Autism Speaks

Booga was five before he spoke.
The things you take for granted when you have other children that are so-called "Normal".
I remember looking at him thinking, "Do you know who I am?"

He had said random words but never sentences and never anything that made a connection.
Then one day I was swimming in the lake with him and I was watching two other children who were throwing seaweed at each other and I remember thinking, "Wait till your mom's see your hair."There are all kinds of junk that's unsavory in seaweed...Yuk!

And I heard something I never thought I would hear, I heard my son say to me, "Mommy, watch me!"
I turned around looking for someone else standing near, but suddenly he was in front of me, "Mommy watch me" He repeated.
I started to cry.
And I bet everyone that saw me leave the water at the lake thought I was dragging my drowned child on shore, but I had heard something I never thought that I would ever hear from my son.
Not only was this his own declaration that not only did he know who I was, but that he wanted my attention.
All those times looking into his eyes and seeing someone there that truly loved me back was confirmed. I went home and began making him tell me what he wanted instead of letting him point to it.
From then on the jig was up. Booga was a part of the world and we were his parents and he was going to have to be a part of this slightly different, oddly dysfunctional family.

Booga hadn’t spoken till then; and for years we worked getting him to look us in the eyes when he said something to us, learning to hold a meaningful conversation with us, and tolerating a world of noise and people.

Booga is nineteen now. He holds conversations and goes to school and fights with his brother and gets mad at me when I tell him he's done something wrong. He sometimes talks too much and we have to tell him to shut up. He loves words and is an avid movie buff. You ask the director of any of his favorite movies and he will not only tell you the director but the producer and the stars of the movie and possibly what movie company produced it.
He has won awards for art. His art.
I see my personality in him.

He might never live alone, or he might live in assisted living, I don't know.

But I remember the days when there was little hope and the day I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and the end of his silence.