It seems that I've become that person, the mother others notice. And react to. Just the other day, as I was staring at what I think were the booster engines on the Saturn V rocket, a woman approached me and said, "Are you ok?" I was actually startled by her question, since I didn't immediately know why she was asking. "I have a son who's autistic. I see it in your child." I don't actually recall responding because, after all, what would I say? "Keep smiling," she added, and walked away.
I'm not exactly sure how I felt about that encounter. Well, that's not entirely true. I think it hurt my heart. Not because what the woman said was unkind or uncalled for. I knew she was reaching out with kindness, with empathy. And I will always, always, be grateful for folks like that. It's just that other people seeing you struggle, seeing your child struggle, is something that just hurts. It's not that I'm embarrassed about it, since I make a point in those moments of not seeing other people who might be seeing me. It's just that it brings the most intimate of family struggles out into the open in a way that is like wearing a wound, like bleeding profusely as you go through what otherwise look to the outside world to be the normal activities of family life. But of course there's nothing normal about any of this.
And just a day after the Saturn encounter, I found myself explaining to a lovely, well-meaning flight attendant that my child is not rude or disrespectful. My child was in fact stuck in an obsessive loop that didn't seem to have an exit ramp. Clearly, the flight attendant saw something in my eyes, on my face, that led her to offer to intervene. That would not have made anything better, so I demurred.
After the plane took off, I went back to the galley to explain to her why my child was behaving that way. Which led her to reveal her own struggles, with anxiety. That led to some quite wonderful conversations during the flight, including our sharing photos of our rescue dogs (hers and one of ours look exactly alike!), and my learning that her dog Charlie is the only one who can get her 88 year old mother with dementia to take a shower. Charlie visits her mom and by licking her mom's leg, somehow effects the transition to showering. I also learned that her mom still smokes, that she and her husband try to keep her mom safe, and that she still buys her mom cigarettes.
This is the same flight attendant who took it upon herself to move us to two empty rows in the plane before takeoff. She did this while I was in the restroom and when I came out and saw that we'd been moved up, I asked my husband why. He told me that she'd said to him, "Your wife's a doll." Well that was completely lovely and totally unexpected. But I also think it was one woman who understands pain and struggle reaching out to another. And that was kind of perfect. And wonderful. And heartbreaking. And gratitude-inducing. And a reminder that sometimes, being seen can be a very good thing indeed...
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