A Moment of Clarity

Today is my son’s 8th birthday. Tonight at 9:18 he will officially turn 8 and a whole new world of 3rd grade and life opens up. I remember thinking 8 years ago to the day, that this child was different. I didn’t know just how different he was or why that he was, I only knew that this child was special.

I remember in the seconds after he was born, he looked at the world with eyes as deep and mysterious as the furthest reaches of space. He looked around and he reached out to grasp the nurse’s stethoscope and the doctor’s nametag. He didn’t just blindly reach out and accidentally catch—he looked, he saw, and he wanted. To this day, Ewan is still very much the child who looks at the world, sees something that I often miss, and finds a way to get what he wants and what he needs.

I remember in the hours and days after Ewan was born, his eyes stayed open as he endlessly drank in the sights and sounds of this new world. He never slept. And I don’t mean that in a babies don’t sleep kind of way. He couldn’t stop seeing, couldn’t stop searching, couldn’t look away from the blinds in the bedroom. They pulled him in with a siren song that only he could hear. Today his siren song has become science and technology—it calls to him in a way that I may never fully understand. Then I would have said he was uncomfortable in his own skin, today I would say he is learning the inner and outer boundaries of his self and of his soul. Today I would say he knows himself better than anyone.

I remember in the days and months after Ewan was born, that he often pulled away from my touch. Stiffened in response to a mother’s cradling and fought against the invasive intimacy of breastfeeding. The slightest of brushes against his skin brought forth a moment of shock. The silence was never silent enough. The barest of whispers might elicit a startling response. Today a hug is not always given freely. Today the cacophony of the world can still be too much. Yet he learns to walk through life in ways that he can handle and he is learning to cope.

I remember in the months and years after Ewan was born, that the world of food and nourishment was far out of reach. Then the very idea of food was overwhelming and frightening. The joy of eating was not something he would experience for years to come. Every bite was associated with a deep and terrible suffering. It would be years before he could approach the table with trust and anticipation. Today, his relationship to the world of food and eating has grown leaps and bounds yet he may never reach out to the table for comfort. Yet he continues to reach with an inner strength and determination that many will never know or understand.

I remember in the early years, waiting for words to come—waiting with bated breath to hear the thoughts running through his mind a million miles an hour. Waiting to touch his mind through the jumble of verbs and adjectives and the full breadth of linguistical magic just on the tip of his tongue. The anticipation grew to an alarming distress when the world of words and sentences seemed out of reach. Today, the years of augmentative communication and speech therapy have given birth to a child’s thoughts so pure and honest they are proclaimed to the world on a daily ‘Ewanism’ basis. The depth of his understanding gives profound meaning to my life as I eagerly await the next ‘ism’.

Those early hours, days, months, and years left me confused, scared, out of my element, and pushed into the deep end of the ocean. Yet I learned to stop swimming against the current, let myself go, and embraced his world as much as I did my own. In those early days, every single day I would dare to dream in the darkest of the night of what my son might become—what life might hold for him. And I can say he has far surpassed all my expectations and dreams. He is Ewan. And that, is enough.