First Snow

Yesterday it snowed, and it got me thinking that this very well may be the first snow Matthew has ever seen. Well, don’t get me wrong, we have had other snow storms since Matthew has been born and we have pointed said snow out to him before. But I really think this is the first time Matthew has actually “seen” the snow itself.

Larry came downstairs yesterday morning and said that it was snowing outside. The boys and I had been busy doing something else so we hadn’t even noticed. But as soon as Matthew heard the word “snow”, he went flying to our glass slider. And he saw. He watched the flakes fall from the sky and he noticed how it was starting to cover our patio. Promptly he asked, “Can I go outside?” So Larry said “yes”. We bundled both kids up, making Nico look quite a bit like Randy from A Christmas Story, and headed outside. Nico just stood around, I’m not really sure he could move in all of his snow clothes. But Matthew ran around delighted to be outside experiencing the snow. He held out his tongue to catch the flakes; something he had seen on a Little Bill episode. But when that didn’t work he tried to lick the snow which had accumulated on Nico’s hood. He even noticed that my hair was getting covered in snow and made me stoop down so he could shake the snow off of me.

Who is this little boy? Where did he come from? Larry and I were just like small children ourselves again. We had always hoped for these moments with our children, back when we were simply pregnant with Matthew. Then autism entered our lives and we weren’t sure we would ever have these experiences with Matthew; Nico, probably, but not Matthew. Then this marvelous thing came a long. They call it “biomedical interventions”, I call it hope and a miracle. And it has been giving us Matthew. He can see, he can comment, he can experience so much more. And the truly remarkable thing is that he can recount that experience with us. He asks questions about it. He shows us that he has taken the experience in and it has become part of him; that he will retain the information and it has begun to shape and mold him.

I’m sitting here with a small, wry smile on my face because I never thought I would be talking about how some seemingly meaningless event, just a blimp on our lifelong calendar, was shaping my son so that he could take in life as we know it. Who needs to think that way? Who needs to consider such mundane, yet extremely powerful, experiences? Parents of autistics do. And I’m sure there are others, maybe families of those with Downs Syndrome, probably others. I don’t know. I am not them. All I know is what our family is experiencing, and what we are becoming.

First snow. It makes the world look clean and pure, and sparkly. For a moment or a day, the world is radiant, and in the eyes of a child it is brilliant. Hello First Snow!