We recently embarked on one of the most apple pie of American traditions that is the family vacation. In other words, we packed our car to the gills, hauled our kids out of bed before the crack of dawn, and began what would be a 12-hour road trip to meet with the sunny South Carolina surf.
Like any other family, we had big dreams for a week together at the beach minus the daily grind of our Ohio reality. And it truly has been good so far. We made it here in unrecord time, but with little incident- and alive to boot. That's saying something.
Of course, we are well aware that a stowaway was on board. Packed neatly among Rowen's super hero underwear and trunkful of stuffed animals was the trusty autism monster waiting to pounce. And pounce it has, but we have also seen the sunny side of an all too quirky boy that never ceases to make us smile.
Spotlight first on our little, eh-hem, ok gargantuan stowaway. He's crept up on Rowen more than once, an infinite number to be exact. Rowen's latest hang-out is on the pool steps, grimacing at any child who dares enter the pool. I stand by like a hawk, trying to contain his outbursts. Heaven forbid a little girl said hi to him, to which he jumped out of the pool and screamed that everyone in the pool was "old." After feeling the incredulous looks from onlookers, I grabbed Rowen and we made our exit: autism monster in tow.
The autism monster also steals away our sense of normalcy when it comes to all the exciting things we dream of seeing Rowen do. Not that there is a rite of passage that says little boys must ride go karts or play miniature golf to be in the club, but it would be nice to see Rowen bump up his repertoire of activities. Talking to a mom at the pool today about taking her boys to a go kart track, I wistfully thought of how neat it would be to do things like that. In her world, that stuff is exciting and fun for her kids. Normal. In ours, it's something that doesn't exist.
After a few days of playing the pool troll though, Rowen finally made that breakthrough that I know he's always capable of. After sneering at two little boys all morning and yelling at them for splashing, he suddenly turned the dial and decided to be friends with them. It was like a light switch. Not surprising to me though (the light switch goes on and off at a nauseating pace) but probably super crazy to the boys who'd been a target of Rowen's patented "mean face" a moment earlier.
I let out a sigh of relief, knowing my hawk duty was a little lighter. Though it's hard to see this all happen, it was sweet as honey when Rowen turned to me and excitedly yelled, "Mom, it looks like I made a new friend!" Pleased as punch with himself, he finally got the autism monster to sink back in its black hole so he could emerge triumphant. And emerge he did, with a desire to be liked by these boys and the excitement of new found friendship that comes with it.
Though he went a little Sopranos on one of the boys when he pointed at him and demanded that he play with him again (while making very specific plans on when they would meet again), I thought he chalked one up for himself: Rowen-1: autism monster-0.
So we won't be miniature golfing anytime soon, but Rowen does love digging for clams and trying to catch fish in the ocean (ok, so he yells that he wants to kill all the fish if they don't let him catch them, but whatever). So I think we are surviving. And if I write another blog post in a few weeks, you'll know we also survived the 12-hour car ride home. Hopefully sans the autism monster. A girl can dream, can't she?
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