In Answer to the Child Development Questionnaire

In Answer to the Child Development Questionnaire was this pregnancy normal? it was a surprise, my first babe still at the breast, still needing me, just beginning to walk and talk. i held the thought of him in my mind, another infant, a second child, when we had not yet become accustomed to the idea of any child at all. i cherished him, though, grew him in my belly with joy, planned his birth, sewed him clothes. i nursed him at my breast the minute he was born into my arms, into water, into a humid Florida day washed clean by a thunderstorm, amid the soft, insistent hoot of an owl. i felt his belly as he slid out of me - wide, taut, bigger than his shoulders. and then i bled. i bled until i was a fragile shell of me, until i could barely see. my mother and his father fed him dropperfuls of brown rice water that night, walking him the length of the house and back, patting him, letting me sleep, waiting for my blood to make milk again. i tied him to my body with cotton, wrapping him close, snug against my belly, while i chased his sister, laughing her head of blond curls. i nursed each in their turn and sometimes together. i gave it all-- everything i had and more, that first year. and when they told us he would someday die of the disease he was born with, i felt the world crack. so when two months later the towers fell, i simply shrugged. it was the way the world was, now--broken, terrible, a place where people come to die early deaths. he toddled. he talked, and then he didn't anymore. he spun in circles, laughing. he ran across the floor and back again, and again, never having enough movement, enough spin, enough of hurtling his body in space. he knew himself in movement. he counted, he sang songs. but he didn't speak again. fast-forward through a side trip through the strange world of inheritance, heartache that our girl might not be spared, that air might one day too soon not fill her lungs with breath. that no body we make is safe from disease. and that the letters that make up the boy's self spell certain doom. and then, so long after the realization had come to us, the period at the end of a sentence: he is and will always be alone unto himself. autism. i fought valiantly at first, thinking i could fix it, make it better, take it away, vanquish it. anything, everything i could put into his mouth that might help, i did. sent him to the best school, too early, a tiny child in diapers, crying because i left him there with strangers to be made less autistic, to be molded to this world that would not understand him. finally, i relented. early childhoold was a balm. not perfect, often exhausting, but he spent it as wondrous and joyful as a monk, enlightened, living each moment in the present and not asking for more. for some time, that was enough-- i watched him, tried to be like him, to make myself think only of the present, not the unknown, dark future. suddenly i'm slammed against reality. a leanness of face, outgrowing his body, the fur of puberty beginning to show itself. a cool reserve with me, who he used to plaster with kisses, press his body against and sigh with contentedness to feel my soft, striated belly once more, part of me. now, a strength to match my own, and overmatch it, wiry and brute, blind and seeking only relief from frustration, trapped inside. storms overtake his mind, he cries out, he knows nothing of why or how or what to do, just that he hurts, that he feels pain. they pass with the quickness of a thunder shower, leaving cool crisp air in their wake. still he presses his feet against my legs at night, still he looks for me when he wakes, his fingers seeking my flesh and sighing when they find it, still solid. this is the history of his development. and of mine.