Our daughter was assigned to write a vignette for her 9th grade Honors English class. I'm learning that she is a great little writer. I'm also learning how much she hates vignettes because of the lack of punctuation and grammar. :)It about drove her crazy!
I felt it appropriate to share this since today is World Autism Awareness Day. This comes from our daughter, age 14, who lives day to day with all the males in our home diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum.
A lone little boy sits on a swing; you can hear the creak of the old metal as he slowly swings back and forth. His eyes are the color of a cloudy sky, with muddy hair, and he sits alone, in a large school yard, with no one around him, not caring; for no one understands the little boy who has never had a friend in his 6 years of life, who has never learned to love or to hate, who has never even learned to speak in a language other people understand. His eyes, so vast and huge, take in everything in his view as he stares off, seemingly at nothing, when he is really seeing something that people don't take the time to notice, no one understands when he starts to cry, or starts to fight, they all shun him and treat him like an outcast, who sits on the swing where no one wants to play. No one sees his smiling face, though he shows it to all he sees, but they think he is insane, unable to care for himself. Sitting on the swing every day, at every time, like clockwork, not even bothering to try to talk or make friends because the others don't see him the way his family sees him.
Little do they know how special he is, how gifted he is, and how talented but his brain can't process it properly. Little do they know how much he can comprehend. Little do they know, little do they know, how sweet he is like fresh honey on corn bread, or the smile he makes when he knows he's done something mischievous, or when he feels how sad you are and says nothing but climbs on your lap and rocks back and forth, trying to make you feel better. No one understands the hardships he has gone through, the pains and the medications, the emotional pain his mother and father went through so he could be there, be here as he is today, he has a chance, a chance to be able to live and to learn as much as he can, he has a chance to be able to breathe air and to take long walks under the summer sun, he has the chance to learn how to learn, he has the chance to learn how to speak and to read and to write so he can bring his brilliant intelligence to life.
Other children don't understand him, making funny comments about how he moves his fingers, delicately rubbing them together as he tries to process things, or when he rocks back and forth and moans, and even when he screams and tyrants over the smallest things. Everyone thinks he is a loser, and one who will never be able to succeed in life. After school, though, after school his face brightens up to melt even the coldest of hearts, his aura glistens a brilliant gold as he runs into the arms of his mother, who knows him and knows his desires, she herself cries silver tears as she sees him waddle up to her and lay his head on her kneeling lap, the boy doesn't say a word, but buries his head in his mother's side, as if telling her he wants to go home. Tenderly she holds his hand, and starts the slow walk toward home, the little boy, known as Ryder Liam McBride, where he can be free from the world for ever.
