autism is a journey: Dad's Entry

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Dad's Entry

Here is an e-mail I got from Dan this morning; thought it was worth sharing:

Jackson had 2 of those individual pizzas in the oven when I got into the
kitchen. He actually had the oven on, had each pizza on a pan on separate
shelves and had put extra cheese on each pizza. I turned up the oven
to 425 from 350 and hopped in the shower. When I got out, there was a pan
on the stove top and Jack was starting to cut the pizza. He must have used
a towel or one of the rubber things. How cool is that?

2 comments:

tylerbritney said...: WTG Jackson! He is growing up so fast. He's showing more independent living skills every day. AWESOME!!!!!; July 10, 2008 at 4:35 PM
Lisa said...: I LOVE reading about Jackson's life. I'm working the snack stand at the zoo this summer and keep hoping I will see Jackson one of these days. -Mrs. Sorg; July 11, 2008 at 1:10 PM

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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....