Speaking in Hugs
On Being Hugged by My Autistic Son for the First Time
I.
My three-year-old son still has trouble falling asleep if he isn’t held by me or my wife—something we’re working on, you better believe—but here I am in the meantime holding all 34 pounds of his warm body in my arms, his head resting on my bony shoulder, my biceps aching, and my lower back tightening while my wife tries to get our two-year-old daughter back to sleep in the other room. I can tell by my son’s shallow breathing that his eyes—big and round and expressive like his mother’s—are wide open and taking in the room’s shapeless darkness, he and I pacing in its stillness, all quiet save for the white noise machine humming on the nightstand.
There is nothing unique about this bedtime ritual. We’ve done it at least a thousand times. Tonight feels like any other until I feel my son reach up, put his arms around my neck, and give a gentle squeeze; so, I put my free arm around his tiny body, feel his ribs, and gave him a gentle squeeze in return. Back and forth we go. I feel my eyes get warm at the corners. I close them, trying to inhabit the moment more fully before it disappears into my exhaustion.
II.
I often worry I’ll never hear my son’s voice—at least not beyond the charming “eeee” sound he’s been making since he was a tiny one year old, flapping his arms and falling over himself in his excitement, looking up at me with that blue pacifier in his mouth.
He’ll be four this summer, and the internet tells me children on the autism spectrum who don’t speak by age four will likely never develop language. The internet also tells me that isn’t true and not to give up hope. When you have a child with autism, the internet tells you lots of contradictory things (then again, when doesn’t it?).
Family members or colleagues often say things like You know Einstein didn’t speak until he was three! or My neighbor’s kid didn’t talk until he was five, and now he won’t shut up! I appreciate these well-intentioned historical facts and personal anecdotes but, like most unsolicited advice, it offers the wrong kind of comfort. I’m not hoping my son’s non-verbal autism is an early sign of genius or him being a savant; I’m also not concerned with him transforming into a gregarious chatterbox as he gets older. I simply want him to be able to communicate his needs and advocate for himself, especially when the day comes I’m no longer around to take care of him.
I also want him to tell me he loves me.
It feels so petty and selfish and insecure to need to be told by your child that they love you. Isn’t it a parent’s job to love unconditionally? Do I really need to be validated by my toddler?
But, at the end of a long day—after drop off at school, after commuting, after email, after meetings, after work, after dinner, after dishes, after picking up around the house, after the tears and tantrums (the kids’ and sometimes mine), after setting the alarm to wake up and do it all again—I just so badly want to hold and hug my son, my first born, my baby boy, and tell him I love him and hear his voice, hear him acknowledge that he sees me, knows me, and loves me too and would care if I was gone, would notice if I had never come home from the office, that he’d be sad if one day I disappeared and wasn’t around anymore to give him hugs and kisses.
There is so much restorative power and healing in a well-timed “I love you” and, in moments of self-pity, I find myself grieving for its absence.
Sometimes, though, I selfishly take comfort in his lack of language. I lie to myself and pretend he doesn’t understand what I say when I lose my patience and utter words out of anger or frustration, awful things that leave me diminished in my shame and reveal a depth of self-hatred I never knew until I had children.
Who needs words? All my language does is make me ugly.
But, tonight, in this moment, feeling my son hug me for the first time, I feel redeemed, forgiven. He reminds me of what I’ve always known but always fail to remember: he’s never stopped communicating. We don’t need language because we exist together in a sacred space outside of it. He embodies love.
Sometimes I worry he doesn’t understand what I mean when I say, “I love you,” and how deeply those words reach into a place of my being that I, too, have no words for. But, tonight, a few squeezes are more than enough for both of us.
This is a lovely piece. I am not a parent. I am a late diagnosed Autistic man. I won't offer any advice that would likely only add the catalogue of what's already been said and isn't helpful. I really related to what you wrote about how so often what we say we later regret, language fails. Always, speaking for myself, there are so many utterances I've said in anger and clumsiness I'd pay good money to erase, along with the shame that goes with it. So, I will add nothing but this: I enjoy watching actors talk about their craft. When asked about how one memorizes lines, Matthew McConaughey said he didn't. He studied the words and the what they were trying to communicate. Then the said this: If I can communicate a paragraph worth of dialogue in a look or gesture, I do that. Blew my mind.
This is so beautiful, and had me tearing up by the end. Some parts of parenting are universal, and that love is like nothing else. Also, I could feel the fatigue you describe, both physical and emotional, in my bones. We all have our version of it.
I also just finished, maybe a month ago, Kate Swenson's memoir, Forever Boy. At the end, I felt such gratitude for her bravery in sharing her journey of motherhood and autism, and building awareness as a result. I can see how this piece may have been hard to write and then to share too, but I'm so glad you did. Thank you, Jacob!