Then J must surely be for Jacob.
A pair, these two.
Twins.
My bookends.
And me, most assuredly sandwiched into the middle between them.
(Squashed.)
But two more unalike bookends have ne'er been seen.
There is light and dark.
There is slender and solid.
There is early riser and night-owl.
There is picky eater and lover of all things food.
There is my blue & green loving boy and my yellow/red/orange choosing son.
There is the seeker of the next new thing and the one attached to the comfortable and familiar.
There is the greatest divide... Autism and Not-autism.
Jacob is my Autism. His autism.
He has taught me so much.
I am a better mother because of him.
More patient.
More understanding.
Kinder.
Gentler.
Because he needs me to be thus.
I have to listen, so carefully, to hear the message under the words, because so often Jake's words only hint at the true nature of his thoughts, the mere cresting of a deepening wave.
And then, too, I need to pull the right words out of him, help to expand, make explicit, because I will not always be his main listener and I want, nay, *need* him to be understood by the world at large.
Jacob is so easy to love but so hard to be with sometimes.
Exhausting.
Always talking, always louder than need be. Often asking the same question over and over. But how immeasurably better than the silence that he once overcame.
Jake does not walk down the sidewalk most days. Rather, he skips. For why walk when you can skip, just for the sheer joy of it?
Actually I think of that as one of Jacob's 5 basic rules for living:
1. Why walk when you can skip?
2. When you hear music? Dance!
3. Go to every vaguely-appropriate-for-kids movie. At least twice. The first time preferably on opening weekend. Always stay until the end of the last credit. Dance to the music (of course, see rule #2, above).
4. Hands are for holding.
5. Why just give one kiss when three are so much nicer? (And up the arm like Gomez to Morticia is always preferable.)
Sometimes I think he is the happiest child in New York City.
Except when he is the saddest.
Jacob as a baby?
One word: charming.
He was a flirt.
He loved the shopgirls in the stores on Broadway, where we would pop in and out of, to relive the tedium of those early baby days.
He always picked out the cutest, sweetest, friendliest girl to bat his long eyelashes at and flash his killer smile. If I ever showed up without him, his favorites would complain: "Where's my boyfriend today?"
My sister in law Bern once described year-old Jacob as "Always ready to be delighted by the world."
And she was right.
Here he is, then:
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| Jacob, the 3 month old charmer |
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| Jacob, still charming at 8 years old |
Joyful, jouncing, juicy, jovial, jargoning, Jedi-hearted, jigsaw puzzleish, jack o' lantern-loving, and full of boundless joie de vivre.
All this, and more. So much more than the sum of his parts. And always his unique self.
My son, Jacob.
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