autism is a journey: Pondering the Party

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Pondering the Party

Jackson turns 10 soon. That in itself is enough to give me a coronary; but now I also have to try and decide how to best celebrate his birthday. We were going to skip the party this year b/c we spent a small fortune at Disney, but then I realized this may be one of his last parties. So, I at first decided to go with Build A Bear b/c Jackson loves it and his friends still seem to as well. But, as I thought more about it, I worried about the coolness factor that becomes for most boys around 10....

I cancelled with BABW and booked with Lazer X and I'm hoping and praying Jackson handles it ok and is actually able to ENJOY himself...

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from "Metaphor-the puzzle piece symbol"

Ever had one of those "ah-ha" moments? I'm driving down the road today, pondering Jackson's recent successes--boyscout camp and football camp. It occurred to me that each experience gave me back a piece of Jackson. [I'm not doing a very good job explaining this...] When we learned about Jackson's diagnosis, so many dreams were snuffed out. We no longer thought about our son becoming an athlete, a scholar, or even a friend. We thought in much smaller terms:"how many words does he have?""did he learn a new sign""is he reaching out to us?""that's playing pretend, isn't it?"Our perspective as parents permanently changed. It's like we had this complete picture of our child and autism fractured it--into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.Each day little by little, we get pieces of the puzzle back. It'll never be complete, never the same as we expected, but there will be parts that will come together.Like when he participated in the school music program, enjoyed boyscout camp, rode the roller coaster and attended football camp. Bit by bit, we get pieces of what we expected back.Of course, the flip side of this is all the joys we gain from Jackson that we never expected in spite of the autism, but that's another post my friends....