Little Good Things Life is Full of

With him, it's as if time had come to a standstill. He's in a world all of his own and sometimes he emerges to show us he's there, from time to time he visits us. He loves cars and I love him; he's my first born autistic son, Esteban. Life has dealt us all, no exceptions, some blows, some harder than others, no doubt. The darkest hour in my life has to be the day I learnt of my son's condition. It took me years to recover, and I regressed: I started to smoke cigarettes after quitting for seven years, but luckily only picked it up for two more. I haven't touched a cigarette in more than three years, and I am no longer as sad as I used to be, not by a long shot. Initially, what affected me most was uncertainty. Having been raised by a woman who was abandoned by her husband, my father, when I was five years old, it felt like irony with a side of tragedy had hit me in the face: a man who had a stranded relationship with his son was now destined to have a limited relationship with his son. I thought it was like a cruel joke. My love for my first son blossomed, even though there were severe, that is to say, real challenges to our relationship. I wanted to see him grow, not worry about his fate once I was gone, and have that special bond I lacked with my predecessor. 

For all the knowledge I had amassed with respects to autism, I was in for a rude awakening. First, it does get better, at least in his case; never to the point that he could pass off as a normal kid, even though in some cases such had been just the case. What regular people with average to norm kids, the fact that their kids say so much and grow so fast, you can hardly detect the passage of time. One day they're born and the next they're bugging you with questions, and the next thing you know they're off to lead productive lives. Or so we'd like to think. 

Yeah, I speak from experience. No, I didn't have any other kids before Esteban, and Julian comes a long second, seven years apart sibling. But I did have the experience of raising my stepson, and it seems like the other day he was eight years old and now he's all grown-up, showing the depressive tendencies of his surroundings. And still living home. 

What happened with autism was, first I found I wasn't unlucky or cursed. Nothing that extreme. The probability of having a son (or daughter) be born with the condition had increased throughout the years. It had actually multiplied from the incidences reported back when it was first diagnosed. Secondly, I saw once first-hand the amazing people who dedicated their life and time to these incredible children, and I was put to shame. Initially, I had just assumed that his condition would remain more or less the same, but nonetheless I fought to make a positive impact on his life. I taught to count up to twenty both in English and Spanish, and I also taught him the alphabet. He learnt it and then from there, things kind of stayed the same to me. I retreated and got depressed, and then suddenly, that day, in his school, I saw him come alive and do all sorts of things while being surrounded with people who encouraged him to express himself. He danced, sang, made hand movements in coordination with his peers, and it then hit me: I had stopped being his hero. These people were now his hero. And I felt shame. I had no reason to be depressed when he looked so happy, and I started to cry. As a man, I've cried more for him than for any other cause or person or pain or anything else all combined. But most of those times, like then, they were tears of joy. Sometimes, when dark thoughts of death, of life after us, shook me, I felt compelled to cry and did not hesitate to do so. I am crying right now. 

I loved my son and I changed since that day. Actually, I was never too far off from this realization. I just needed the proper mood to set the machine moving on. I taught him cars, I took him for a walk without holding his hand (of course, in quiet parks where no danger of traffic or people), and I took him with me everywhere. He learnt how to walk with me without running off, learnt to kiss, to hug, to thank and to say goodbye, to understand simple words and spell them too. He learnt more cars than I had originally taught him. And he learnt many more things at school. And he still amazes me. But nowadays, the man I was, I no longer am. For a man who grew up reading Schopenhauer when I was just 19 years old, feeling like a fourteen year-old Beethoven who had recently discovered the love for literature, I learnt optimism with my son. And it's simple, really: optimism is patience, song, dance, little things, pacing, and finding pleasure in the little good things that life is oh so full of.