I Love Being His Mom. I Don’t Always Love Being a Mom.
I love my son more than I could ever explain. I also miss silence. I miss freedom. I miss belonging only to myself. Some days the talking, touching, questions, and constant need for me are too much. Both things can be true. I don’t love being a mom every day. But I love being his mom every single one of them.
Autism Lives in Our House. We Don’t Live in Autism’s.
Before I knew Cristian was autistic, he ran face-first into a glass wall. I can laugh about that now. Not because autism isn’t serious, but because it isn’t the only thing happening in our house. Autism lives here. So do jokes, arguments, ordinary days, ridiculous moments, and a whole lot of life.
He Doesn’t Remember. I Do.
He was too young to remember the moments that changed the way I parent him. I wasn’t. Some things happened before we even had a name for what he needed and years later, I’m still carrying memories he never had to keep.
And Apparently My Solution Was: Then We Won’t Have Hair.
Parenting Cristian means sometimes having a perfectly reasonable conversation right up until it takes a hard left. One minute I’m explaining consequences. The next, apparently, neither of us is going to have hair.
I Didn’t Have A Voice. My Son Has A Microphone.
I learned early how to make myself small. Cristian did not. Raising a child who says exactly what he thinks has forced me to confront everything I was taught to swallow and I wouldn’t change that about him for anything.