton in the Liverpool Derby and I was eager to see the highlights and the interviews.  I turned my head to the screen.  You asked a question; I heard you speak but not your words.  Frustrated, I asked what you said.

"Why does that man speak with a British accent Mom?"

I look to see a non UK player on the screen.  No one there but the sports anchor and his co anchor.

"Who love?"

"The man in the suit......is he faking an English accent?"

"The man on the left?"

"Yes."

"Why would you think he shouldn't have an English accent hun?"

"But he doesn't look English....."

I knew immediately why Jacob asked this innocent question, although I struggled with my immediate response. The Sports anchor was black.  I inhaled my mortification in a single breath and turned to my son.

"How many black people in America have an American accent?"

"All of them Mom."

"How many white Americans do you feel  have an American accent love?"

"About half."

"I mean not including Latino's hun."

"Oh, then, most."

"How many white people in England do you feel have an English accent?"

"Well all....duh..."

"OK, how many Black people in England have an English accent sweetie?"

Jacob's little face scrunched up, his head tilted like it always does when he is struggling with a quandary.  "Well, none.  There are no black people in England!!"

My heart snagged on emotional muscle tissue, it tore and spotted blood on my ego.   I was stunned into silence.  I have always prided myself on being a pretty liberal, left winger.  I assumed' my children were absorbing my openness by how we lived our lives and by daily family cultural osmosis.  However, add to that Jacob's brain is not wired like yours or mine.  His autism and our coexistence of almost 12 years had me fooled into believing I was in step with his cultural understanding.

He and I talked a bit about people speaking languages with accents and no matter their skin color it was based on their country and their upbringing.  I could see he understood the concept but in his mind he was shaking his neurological head. It's time Jacob met the country that gave birth to his translucent Mom, and be exposed to all of Ireland and Britain.  We are all now mixed race and inclusion, regardless of our accents.  How nice though, to deal with race based on accent and not necessarily pigmentation.  Autism is a gift.

The Chosen

I remember my Mother commenting on how the babies we bear, whether to term or not choose their life's start, in a sense choose their family.  It seemed a wonderfully easy and ethereal plane to believe in, especially as a young woman, not yet to achieve that state of pregnancy and motherhood.  In the Bible, most especially the Talmud, the Hall of Souls is known as The Guf.


"The mystical significance of The Guf is that each person is important and has a unique role which they, with their unique soul, can fulfill.  Even a newborn brings the Messiah closer simply by being born."


Such a perception and belief is comforting, knowing every soul born is a rock across the tumultuous river that we pivot and slip upon to reach the "Messiah."  Of course this is probably only so if one believes in the concreteness of the bible and /or the Talmud.  As an older child and a teenager these mystical concepts fed me like a spiritual milk.  I was so desperate to believe in a reasoning for why certain children are born with needs beyond the everyday, or why someone I knew was suddenly not "themselves" after a car wreck or a medical procedure.  Even as young as my mid teens I had a deep draw to those around me with special needs, or as I now call them, needs.  I can not explain it and I gave up a long time ago attempting to pin down why.  That is and maybe truly beyond me, that's ok too.  Not everything, including intuition or perception needs scientific swordsmanship.


Having said as much, I have been struggling with something beyond my comprehension.  After years of catechism, a lapse, an extended involvement with the Episcopal Church, I have finally found my peace with the belief there is no built gathering of stepping stones, straight and pointed across that river of spiritualism.  It is for so many a teetering balancing act, with limbs outstretched, waving, gripping their rocks; calling every mossy slip "God's will," or "faith's challenge."


Parenting my children, the ones with "needs,"  I skipped across the same stones and green, glassy rocks for so long.  I could only see the next stone, the whitening rage or mild circular flow of the river that day.  I kept looking down, fearful, what if I fall?  Will my lungs with their heaviness and the Guf would be one less original soul?  When I think back to my Mother's original epiphany, she was and is by no means a religious enforcer. She is attune with the Earth and understands the water. She has, within' her own rocks and river found a quiet peace in the midst of the torrent.  


At times, when it's quiet or when my childrens' needs conquer an unimaginable milestone, I question if they chose me from The Guf.


I have watched my Mother, with a cocked head and an inquisitive eye for years now.  How does she live midst the same surge, yet never slip or become immersed, never washes away? 


"Go gently," she atones...."go gently."  I pause, eyes fixed on her, she is not looking down, scanning the slickness of the next rock like I am.  She is hunkered down on her rock, balanced, mid stream, looking up.  Her straight poise is palpable, her hand dipped in water that dances around her fingers like a well known friend, caressing her form.  I hunker down, some stones behind her, no longer studying the next rock, or the farther shore.  I allow my hand to atone and go gently with the river laughing around my fingers.