Man, do I have hissues

Nope, not a typo. I have hissues. Or possibly heh-shoos.

It's not often that I roll out posts a day apart, but since the inside of my head has been upgraded (downgraded?) from a tumbling clothes dryer to a category 4 hurricane, I figured I'd best get myself back here and let it go.

Yesterday, as you recall, I noted my envy of the Ramblin' Man with a bit of wry amusement. Today on the way to work David and I were behind a truck pulling a rather large fishing vessel bearing the charming moniker "Happy Hooker." The "h" in Hooker looked like a fishing rod and reel and isn't THAT just the cleverest? "Come on, guys! Everyone jump on the Happy Hooker and let's par-tay!" Imagine the awkwardness that could bring on at garden parties.

But I digress. I stared at that stupid boat with it's stupid name, and I felt the old familiar bile starting to simmer. Whoever owns that boat must die a painful death, and as soon as possible. I looked to my right...there's a young lady be-bopping to some shitty hip-hop music, no doubt, while she puts on her lipgloss. I hated her immediately. Just ahead and in the right lane there was a woman driving a small gray car bearing a bumper sticker that David noticed just as I did: "Don't let the car fool you. My treasure is in heaven." Well, isn't that just fantastically wonderful and amazing. Forty lashes for you, missy.

Nobody gets to be happy. I don't care if Billy Joe worked hard to buy that damned boat. I don't care that the young lady can listen to her music and put on her lipgloss because it's a free country. I don't care that Ms. Gray Car is at peace and content with her treasure in a heavenly safe deposit box. I look at everyone through my own selfish filter, and I hate people going about their lives, DARING to be at ease, happy, and relaxed. I don't want to hear that other people have it worse than me. (Oh, I know that, but right now I don't want to hear it.) Don't tell me that everybody has issues. (Of course they do.) But I have HISSUES, and those are so much worse.

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but the saga continues. Roughly a week or so ago, Stephen starting asking for "heh-shoos." We have tried everything. I thought it was Harold-shoes - "let's go buy the Harold DVD." We tested that last night. Nope. We have tried, "All done shoes." "We're home." Nope - doesn't even faze him. When he finally went to sleep last night, I breathed a sigh of relief because 1) I needed a break from all my hissues, and 2) I needed to work on schedules and PECS and stuff. I went to bed exhausted.

This morning Stephen was up before 6:00. I was already up and we got the lights on. He popped in a DVD, and I started getting things ready for the day. He was lulling me into a false sense of security. I sat down on the couch to turn on the TV, and he plopped down in the recliner beside me.

"Heh-shoos."

Great God in heaven...WHAT IS HE SAYING? I said, "I don't know."

"HEH-SHOOS. Heh-shoos. Heh-shoos!"

With weariness oozing out of every pore I said, "We'll put on shoes in a little bit and go to school."

"NO NO NO...no no no...."

See...I'm not GETTING it, and he knows I'm not getting it. He seems to say this only when I'm around.

"Heh-shoos. Heh-shoos...heh-shoos," like a little rapid-fire machine gun. I stood there dumbly, sort of mumbling, "I don't know. Shoes in a little bit....I don't KNOW what you're saying. Show me. Hissues...I don't know..."

And the crying began...rocking in the recliner almost violently, demanding that I "Push, please" on his feet.

David got up, and got Stephen calmed down (thank you) and he finally went back to his DVDs. Kerry got up, ate breakfast and got ready for choir. David and Kerry left and I went to the bathroom to get ready. As I walked into the room, a boulder landed on my back. I sank to my knees on the bathmat.

I didn't even realize I was crying until I noticed the wet spots forming on the bathmat - dark green spots on a mossy green background. In a strangely disconnected way I found myself noticing wonderingly that the tears seemed to fall in the same spots each time. "So they follow a path down my nose and drop down on those same two spots on the rug..." Jeez...how many times can my thoughts divide themselves before all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put them back together?

This "simple" conundrum - trying to figure out this tiny little two-syllable phrase - bores into my consciousness, piercing into the very soul of the matter like some gazillion watt searchlight. My child is trying to talk to me, and I can't understand him. He's not a little baby who can be coddled and cajoled with a cute rattle, yet he IS a litttle baby who can't tell me what he wants. I can't tell him no or yes or later because I have no idea what he's asking.

It's the perfect illustration. It is the whole sum of it all. My child might as well have been dropped off on my doorstep by someone from another galaxy, or, even better...we were picked up and taken to his planet. He speaks a language all his own, and my translator is broken. I don't know what goes on inside his head, or what pains he feels. He may be asking for the simplest thing in the world, and all my prattling on about shoes is driving him as mad as it's driving me. Someday I hope to look back on this and laugh. Yeah.

Ironically I got an email digest from an autism group I joined on Yahoo, and it contained the heartwarming "Trip to Holland" story that I used to hold so near and dear (http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html), back in the early days of autism when Stephen was 2 and life seemed manageable. We might've started out in Holland, but our itinerary moved on to other foreign and bewildering places around the globe, and now we live on Omicron Persei 8, and I hate it here.

So, baby boy, you're right. Boy, does your mama have hissues.