Today's quote is from King Lear.
Lear’s warning isn’t about trains or parenting. He is staring down the kind of road that will twist your mind if you follow it too far. As the single parent of an autistic son, I have seen that road plenty of times. I just choose not to walk it.
Yesterday morning I took George to the train museum west of Chicagoland. We spent hours in his passionate realm. A place with rails, cabooses, whistles and the kind of detail that would make most people dizzy. George has the bloodline for it. One grampa built trains and the other played with them. That passion melted from them, through me, and into Georgie.
George knows more about railroads than I ever learned from my father. My father-in-law had an expensive O-gauge model railroad in his basement, and George was the only one PopPop trusted to handle it. That trust started when George, still in toddler mode, fixed a taxing issue that had stumped PopPop for years. Ten minutes under the train board and the problem was gone.
From the minute we stood in line for tickets to the last display we saw, I noticed that I wasn't alone. The place was packed with parents of autistic kids. Kids who were walking encyclopedias on the Chicago & Northwestern, the demise of streetcars in the ‘50s, and how many bolts hold a coupler in place. We parents walked the same tightrope, letting our kids run free with their passion, while keeping the day on the rails.
When George’s mom and I first learned that he was on the spectrum, the doctor told us the halls of the University of Chicago and Northwestern were full of George Shepley's. So were Metra’s conductors, pharmacists, maybe even the people combing through our tax returns. He wasn’t kidding.
Three and a half years ago, George ran away in the middle of the night and moved in with me full-time. Since then, it’s been me and George, with occasional visits from his little brother and sister. The “challenge” that people talk about? It’s been more of a reward. George sees things I can’t see. He often finishes my sentences… or hijacks them.
Hazel came over this weekend, partly to nap, partly to collect her birthday present, but mainly to have George hack her laptop. He not only reset her password, but also installed something that might let her break into her grade-school computer system.
That’s George.
When he was in fifth grade, he hacked into his school’s system and bypassed their security. They “invited” him to finish the year at a therapeutic school instead. Gen Xers will remember Weird Science, my son is one of those nerds, but without the hot chick.
My marriage failed, but my ex gave me the biggest gift in the divorce, raising this boy. He is the best roommate a divorced dad could ask for. Yesterday afternoon the rain came, and some parents scrambled to keep their kids from melting down. George got loud and mad, but by the time we got back to our neighborhood, he apologized. I told him it wasn’t necessary. I was just grateful he recognized it.
I don’t know what the future holds. I worry about him after I’m gone. George doesn’t think much about angel numbers or guardian spirits. When I go to heaven, he won't look for my signs. I just hope he finds a train that takes him calmly along his way. Some people ride life’s bumpy freight cars; others have a Pullman car with a timetable. The world will figure out how to harness the brilliance of autism. Until then, I’ll keep enough steam in the engine to pull us forward.
Lear wanted to avoid the road that leads to madness.
Not me...
Parenting an autistic son isn’t madness. The madness would be ignoring who he is and trying to make him into something he isn’t. I’ll take the tracks as they are... curves, switches, slow signals...
... and just try and keep my hand on the throttle.
I apologize for the lack of a smiling sun today. The reward might be the smell of August rain... I'll take that!
