Friends

Joseph is five. It's just hit me recently that, when I was five, my best friend meant everything to me. I lived and breathed Gina, as she did me; we were -- to borrow a phrase from Mr. Gump -- like peas and carrots.

And now my kid is five. He has no best friend. He has an occasional playdate, and he has kids at school who are slowly figuring out how to interact with him.

But he has no friends.

He has autism.

And, as much as I like to stay optimistic and cheerful and think that it's going to work out, sometimes the realization hits me like a punch in the stomach. My god, he has autism.

At five Gina and I were confidently exploring the world. We talked endlessly about the giant who lived in the forest behind my backyard. Once we even found his footprint. We froze in the snow waiting for our sisters to get out of school and had to go to a neighbor's for help. Our imaginations ran wild, dancing, swirling and feeding off each other. There was no place we couldn't go when we were together.

Joseph doesn't have that. Any of it. No child calls us to say, in that lilting, timid voice, "Can Joseph play?" We didn't even bother to attend the last time we were invited to a birthday party, because the concept of Joseph trying to cope in a new house with new kids was just too much to face.

Some five year olds are starting to sleep over at their friend's homes, and their parents get a night to themselves.

Not us. We have autism.

But I'll try to stay cheerful and optimistic. Maybe I'm just a little low tonight. Maybe, if we keep working on it as crazily as we have been, it'll turn out better than I think.

I think now I'm going to try not to think. It's not doing me any good tonight.

A sick boy

You know that autism is a weird disorder when you're relieved that your kid is sick.

We work so hard to help Joseph (he's 5) bridge those autism deficits: social skills, emotion sharing, referencing (via eye contact) and more. And we've come a long way.

One of the odd things about this particular parenting journey is that you obsessively pay attention to every change in your kid, even every nuance of change. And one thing we've noticed lately is more interest in other kids. Joseph's been eager to hang out with kids at playgrounds and at preschool -- he'll imitate them and begin to join in on their games.

This has been very exciting. His preschool teacher promoted him socially from an early 3 year old to a mature 3 year old. I can't tell you how good it feels to see him run toward kids instead of away from them -- to see him smile with delight when another kid shows up when he used to just scream with fear.

So. Today, at the playground, Joseph wanted nothing to do with the other kids. He wanted to be there, but he played separately, away from the others. It finally culminated with him screaming up on one of the playsets when the kids were around him. I had to intervene and take him away.

Anyone touched by autism knows the fears that come up: Has he regressed? For good? What the **!!&% happened? Did I feed him gluten or something? The mind jumps ahead to one's child at 21, or 31, or 71, never having made a friend, always alone and isolated.

But then we got home and I noticed, hmmmm, his forehead is a little warm. I take his temperature, and, sure enough, he's got a fever of 101. Phew. What a relief. It's not regression -- he's just sick.

See? Autism does crazy things to a parent's head.