This is for my neuro-typical children: Emily, Jenna, Sam, and Nathan. The way the love their brother Jack brings me hope. Some years back, I wrote a post for them entitled, “A Salute to the Siblings of Autism,” and I always wanted to turn it into a video. On New Years Day of this year, our family took a beautiful hike in the Oregon fog, and when I saw my kids walking with Jack, my heart swelled. I pulled out the camera and started filming. After I wrote the piece, I got help from my composer friend Robert Bearden and my photographer friend Anne. This is the result. I hope it encourages the brothers and sisters who are most often overlooked. I pray they can hear us when we say, “we see you.”
There is so much to say to you sentinels of breakthrough. You grow up next to one they call “special.”
That’s a heavier weight than we know. It means you’ve marched with your own needs muffled and your faces thrown out of focus. It means you walk on wires balancing your own desires with our need for you to be okay.
Because you’re Nero-typical as they say,
And yes, you’ll say it’s your duty, and I know it’s your joy because he is your joy. But buried pains have long memories, my loves.
If these ones ever resurrect themselves from the leather cushions of a therapist’s couch, I will be the first
to throw myself at your pairs of wounded feet, and say I’m sorry for my seasons of blindness, I’m sorry for my numbness and lapses of kindness, and for all the hours that should have been ours.
And on that day, God forbid it if it comes,I will plead guilty for my failings in this fog. But I will not say I didn’t see you. Because I do see you. We see you.
We see you surround your brother like the honor guard of a child king. We see you chase him down with
tickles in hand and celebration on your lips. We see you break into his world with breadcrumbs leading back into your own. How he follows you with wonder…
And we see you apart from your brother or anyone else. How you grow in wisdom, beauty and in fire.
You array yourselves with a shield of faith and a lance of true compassion reaching past the makeshift fashions of pedestrian acceptance. Your arms wrap around your brother even when his remain limp. Your embrace carries him.
So tell me again, who would dare call you typical, you agents of sacred hope. One day, when the fog clears the masses will see exactly what yo have done: you have shown them how to love their brothers without condition.
For now, you show me.
