A Mother’s Love is…

“Stop it, Jim!” I said shouting at my son who was pulling at the hair of this little girl at the grocery store. I pulled him away from her and I dragged him out, he was now smashing every vegetable at the store. I put him in the car safely with the seatbelts fastened, not that I wanted to tie him up like that but I did what I thought was right at the moment. I went in to settle the bills and I approached the poor girl’s mother who was shopping, I could easily say how angry she was, she took her in her arms and she was heading out, more like running away, I stopped her and I apologized for whatever my son did to her daughter but she didn’t say a word, she just left. As I went in to check the bills, one of the mothers standing there started judgmentally criticizing me, I didn’t say a word but deep inside I felt the pain. This person don’t even know me but started judging me for who I am. I really wish I could stop people like this once and feel fit to judge them all day, but that would definitely be out of my anger.
With this event I can’t even begin to explain how I have felt and how I feel. What happened to my Son at the store was a major temper tantrum. My Son is now eight years old, and he is autistic. I knew that he hasn’t been a normal child from the beginning. He can’t even make eye contact with me. All a mother needs from her son is to know that he loves her back as much as she loves him, but I guess I’m a little ill-fated there. He talks to none, he has had only two friends since he was three years old and I have never seen him invite his friends over or getting invited by his friends. My son was eight years old when that happened, he used to push me away whenever I try to hug him or touch him, I thought he doesn’t like being that way. But I have always felt that this behavior is strange since I see no children hesitating to even hug their own mother.
I, then visited my friend who is a doctor, I asked her about her opinion and what I got as a reply was shocking. My son has autism, every symptom matched. That’s when I started studying about autism and how it affects people. Being autistic is not easy, and having a Son who is autistic was terrible. On learning more about it, I came to know that it can be cured, not completely though. I used to wonder guiltily on how it would be if he wasn’t autistic, but it was just an aspect of him, a quirky way of viewing the world. But I wanted my son to have a normal life like all the other boys. I wanted him to go play outside, ask me to push the swing a little bit faster, so I started learning more about how autistic children can be cured. I started teaching him how to make eye contact, how to greet people, how to talk to them and how to respond in many situations. Years passed by and I was really surprised to see how it changed him. He started behaving to people normally, made new friends, got invited to parties. But that’s when I
noticed how rapidly his language skills were developed, he had a much larger vocabulary than a normal child of his age would though he was a bit off with his motor skills, he was never good at sports. He started learning things the hard way even before learning how to do it the easy way.
Now my son is twenty one, I was sitting on my desk doing some clean up as I found my diary which was almost ten years old, I turned the pages and I saw, “Screams. Hasn’t progressed in talking. He hit me a week ago with a glass, I’ve still got the bruise. Eyes fixed. Echolalia. Obsession on insects. Not sleeping. Not sleeping. Not sleeping.” Then I heard a knock on the door, it was him, with his graduation shield on his hands and then I felt what no mother on earth cannot, I burst out gallons of tears as I saw him standing there with a smile wanting me to hug him. The joy and happiness that I felt knew no bounds as I ran towards him and hugged him. No matter what people would say or feel about him, he is my son, I love him with all my heart, I would never give up on him, as they say, a mother’s love is unconditional. He is a precious gem, the best son a mother can ever want or get.