We recently had my stepson fly in to town to visit. He is an adult and on his own, but we always welcome him back into the "fold" when he comes. We would love to see him more, but he is so busy with his job that we're happy for whatever time we have him. We were lucky this time to be able to have him with us for four days. We never know from visit to visit when we'll see him again, so we always try to make his visits a good time. I have known him since he was 6. He will be 28 in January! As the saying goes, time really does fly by. He wasn't in our house five minutes before I was asking him if he would like something to eat! I had a sandwich on the kitchen table for him within 15 minutes. I love cooking and baking for him (I always have). He appreciates it so much and always gives me the best compliments! How could I not want to feed him?? We made him an early Thanksgiving dinner, complete with pumpkin pie because he will not be with us on the actual day of Thanksgiving. His returning flight left on Saturday at 9 a.m. We all got up and out of our house by 7:30 a.m. No easy feat for 5 people on a Saturday morning. We chattered away in the car on the way to the airport all of us wanting to talk! My husband was just going to drop him at the curb and I was like "no, you're parking the car and we're all going in to say good-bye!" I was joking to my stepson that I should have made a sign saying, "Bon Voyage!" He told me nicely that might have been a bit much. Instead, as we were saying our good byes near the security entrance we started hugging him one by one. My 7-year old started to pull us closer together so I said, "group hug!" So, the five of us did a group hug. It didn't matter to me who saw us doing that. Some people might have thought it was something unusual to see at the airport, hopefully the people that did see it thought it was cool! My stepson was very touched, so to me that was all that mattered. He was feeling the love from us. I love to give and receive hugs - that's just who I am!
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...
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