This Little Light of Mine by Susan Senator

THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE
By Susan Senator

The diminishing daylight signifies a different thing to me than just the approach of early winter.  This seasonal change has always made me extremely anxious, because it made my son so anxious.  Nat has severe autism, and so something like inconsistent daylight and faulty timing in streetlights has had the power to upset him to the point of screaming and biting himself.  My winter days would start with those four dreaded words: “Streetlights will go off!”  — Nat’s wintertime cri de coeur – and end with my futile bedtime prayer, that the power company would change the timing of the lights so that they corresponded with the new timing of dawn.  For so many years I felt mystified and chokingly frustrated by this: why did it matter so much to him? Why couldn’t I help him understand that it was O.K. if the lights stayed on an hour or two into daylight? And more importantly: that it was not in my power to control them?

Because to Nat, it was in my power.  Everything was up to me or because of me.  But I didn’t know he felt that way.  For so long, I made the mistake of believing, like so many people, that someone with autism could not connect with other people.  That because Nat did not show how he felt about me in all the familiar social ways, that he did not care about me.  But the streetlights panic eventually showed me I was wrong.  Nat watched me like a hawk during those times – he who couldn’t sustain eye contact – hungering for me to say something, do something about the lights.  It dawned on me that this could only mean one thing:  perhaps the experts had it wrong.  Perhaps it was actually his profound attachment to me that made him believe I was all-powerful, responsible for the lights and everything else around him. Perhaps it meant that Nat – though profoundly autistic – was deeply connected to me, after all.

From the very moment I started to feel the almost unbearable joy of this truth, Nat’s behavior improved. My openheartedness caused him to relax.  Nat being relaxed buoyed me and kept my head clear. I could then explain things to him, and he could take it in.  The symbiosis was real.  The streetlights will go on, Nat, you’ll see.  It’s still too light out, that’s all.  Now you have to stop talking about it. Now, at 21, although he still mentions the lights with a quavering voice, I have faith that I can get him to understand quickly with just a little authoritative reassurance.  O.K., he says, still peering worriedly out the window – but I know he can move on from the obsessive worry.

This shift, this growth for both of us has changed everything.  I feel a new confidence, as if now it’s O.K. for me to hope for things – because he can manage his feelings, And it’s not just me anymore:  Nat is learning to communicate – before his panic sets in – with minimal spoken language with others, too.  In recent years his teachers report a new maturity in him, where he can indicate what’s bothering him – a computer that is slow to load, a school van that has arrived too early.  I note their relaxed assuredness talking about him and I wonder, did they have the same discovery I had, that his obsessive demands were actually an expression of his need for connection and feedback?

Recently I realized that with all this positive development, I was even enjoying the task of planning for his adulthood – a milestone that is universally feared among parents of children with disabilities. Even reworking our will, creating his guardianship, actually thinking about his life after we’re dead has not had the power to pull me down. Nat’s transition to adulthood feels like a chance to dream in a way I have not experienced since he was a baby, before I knew about autism.  Nat today can calm himself by timorously reaching out to others, asking the same question three times or more and stopping when I answer him firmly.  One connection builds on another, at home and at school, and his sense of safety spreads. I now let myself imagine his future mornings, how he’ll feel waking up, full of purpose as he dresses for his day program, where, I hope, he will work some of the time.  I see him maybe carrying meals in to elderly people who will smile when they see him, my eager, handsome, competent son.  I know that he will feel those smiles, even if he never really looks at them.  He will feel the attachment that he has learned is there in others, and he will relax and be one of their best workers.  Because that particular light is on – for good.