How do I love my son?

(In honor of National Autism Week Awareness, which was celebrated from Jan 20 to 27. Teodoro was diagnosed with autism at 3.)

My husband sends me a text message this morning as I sit at Starbucks, nursing a hot mocha.

 He sends it in the middle of my thought bubble. I always live in thought bubbles: my favorite place where I am perpetually writing dialogue, chasing first lines, pursuing an idea or a thought or a thesis statement.

I love the dependability of my spirit to be able to do this: Imagine, conjure, document, articulate, give shape to things that normally go unnoticed. I always hear so much more. I can hear the world humming, all the time.

 Across from me, two men are deep in conversation. I think of what the discussion is all about. My mind goes from tragic to comic. It is either a confession of sorts (I’ve always wanted to tell you that…) or a list of medications they will have to buy at Mercury Drug. I think about a play I want to write. I have a title tête-à-tête and it will be a series of monologues delivered by a mother and daughter. I laugh a little thinking I should call it “teteng to teteng” and the guard by the door gives me a sharp look. Perhaps there is a place somewhere in the world where laughing is not allowed? My brain is always elsewhere, even when it has landed somewhere beautiful.

 But the text message grounds my flight. He says, “Teodoro was looking for you this morning.” My heart does that funny dance whenever his name is mentioned. The dance is part-guilt, part-sadness, part-desire, part-longing. There are so many parts to it that it often takes up all the space in my body. He owns all of me, truly. Every ache I have is his. I turn strange in my thoughts. I think about the appendix I lost years ago. Where is that appendix and if it knew the grief that was to come for me so he left before he could be asked to stay.

I think about how I am always on the verge of tears. “Touch me and I will bleed” my constant refrain when I walk, nay, gallop, from place to place. From this text on, that refrain is replaced with “Teodoro was looking for you this morning.”

 There is no other love more complicated than this. Even abandonment is a pale pain in comparison. I think to myself, was this what Mary Magdalene was referring to when she sang, “I don’t know how to love him?” The center of that song has always been an elusive thing but now understand a bit more. How do I love Teodoro? I don’t know how to love him.

When I go to him to tell him something that will make him happy (“Teodoro, I found a copy of Haydn!”) it is sure to be met with a slap on my cheek. He does not like strong emotion and I am all about strong emotion. He gets nervous by the delight in my voice. He does not know what it is.

 Or I perhaps will try some other thing. I will tell him news but will do so 10 feet away from him. “Teodoro, the car will take you to the pool this morning.” This time, a shoe is sure to be thrown my way. He has memories of hitting me in the pool. What he really wants to say is “I don’t want to hit you in the pool.” But the slipper is faster. He has no understanding that he has just hit me once again.

 Or I will tell him something in a low voice, far away, with no expression. He hates that the most. At the very core of his being is his knowledge of me; sometimes a deeper knowledge of me than I have of myself (in the way he knows I am not well, that I have just cried, that I need French toast). This woman with no expression is not my mother. So he will have to hit the stranger.

 It is a dance that has no sure steps, no obvious narrative the way the tango has although this feels like a tango. How filled it is with passion and love; an intense desire to be loved by the other in the way one wants to be loved. How love is also about wanting to be hurt, but not this way, Not this way.

I hardly touch him now. I no longer know how his hands feel. Nothing crushes my heart more than seeing old pictures of carrying him, hoisted on my hip. How simple love used to be. “Here, take my breast, it is all yours. Cut it, if need be.” Motherhood is all hyperbole, I tell you.

 I hold the line in my head as I walk. “Teodoro was looking for you this morning.” How do I say to him, “Mommy was also looking for you, my darling?”