There we were

My sweet 3 year old pitter pattered from the bed into the dark labrynth of our home to escape sleep.  I listened to his silence on the opposite end of the house for a few moments before I ventured down the hall way with the flashlight of my phone. I peered into the living room, the foyer, the dining room and the sun room where I suspected he was buried underneath the blanket bundled on the floor, only to turn around and find his little toes sticking out from the kitchen. Passed out on the cool tile in his favorite pajamas, a Dalmatian zip up piled and faded from the time after time that I wore it day after day in the early nineties, my toes, supple & uncalloused, the size of his.

There was a little hat with flappy ears that went with it. My mom would tie the thin black strings into a bow tight, but not too tight, into a bow underneath my chin. I came up with this master plan inside my own head. I kept it a secret otherwise it would never work. I would crawl into a box to be shipped to the farmhouse of her new boyfriend, the one with the giant lone willow tree marking the property, the countless number of barn cats I was so fond of. Him and his elderly parents would go, “Hmph! A package! What on earth could it be?” Only for me to burst out in my full Dalmation costume. They would be surprised, ecstatic! A puppy! A little Dalmation puppy! How wonderful! If I kept the act up of walking on my hands and knees and woofing for a bowl of cocoa pebbles placed on the floor, I would have them absolutely fooled. Under no circumstances would they realize that it was I, the little girl. I could go on to live my life as a dog as I wished until I no longer felt like it and missed my mom and Cartoon Network. I would stand up and remove my hat and they’d gasp! Aha! It was me all along!

There was no doubt in my mind that this was foolproof.

Then 30 years later, there he is, my little boy. The little boy who doesn’t speak. Who bangs his head onto the hard floor with force when the world around him no longer feels right. The little boy who’s locked his eyes with mine since the day he was born. The boy who never left my hip, my arms, for the first year and a half of his life. I thought, how blessed am I to have a baby who never cries. But really he never had the opportunity to. Not because of his Autism, but because he never had a need that wasn’t met before he knew he needed it.

I remember sleeping on my mom’s pull out couch, surrounded by towering boxes and clutter, hoarded into the center of the house on painfully springy mattress being absorbed into absolute bliss. Thankful for the pandemic. Thankful I didn’t have to leave my home. Thankful. Blessed, kneeling towards god with tears in my eyes that I…felt that way.