Oh the Place you Will Go

My son was born 3 weeks premature weighing in at 4 pounds, 14 ½ ounces. I had just turned 23 when he came into the world, single, and scared and facing something I was not really ready for. My pregnancy was a tough one I got was put on bed rest in my 8 month, during an ultrasound they noticed he was dropping weight rapidly so C-Section it was. He came into this world on a Friday in January my best friend had gone to San Francisco for Christmas and told me not to have him until she came back I did not disappoint her. He was my saving grace, before him I was a wreak living on the edge of a cliff. My mother was wheelchair bound she no longer spoke, my dad was trying to keep it together with this little creature our whole existence change.

He was a curious child who had a temper blue fits abound. He didn’t like cartoons, but loved to watch PBS when they showed how things worked. While most kids where playing with cars he was looking through a microscope. Every morning he would wake up with my dad sit at the table eating grits, milk coffee reading the paper. He was a little man. He started reading at the age of 3, but it wasn’t until he was in the first grade that we noticed that he was unable to spell, having a learning disability myself I made sure that it was addressed. He was a computer geek at the age of 4 when he got his first one an old black and white one, he knew more than I did at 7 he was known to at school setting up their equipment.

My mother died 10 days after his 7^th birthday and then he changed. He no longer was the cuddly boy he went into himself. He always had trouble making friends, he didn’t speak to them about cartoons, Pokémon, or things other children loved. I started to notice that he never looked at anyone in the eyes when he spoke, change blew his mind. He was good in school, but not able to organize himself.

When he started 6^th grade he took up an instrument which helped him with math and by the time he entered 8^th grade he was on task. He had great co-teachers his teacher loved him, but again he had no social skills. This was something I worried about, but kept saying once he gets to High School it will change. In High School he took Drama with that he started to make friends that he only hangs out with at school. Last year I was watching America’s Next Top Model and they had a model with Asperser’s she started to explain it a light went off. I started to research it only to see what the signs more clearly. After testing we found that he had a mild form of Aspersers though he has learned to compensate for this in the last 3 years it was a relief to him to know that he wasn’t weird. I struggled with dyslexia as a kid before they had help in the schools for this, I to this day do not get math you can show me a formula go over it and 2 second later it is gone. My son has a wicked since of humor, has always know who he was, and is open minded. I have never had expectations of what he would be, I always said if I raised him to be a compassionate, open minded man than I had done my job. This January he turned 18 and the places he will go are opening up...he will start junior college this fall to get his core classes out of the way he will be double majoring in Computer Science and Political Science. He is the brightness of my life. Oh the place you will go my son.