Interview with Aunt Jetty

I'd be fibbing if I said that I was a very concise speaker, that I often get straight to the point when discussing anything. I apparently come by it naturally since one of my first nicknames was "Aunt Jetty" after a deceased relative who was well known for her ability to talk incessantly. I rather wish I had had a chance to meet the awesome lady. We blabber mouths have a rarely appreciated gift for idle banter.

In all seriousness, though, I particularly find it difficult to express myself verbally because my thoughts are often zooming around in my head, and I tend to randomly verbalize snap shots of what is flitting around between my ears. When I am pondering a complex issue or one rife with emotion, I often have to write out my feelings because, for some reason, the process of writing lassoes my thoughts together and leads them straight into a more cohesive order. I was reminded of my difficulty with organizing my thoughts yesterday during an interview about our family's experience with autism.

Considering that lately I've been absorbed in my thoughts about autism, one would think that I could formulate a decent response to a few basic questions about the challenges we face, our reaction to the diagnosis, our hopes for our son and so forth. Granted, I did provide responses but I pity the person who has to edit my interview. Despite my having psyched myself up for the interview, I found it hard to narrow all the many thoughts in my head to concise and poignant responses to their questions. Although I'm likely being excessively hard on myself, I do regret my inability to clearly articulate what the challenges are for those affected by autism, to express the multitude of emotions a parent feels when discovering their child has a disability, and to honestly state our deepest hopes for our son and his future.

Of course, the more I reevaluate my responses, the more I realize that there is no easy way to convey these complex emotions. Our challenges occur at every level of our son's development, at every type of social interaction he has or we as a family have with others. It affects how he is and will be educated, how he is treated as a medical patient (we have to find autism-friendly physicians who understand why our son may not be the most agreeable patient, for instance). It affects what friends we all have, how close we may be with certain family members (although we have been fortunate in this regard). It affects how much energy we can devote to our twin sons who, as far as we know, are neurotypical. Finally, my husband and I experience a stress on our marriage stronger than any strain we have experienced before, and we have gone through plenty: infertility, in vitro fertilization, having premature twin babies, financial strain, and so forth. Unlike the other stresses, this stress on our marriage is chronic. Our son's autism will always be with him. Fortunately, my husband and I are both stubbornly in love with each other, we love all our children beyond words, and we both know that this is the path on which we have found ourselves. I'd be lying if I said we don't occasionally feel sorry for ourselves but, seriously, what good does that do anyone? None.

Perhaps over time I'll find a better way to verbally explain our situation to others when an explanation could help our child or others like him. Like mud settling to the bottom of a recently disturbed river, perhaps our lives and our reaction to our child's diagnosis of autism will be simpler and easier to be conveyed. One can only hope.