Lost son and mother

My son Mikey is growing up so fast that I've given myself the luxury of thinking how far we've come since he was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum.

One time my friend Ellen Walther Sousa came over to visit, and Mikey was in his Wizard of Oz phase. He'd spend entire days dressed as the witch from the Wizard of Oz and repeated a line of dialogue from the movie over and over: “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too,” while he went around in circles. We tried to hide the outfit from him but the resulting tantrums were indescribable. The doctor advised us to try and break the obsession then he'd replace it with another one, which would be less intense than the first, then keep doing that until -- I dunno, forever.

Anyway, Ellen came to see us and finally she had to ask about Mikey in the corner of the room doing the witch routine. By that time, it all seemed so normal to us that we forgot how it must have looked to outsiders.

Once we broke him out of the witch obsession, he had to wear a suit and tie and winter clothes all the year long. We would try to hide his tie but the house would be a war zone until we produced it again.

But during this horrendous struggle to break the hold that autistic behavior had on my son, we were so close. But teenhood has reared its ugly head and taken that closeness away.

Now Mikey's all grown up and has a girlfriend. Sometimes it seems like I've lost my mother (she died two months ago) and my little son at the same time.