Be Careful What You Wish For

When Mendel was a baby- and the cutest, most strikingly beautiful, cuddly and adorable baby you could find- I remember looking at his face (I could stare at it for hours) and thinking how much I wished for him to stay a baby, to never grow up, to always be my precious and beautiful baby boy. I thought that no stage could possibly be as adorable, as delightful and wonderful as this.

Turns out that I was right. Mendel made a perfect little baby and a really cute young toddler but his mind was not catching up as the years passed and his body grew. Perhaps I knew this on some deep instinctive level, even when everything looked so perfectly fine. Perhaps I wished for him never to grow up and face a world he would not understand. I did not know it then, but as the months went on, in the chaos of my life, under everything, I did know that something was wrong, try desperately hard as I did not to admit it. When he was two, almost two and a half, I took my three children in the car to pick up my sister from the airport. She had been abroad on a study program; it had been a full year since we had seen her. In the car, I thought about the changes she would see: our sweet five-month old baby she had not yet met. Our oldest child, now a four year old big girl, bouncing in her booster seat with excitement as I drove. And Mendel. Mendel was a year and a half when she left, a sweet if slightly withdrawn baby. Now he was two and a half, and still!- I realized this in shock- a sweet and slightly withdrawn baby. Desperately I tried to think of the ways in which he had grown over the course of the year. His hair was longer, and more beautiful. He was taller, less chubby. Would he say her name? Would he say anyone's name? Was he talking? He was not. He had not grown. A year had passed; he had not grown.

So I say: be careful what you wish for. I wished my son would always be my precious and beautiful baby boy and here I am: he is now four, with full-blown autism, a beautiful, beautiful boy with skills not much beyond a baby's. My little girl, now two, has surpassed him months ago in language, cognitive and social development. The tiny seed of worry in my heart has grown into a full blown monster, worse and more severe than anything I could have ever pictured when he was two. When I look at him, I see my beautiful boy- but inside, the spirit is fleeting. He talks very little; he is in his own world and seems unwilling or unable to come out. He is adorable and sweet but at four, there's so much more you need to be.