"I missed you," I said, pulling Dov down to sit next to me on the edge of the bed. I wanted so much to take his hand into mine, to kiss his cheek, to hug him and hold him. Instead I just stared at the tangle of uncombed hair at the back of his head, I wished he would look at me, but I knew he couldn't. Not when he was like this. Just sitting beside me without shrieking, for this precious moment, was the greatest gift Dov could give me. I knew it took every ounce of his energy and concentration to do it. "I love you," I said quietly, getting up as slowly as I could.
"How about some pajamas?" I asked, rummaging through his dresser drawers. I tried to help him put them on but whenever I touched him he doubled over, laughing hysterically. He could not stop. "Was everything okay while I was away?" I asked, trying to ignore his behaviour and my despair. "C'mon, let's get these on." I was on the verge of tears. Dov couldn't stop laughing; he laughed until he was screaming.
Then suddenly, just as inexplicably, he began sobbing uncontrollably, a deep, mournful, despairing kind of crying. Huge tears rolled down his cheeks. I stared at him in utter grief, unable to know what was going on in his mind and heart. Finally, I just hugged him tightly, locking my arms around him and rocking us both, brushing away my owns tears on my sleeve.
I didn't really believe in praying. But that didn't stop me from doing it. In fact, I prayed all the time. And not just for Dov but for all the children in the world who suffered from autism. They all deserved a miracle.
But I wanted a modern miracle. The old-fashioned miracle where one person at a time was saved just wasn't acceptable anymore. No, modern miracles were much bigger than that: They had to be reproducible; they required clinical trials and publication in peer reviewed journals. Modern miracles were for the masses, not just one individual. That's why we started CAN (Cure Autism Now). What good was a miracle, after all, if it saved only one little boy? No, I never prayed just for Dov -- until now.
I felt defeated, destroyed, inadequate, broken down. I would accept any kind of miracle right now, even the senseless, one-in-a-million, unreproducible kind that cured only one person. I was too devastated to be altruistic any longer. I just wanted God to fix Dov - to save him, to cure him, to help him get better - because this was no way to live.
And then Dov started communicating with an alphabet board, and they discovered he had an intelligent and intact mind beyond their imagining.
Miracles, I was learning, not only brought joy but by their very definition must shatter your world, casting everything you thought you knew to the four winds.
- Strange Son, by Portia Iversen
I am totally going to rave about this book to my classmates. Already started today. It is overwhelming to contemplate the possibility that the low-functioning autistics we've come across actually have complete minds that feel and think like any other. The only reason this isn't in out textbooks, I feel, though I've yet to dig up more on this, is that there is a lack of EBP (i.e. evidence-based practice) and they just haven't distilled the intervention procedure to be scientifically acceptable (and with concrete valid theories etc).
That's the problem with science. It takes itself far too seriously and blinds itself to wondrous possibilities.
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