Embarrassed and Guilty

There is so much of me that is not embarrassed anymore.

Walking out of the public bathroom with your pants around your ankles?  And you're 12?

Eh.

Falling on the ground in the grocery?  Not once or twice, but 6 times in one trip, all while screaming incoherently.  And you're 10?

So.

Walking up to a counter clerk and saying "You are SO BLACK?"

Haha!  There's one for the blog.

But there is one place that uncovers my dark side.  That part of me that does not want my kid to show how autistic he is.

At his high school.

The place where he goes every single day.  Where he acts his usual autistic self.  Where his need to control is stronger than his need to fit in.

In other words, where the students and staff see his autism shining through more than I do probably.  Because he's under more stress there.

So why, when I'm at his school, does it grate on my last nerve to see him do inappropriate things?

At his chorus concert last week, he called out as he was leaving the stage.  Really it was the only time he had a problem the whole time on stage.  But I felt I should go down and sit behind him.  Which was good because in the middle of the senior chorus singing, he raised his hand to the director.  After making him put it down, he said "But I wanted to ask where my lover was.  Where is E____?"

Ah, lover?  She kissed him ONE TIME.  (And OH MY GOD there was such a todo about it at the school you would have thought they had sex on the front lawn.  I guess to avoid becoming felons, which logically seems the next level based on how the school responded, I don't think they did it again.)

And tonight, at his band concert (where he never gets enough solo percussion parts, in my unbiased opinion) I freaked out when he walked up the aisle in a break in playing saying loudly "Where's my dad?  I need my dad?!"  When I went to get him he was satisfied and refused to sit with us.  Instead he wandered around the back of the auditorium, crossed in front of the stage, and sat down front.  From whence he came, no less.

I suppose my problem (and I do recognize it is MY problem) is because it's in front of all of our small town.

But this whole town knows us.

You know, I was a pretty private person, before autism.  I was never in the paper.  I never gave interviews.  I never asked people for money for causes.  But then a cause became near and dear to my heart.  My kids.  And suddenly everyone knows they have autism, even if they aren't really sure what it is.  Because it is one thing to read about it, and another to know people with it.

And sometimes it is wandering up the aisle, anxiously asking loud questions in the middle of a concert.

But more of it is ongoing astonishment.  Daily small miracles.  Which that audience never sees.

All they see is the difference.  Not the magnificence.