I met Tracy when I moved to the neighborhood ten years ago. At the time, I had a lot going on. I was raising three boys, the oldest autistic, and was balancing their care with that of my mother, who was very ill. I was tired and emotionally drained. After Tracy and I talked for a few minutes, she asked me the dreaded question.

“What do you do?”

Before I could reply with – home with kids, oldest autistic, mother sick, Tracy blurted out, “I’m a writer!”

She was beaming.

After a brief conversation–how many kids, how old, Tracy skipped away, and I wondered, what does she write about? I might like to write, too. God knows I have great material. Then my oldest son, Matthew, bolted impulsively towards the street, and I thought- when would I write?

I had always enjoyed writing in a journal as a young girl, but by college I’d digressed to knocking out English papers between the hours of midnight and seven a.m. for my eight o’clock class. Writing had become a game, rather than a passion, and the IBM Selectric was stowed away in the hall closet after graduation. I was distracted by the excitement of life in San Francisco with friends, work and romance, blissfully unaware of what struggles lay ahead.

Years later, when I relayed my adventures with Matthew, people would say, “You could write a book!“. But every day was a frantic mix of unexpected phone calls from school, neighbors and eventually law enforcement – all upset by Matthews’s disruptive behavior. Damage control was my way of life. I’d deliver flowers to a teacher after a tough day, a bottle of wine to the neighbor who had found my son in her yard, throwing basketballs into her swimming pool. In the midst of it all, I managed to make frequent visits to my beloved mother, and nurture, with the help of my supportive husband, my two other sons.

After mom died, my father started writing…beautifully. He wrote about his happy childhood on the Monterey Peninsula in the thirties-the oldest of five. He wrote about his family, and his friends – about Valentines Day in the third grade. Whenever I visited him in Carmel, he couldn’t wait for me to sit down in the white chair by the window and read his stories. He studied my face as I read them, waiting for my reaction to the sentence he knew would make me laugh or cry. I noticed the twinkle in his eye, the amused smile on his face. I told him – you ought to have these published! “Just a hobby” was his reply.

It wasn’t till the following summer when I felt an urgent need to write. My mother had been gone about a year, and my husband and I had placed Matthew in a special school in Pennsylvania. Friends and family thought I would be relieved when Matthew left, that I would finally get a break. But instead, I felt empty, and I needed to write about it.

I wrote about the wonderful days of Matthew’s infancy and toddlerhood when we thought he was perfect, through the heartbreak of diagnosis up to the more recent years of survival and acceptance. I joined a women’s writing group, and took extension courses at a nearby college.

Now I take my yellow pad with me everywhere, and turn to it in idle moments. I think – what do people need to know about Matthew? How can I paint a picture of him and of his place in the world? As the ideas wash over me, I jot them down frantically till the one that illustrates him best stares back at me, and I silently rejoice.

I look forward to my writers group each Wednesday as if it were the first day of school, and when I come home afterward, I am so full of energy that I have to keep moving, usually cleaning the house that I have neglected in favor of my new friend, the gray laptop. There have been days when my husband and children have had to remind me to feed them dinner, but they’re proud of me.

At times, writing unearths dark feelings, long buried, as I remember the moment the psychologist first uttered the word autism, or the haunting questions from curious friends.

“Will he ever live on his own or hold a job?”

On days when I plunge into a well of unbearable sadness, the only way to climb out is by turning to humor. I write funny stories that make me laugh out loud as I go.

Once I am lifted out of my funk, I share my writing. The thrill of moving family and friends to tears or laughter, the crafting of the perfect sentence, or of seeing my name in print allow me to store the dark days away until I have the courage to revisit them.

While writing about my journey with Matthew has been difficult at times, it has been illuminating.

I have a new-found appreciation of what a struggle it is to be Matthew.

Writing has been an awakening, an energizing preoccupation, and now I understand Tracy’s eager proclamation and the twinkle in my father’s eyes. There is a new dimension in my life, and I see and feel everything with inspired clarity.

I’m a writer.

Laura

Laura Shumaker (www.laurashumaker.com) writes for www.specialneeds.5minutesformom.com on Fridays. She also does book reviews when there is a book to review!