Nightmares of an Autism Mom

  When Max was a tiny toddler, newly diagnosed and uncommunicative,  i first had the dream.
  In real life, we often let him run around in just a diaper.  In the dream, he was dancing away from me, wearing just the diaper, into a twilight downtown alley.
  He wouldn't return to my calls and i couldn't run fast enough to catch him.
 There was no one around to help me.

  In the nightmare and in real life, he is a happy person.   But it's still hard to reach him.  And it's harder still to determine what he wants, in an everyday sort of way.
  Refusals, he has down cold.

Max, In and Out of the Dream

    When Max was five, i got involved in a game with Boom.  i kept telling myself, i need to go check on Max.  After this next turn, after THIS next turn. . .

the driveway, slightly earlier in the evening

   When i finally did, Max's movie was over, the front door was open, and he was in the driveway with a stranger  The stranger was restraining him from taking his tricycle back into the street.
  Again.
  At twilight.
 The man yelled at me, and i deserved it.  And the thought still gives me chills.

  Max was what we call a "runner" at that time, and we hadn't taken proper precautions.
  The bolt went on the front door that very night.

No Longer a Runner

  Somehow in the years since we've gotten (mostly) past the runner stage.  He will run from what he considers an unbearable situation to the car or his classroom.  We know where he's headed; we never used to be  able to figure that out.  This is how he tells us, when he has no words, that the situation is not supportable.  We haven't been able to impress on him about staying with us or even necessarily watching for traffic.
  He is better about the traffic, though, in that he remembers.  Sometimes.  Not enough to make a mom's mind easy.
  But then that would be 100%, wouldn't it?

  And i have an uncommunicative twenty-one year old  happily dancing into his own world without me.
  But he doesn't dance away so often now.  And it's always in his clothes.