Silence.

• 

Today I took my middle son, one of the twins who is Autistic, with me to run some errands early this morning.

I did my usual commute to town which is about 30 minutes away. I went through the drive thru and grabbed an iced coffee, went to our pharmacy for medications & then I grabbed some breakfast.

As I was in the last drive thru for the morning (which was crazy long), I started to ponder to myself. Wow it’s so quiet in this car.

I thought back from home to all the places we had been and there was zero conversation. Just pure silence.

I started going down the rabbit hole of why can’t my son talk to me? Will I ever hear his voice? What is he thinking about this past few hours?

And then, the tears came down. I don’t cry often about the disability itself. Sometimes I’ll cry about the future. But not as often as I used to.

Today hit me hard. Like a ton of bricks fell on the car while in that drive thru line. So I started talking. I rambled about nothing. But I realized that I was so used to not having a conversation with him that I stopped talking.

So, I talked. I told him momma loves him. I told him about the drive thru line. I asked him what his favorite show on the tablet was. I sang songs to him.

And nothing. Not a word. Not a look. Not an acknowledgment.

So, I reached back to his seat and grabbed his chunky, sweet little foot. And he looked at me. And I knew he knew I was there for that second.

We started on our way home and I felt my way back again and held his foot and he looked up and then back down at his tablet and I knew even though we were in silence, as long his momma had her hand on him, he knew I was there.

These are the hard days of Autism for a momma heart. Even though he doesn’t know what the word momma means, or maybe that I am his momma, he still knows I’m his comfort and his peace and for that I’ll always be grateful for.