RED LIGHT - GREEN LIGHT

You could ask my Stevie what the secret to life is, but don’t be shocked if he won’t tell you. He rarely talks to anyone. It’s not that he is being rude, it’s just Stevie being Stevie. You see, my beautiful autistic boy is too busy discovering the answer to life’s deepest questions than waste the effort of engaging you. The reality is that if you want to engage him, you will have to enter his world. But warned. If you are courageous enough to venture there, be prepared to have the riddles of life’s mysteries unraveled for you. Don’t be shocked if you find him teaching you that the essence of existence is really very simple. You may discover that living a true life is no more complicated than watching a child play a game of red light, green light.

Too often in my life, I failed to grasp what he was trying to show me. Mostly because our brains were wired so differently. Mine was cluttered with the verbal, the logical, and the linear. Stevie was freer, flitting from thing to thing, never spending more time than he wanted at any one project. He was like a bee pollenating a bed of petunias. Some of this. A little of that. A sprinkle here. Resting a while there. His job was to be spreading the pollen so desperately needed by the universe. Making the world brighter, and more colorful. This was my beautiful boy’s palette. A harmony of colors and shapes and constructs that an ordinary person might have dismissed as slop, but my child knew was nothing short of divine.

Stevie is oblivious to the mundane and mediocre of our world, because his brain is always on. Always discovering. Always exploring. Always grasping, clinging to the morsels of joy that his heart and mind can contain. This is the world of the autistic. This is the challenge of the parent of a special needs child; the constant battle to break through the fog of isolation in order to connect. It is never an easy task. Autism can be a lonely place for both a parent and a child, like staring through a Covid pane. You on one side. Your child on the other. Desperate for the slightest touch, the simplest kiss of the heart.

Now, I admit that having any kind of in-depth conversation with a mostly non-verbal child is almost impossible. Not that I didn’t try, however. Many times, I spoke. He listened or didn’t. Depending on the day, my Stevie might prefer to immerse himself in whatever video the I-Pad might be showing him. The moments I received one-word answers to direct questions were victories for our relationship. Repetition became our constant companion, as we trained on basic skills like an athlete might prepare for the Olympic gold. Structure and organization. These were the feeble attempts I made to impress order onto what I perceived must be the chaos of his thinking. But little did I know that it was his ultimate red light.

I helped dress him. I wiped poop off his butt to keep him from smearing it off his fingers and onto the bathroom wall. I showed him how to brush his teeth, put on underwear, pour a drink for himself. Eventually, we began to make the tiniest bit of progress, and on those days, when the muscle memory took over and he was focused enough the see a task through, those days we celebrated the victory like we had broken a world record. High fives. Fist Bumps. Pats on the back. This became the language of love between a father and son.

Slowly, over the years, Stevie learned more, but only the things he had a desire to discover and embrace. For example, my son learned enough hand eye coordination to spank me silly on a video game. Racing games were his favorite. I discovered one day that he had learned to read by watching television with the closed captioning on. He learned computer skills by messing around on a smart phone so much so that he cracked my personal pin and ordered a couple of cartoon videos from Amazon. Art became a passion. He had trouble staying between the lines, but I didn’t correct him or try to contain his expression. By this time, I knew better than to insist on the constraints. The student was learning. Let him be as free as his mind will allow. I told myself. Let my Stevie be Stevie. When I complimented the scribbles, he would smile, and if I were lucky and he was really feeling it, a gentle thumbs up. These were the moments I lived for. Longed for. The green lights of life.

But there were moments of frustration. The night I got up to check on him and found him passed out from drinking two 2 liters of Sprite, or when he raided the freezer, ate a half gallon of Rocky Road and put the empty carton back into the freezer just as he had found it, thinking I would never notice. The times he would when he would raid the fridge at 3 am and leave the door wide open until the next morning. Nights when he wandered the neighborhood in the middle of the night, and knock on a neighbor’s door, crying because he had forgotten which house was his. We took measures for his safety. Changed locks. Secured cabinets. Put covers on thermostats so he wouldn’t turn the furnace on in the middle of a hot summer night.

I do not want you to think that I was the perfect father. I was far from it. Stevie’s autism conflicted with my worldview constantly. Because I worked full time, I filled the days with the fury of frantic frets, weighed down with the worries of always wanting more. Never content to rejoice in the beauty of a moment or pause long enough to embrace the glory of a glance. My heart stressed about every success and sorrow, as if the sun were setting on the horizon of my humanity. I filled my time with activity, like the hamster spinning in a wheel, convincing myself that my wasted energy was advancing me toward tomorrow, when it was leading nowhere. Even now, I wish I could reclaim the nights I was too tired to get up off my ass and enter his world. I could have cracked open the door and stepped into the light of his life so much more than I did. How I wish I had been more intentional about living in the world of my beautiful baby boy. Even now, I realize that I might very well have sipped the nectar of his cup, letting the honey of love for life linger on my lips.

So, I tell you this. Real living is as simple as a child’s game.

Because as I look at the body of my son through the hospital window, all I can see is the shadow of his form in the bed. The respirator covers his face, pumping its rhythmic up and down, forcing air through the myriad of plastic tubing and into his anxious lungs. Every now and then I see him stir. Courageously battling against the monster that has separated him from the life he loved. This is my beautiful boy, fighting with every feeble breath. This is my son for whom I weep tears he will never see.

But my Stevie has fought demons like this before. I know that his essence was strong enough to thrive in isolation from a disability no one understood, and that he is valiant enough, capable enough to fight this beast. My Stevie is probably better equipped than most for this task. Though ten thousand may fall at his side, my beautiful boy will charge the gates of hell with all the fury that heaven and its angels can muster.

I learned from the doctors that the more green lights I see on the machines next to his body, the better, more hopeful for a recovery. The better chances are we will not be separated again. Separated as we are now.

So, my beautiful baby boy, every day, I pray that when I come to this window, I pray for the green lights. After all, green light means there is still a chance for my Stevie to show me the secrets of life.