The Beauty and Terror of An Unconventional Child

My autistic son steals an ice cream and we both survive

I don’t talk about my son very much. He’s a young adult and after devoting 20+ years of my life to his wellbeing, at this juncture I’m mostly looking to explore the aspects of my life that aren’t about him and being his mom. And then there’s the respecting his privacy thing…. But sometimes Hugh and my relationship with him is the perfect thing to write about, so today that’s what I’m doing.

My son is on the autism spectrum. When he was born, he aced his APGAR scores and seemed to be developing fairly typically. And then at about 15 months, after a routine trip to the doctor’s office, everything changed. Instead of being happy and comfortable in KinderMusik and our twice weekly trips to restaurants as he’d previously been, he was now miserable in both places. His emerging speech stopped and his hearing became much more sensitive. He is currently non-verbal. We had him tested and started doing research and what we discovered is that we had a child with regressive autism, a condition that affects about 1/3 of the people on the autism spectrum — the other 2/3s being more identifiably just born that way.

Autism is an enormous spectrum, with a wide variety of possible components. The joke is that if you know a person with autism….. you know one person with autism. There are some basic elements, but over all, it’s such a vast continuum that each person is very much an individual. Raising such a being has been both an honor and a challenge. For example, he doesn’t care about what other people think — and although that’s an admirable thing in many ways, we also worry about what an unforgiving world might do to someone who refuses to play by its rules. So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. He’s had very little overt experience with discrimination or bullying and most people seem to find him charming, even though he quite often doesn’t behave in typical ways.

This afternoon I took him to a benefit for street dogs in our city. He loves animals, and dogs in particular. It was also an easy way for him to meet our girlfriend Tamara for the first time. My husband, James, was tied up with work, but at least Hugh and I could go. Tamara is very active with this group and I wanted to support her, as well as the organization. Hugh wasn’t as into the dogs as I would have hoped, but also mostly did pretty well with minimal supervision from me and I got to have a pretty enjoyable time, just chatting and sipping wine, keeping only a loose eye on him and his activities.

Even a few years ago, I wouldn’t have dared take him to something like that for fear that he’d be into everything, and that I’d spend the entire time chasing him around and running interference. Today, his behavior wasn’t perfectly mainstream, but it was pretty darn good, and he seemed reasonably content, allowing me to spend a lot of time talking with Tamara and her best friend who was also there, without having to keep tabs too closely on him. I also got to visit with the foster mom of a dog that we are seriously considering adopting. All seemed well.

Until…… the 10 year old son of one of the owners of the event space where the benefit was being held showed up with an ice cream cone. I watched in horror from across the room as Hugh took it out of his hand and began to eat the ice cream. The young man didn’t object or try to take it back, but did look a bit confused and upset. He headed for the back office, with me scurrying across the room to try to catch up with him. I poked my head in the door of the office and apologized. As I did so, I found my eyes welling with tears, asking for forgiveness for someone whom I love so much; someone whose actions were out of line, but who really didn’t know any better. We’ve worked with him on just this sort of thing a lot, but impulse control, particularly when ice cream is involved, is still not one of Hugh’s strong suits.

The mother of the boy was also back there in the back office and she immediately took pity on me — assuring me that it was no big deal and really just all fine. That made me cry all the more. Most of the time when Hugh is not abiding by societal mores, people are understanding and forgiving. And a couple of times, they haven’t been. And the person that they most take that out on is me. Why didn’t I teach him better? Why can’t I control him? And as much as I don’t like that, what I really don’t like is somebody thinking less of Hugh. He is the best, most pure soul I have ever known. He is not caught up in the BS that hampers the rest of the world, and that’s a good thing. And, I still don’t want him to act entitled around other people, just because he doesn’t realize that’s what he is doing.

A few minutes later, the mother of the boy came out to check on me. I was standing with Hugh back by the bathrooms, trying to get a better hold of myself. She gave me a hug and assured me again that it was all OK — mother to mother, she really seemed to understand. As she poured me another glass of wine, which was just what I needed at that moment, she said again that it was OK. What came across in her very minimal words was, “I see you” and that was all I needed to get through the embarrassment and upset of the whole thing. I sent her a silent blessing.

As I made my way back over to where Tamara and her friend were standing, I expected to just ease back into whatever conversation that they had going on, putting this incident behind me. Instead, they let me know that they’d witnessed the entire thing. They commented how it was almost like slo-mo as Hugh reached for and appropriated the ice cream. Amazingly, they seemed to envy Hugh’s single-minded focus and to see the purity that was there, despite what might be considered by some to be anti-social behavior. Once again I was grateful to be seen, and for my son to be seen and valued as well.

Hugh is an amazing young man — someone who sometimes steals other people’s food and drink for himself. It’s not because he wants to deprive them of it. That thought, I’m sure, never crosses his mind. He’s simply focused on what would make him happy, and he doesn’t yet have the impulse control or understanding that this might make someone else unhappy. I love that he lives in a world where he follows his bliss — and we are still going to keep working on impulse control and personal boundaries. I love that I had the experience of being seen and understood in this difficult scenario. When I told James about it later all he could say was, “Oh, my god… oh, my god!”

And as hard as it was, to have not only random humanity affirmed in the person of the mother of the poor guy who lost his ice cream, but to have the understanding of Tamara, someone whom I love and admire — was priceless. It was a largely fun afternoon. It wasn’t an easy afternoon. Thank goodness for dogs in all of this. And also, thank goodness for the real, and good people who do inhabit this earth. My son is a very special person. He doesn’t always know or understand the rules of this particular game. And that’s one of the reasons that I adore him! Those who honor and admire that about him are a very particular breed. I am eternally grateful for them.

And someday, in the not too distant future, that boy is going to tell the story of when the gentle giant came up and stole his ice cream. Hopefully it’s a story that will make him smile.

© Copyright Elle Beau 2019 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.