lost in translation
Robert Frost would be proud: Every night Adam roams and roams for miles before he sleeps, up and down the same stretch of hall, his heavy tread pressing the carpet flat, beating out a path.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. In muffled pilgrimage, he travels overhead, across the living room ceiling and back again, as though he has some destination in mind, when really he’s going nowhere. Our lives can feel like that, for all our hurry and busyness. In Adam’s life, I’ve witnessed this so many times I see him now quite clearly, as though the ceiling were made of glass. He paces at a fast clip, his long, lean arms swing by his side, and sometimes his hands rise as though choreographed, animated by music or the rhythm of a repeated phrase on his CD player. I have often wished Adam could tell me what he’s doing, what he hears, what drives him down and back, what turns his head and lifts his fingers as though he’s caught by an intriguing idea, what suddenly draws his eyes so sharply to one side. I wonder if even he knows.
Theories suggest that back and forth movement serves as a warmup for Adam’s neurons, a bridge-builder for synapses. Swinging, with its rhythmic rises and falls, has long been known to help autistic individuals with sensory processing. If that’s true, Adam walks to understand. I guess that’s really all a pilgrimage is, a walk to understanding. And if all the back and forth is good for Adam’s brain, maybe it’s good for mine too. Maybe the routine parts of my life serve a greater purpose than I know.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. Kevin and I try to ignore the thuds against the ceiling. We try. But sometimes…
“Hey, Adam?” Kevin calls, standing at the foot of the stairs, gripping the knob at the end of the banister, running a hand through his hair. Kevin’s hair makes wild peaks when he touches it.
Thunk, thunk, thunk from up above and then, an abrupt stop. A destination, then, a stilling: Dad. Having heard his Father call, Adam appears at the top of the stairs, grinning and open, his expression saying what his mouth does not. “Yes, Dad?” From my wandering, my Father calls, I’m thinking, craning my neck toward the stairs for a glimpse of our son.
“Walk softly. You’re going to shake the house down.” Kevin’s words are kind, his tone laced with none of the insanity that has begun–thunk thunk–to dismantle our peace. The lesson is simple: progress need not be loud. And yet, sometimes I feel like my living must be loud, expansive, even earth-shaking to make a difference. I’m learning the same lesson as my son: I’ve taken big, thundering steps that took me nowhere and had quiet conversations that moved mountains.
Silently, Adam turns away from the stairs and back to wandering to and fro in the hallway. His footsteps become less discernible, and with relief, we return to rest. But later, when we wander upstairs, Kevin finds Adam turning on his heels for another lap down the hall. Adam seems distressed, his open expression furrowed by deep-carved worry. He wrings his hands, clasping them in front of him. In moments like these, autism stings; its challenges glare; the failures of our communication hurt. We grieve when Adam suffers in silence. I imagine God grieves too, when I can’t quite figure out how to talk to him, or when I won’t take the time. But I’m an open book to Him (Psalm 139:2); he hardly needs my eloquent speeches to understand. God reads us better than we can now read Adam’s distress; He searches us more carefully than we now search out the source of Adam’s heartache.
“How’re you doing?” Kevin says, stopped by Adam’s demeanor, the way Adam stands, the way he holds his body. In the father I see my Father, who comes looking for me; I hear His where are you, reaching through my isolation.
“Walking softly,” Adam says. He glances nervously at his hands, carefully caught and gripped in front of him. “No shaking hands.”
“Oh, you can shake your hands, buddy,” Kevin says immediately, realizing with compassion that Adam has misunderstood, that Adam has created a rule where none was intended. Figures of speech often don’t survive the language barrier between us. We can mean nothing at all by what we say, and still, those confusing phrases bring Adam pain. He listens imperfectly, and of course, we speak imperfectly. And I understand Adam’s mistake: I’ve made the same assumption, believing that quieter obedience ultimately limits the use of my hands.
I have spiritual autism. I realize it again in moments like these, when we confuse love, tripping over words and phrases. I struggle to speak and understand the language of heaven. It’s the language of my homeland, but still a language I’m learning. Faithfully and continually, God untangles my misapplications.
“Oh, thank you,” Adam gushes in a whisper now, as though he has held the words with his breath, as though with his dropped hands impossible burdens fall to the floor. Immediately I understand: I too have felt the relief of grace; felt how it is to let go and watch my chains fall, to see my despair crumble. Adam grins, shaking his hands out in front of him as though they’ve been tied, as though before this moment the blood couldn’t quite reach his fingers. And then he pilgrims on, softly, and his hands return to their artful rising, as though caught only in a dance.
