The Waves

My grandmother tried to teach me to swim at the ocean. I don’t remember if it was Far Rockaway or Coney Island, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Between instructions we would pause as the waves lifted us higher, and then resume as they passed. Once, as I turned away to face the shoreline from the water, Grandma became agitated.

“Never turn your back on a wave,” she sternly cautioned.

I never learned how to swim, perhaps because the undertow of the Atlantic ocean pulled me downward toward suffocation such that the memory of that fear drove me to breathlessness ever since. But I also never forgot my Grandmother’s cautionary words, and they too are emblazoned somewhere behind my eyes.

There are the waves that seem to come in some predictable rhythm, and then there are the rogue waves that seem to come from nowhere and really take you by surprise. But there are always waves.

Having a child with autism is like being hit by a rogue wave. Becoming a parent is always a bit like taking a dip into the ocean. We can keep our eyes out for the waves, but there are just those that we can’t see coming. And getting hit can drag us under, whether or not we think we know how to swim. The challenge is to find a way back to the surface, to find our breath again, to recover and move on as best as we can.

Ask a parent of a child with autism if the pain ever goes away. It does not. They do their best to find new perspectives, new ways to remain appreciative, to fight becoming tired of swimming and giving in to the constant undertow, to let love and hope and gratitude carry them to the next day and then the next.

Until the moon finds its way out of orbit, the waves will keep coming. As my grandmother said, we must keep a watchful eye out for them. But life will also find a way to catch us off guard, and it will occasionally take our breath away. The longer we can hold our breath, the more likely we will eventually make it back to the surface. At some point, some rogue wave may do us in. But until then, we must do our best to ride the waves we can see in front of us, and, to borrow a wonderful phrase from my youth, keep on keeping on.