Whats Hope Got to do with it?

I often think back to the morning I first got Asher's diagnosis. I think about the way I reacted and wonder if I knew then what I know now, if I could have escaped the weeks and months of bouncing frantically between sadness, despair, and denial. I'm not sure. What I keep coming back to is hope. Hope is a very funny thing. When I first heard the diagnosis, it was like all my hope flew away with one small sentence. That everything I wanted for Asher flew out of our lives. A dark cloud on what had once been a sunny day. I felt guilty for a long time that my hope was fleeting. I felt like a failure as a mom that I wanted more for my child that maybe he could achieve. Why couldn't he just be good enough as he was? Tonight I wrote a 30 days of thankfulness post on Facebook about Happiness. If you're on my FB then you can read it there. If not, the gist was that we gave our son the name Asher because it meant "Happy and Blessed" that Happiness is what we most hoped our son would have. I thought about this a lot after his diagnosis. If it was true that I wanted happiness for him, wanted it more than anything else....then why is it my hope had vanished just by hearing the words Autism Spectrum Disorder? I struggled with this a lot. I tossed a lot of theories around in my head, it almost always came back to me blaming myself, that it was really my happiness I was worried about, that my pride was getting in the way, that it was my idea of what my life with Asher should have been that got smashed and I was confusing it with hope. But then one night I was reading a blog that was written by someone I actually don't like very much at all. Its funny how that works out sometimes. But anyway, this person is another special needs parent who is newer to the special need parenting thing than I am. Anyway, she talked a lot about the hope she had for her child, the things she hoped her child would be able to do, but that in the end it really came down to the fact that she hoped someday her little girl would get married. And it hit me, I had to stop reading, I had to cry. That was it. For me Happiness looks like a loving family, something you create with another person, a companion, someone you can laugh and cry with, have babies with, share your dreams with, grow old with. When I heard the word "Autism" I stopped being able to see that type of companionship for Asher. After all, not very many little girls wish they'll grow up and fall in love with an Autistic man, a man who will have social and emotional deficits, a man who may not be able to bring the emotional depth to a relationship that she needs him to have. And of course I looked in the mirror and I was disgusted. Holly Cole, be honest, you snob, you could not see yourself marrying an Autistic man. And I shook my head, I bowed it, I was ashamed. There was so much at that point that I did not understand about Autism, about Asher, about my husband, about my own self. So many answers that I knew I needed to uncover if I wanted to refind my hope for my son. I look at my little boy, with all the hell he goes through, all his struggles, but he giggles, he smiles, he hugs and loves, and is happy. His childhood is happy. And that has to be okay for now. I don't know if he'll be a happy man, I will do my best to teach him how to hold onto happiness. I don't know if he'll be successful, though I will try to teach him to be satisfied. I don't know if Asher will grow up and get married or have a best friend, but I will try to instill in him a drive to keep going after the things he wants in life. That way if he wants to love and connect to someone, that he'll give it every last bit of effort he has, and maybe some lucky girl, will be better than I am, able to see beauty and worth when it is right in front of her, maybe she'll grab him up. Maybe he'll make her a better person and she'll make him a better person. Maybe. Or maybe he won't need those things at all to be happy. Maybe he won't. And for right now my hope can hold hands with "Maybe" I think I can live with that. After all, hope is a funny thing. It has a way of creeping back into your heart, even when you're pretty sure it has gone away. Poof! There is is sneaking back up on you!