"You ruined my day"

Sunday morning carried on with our usual routine: coffee, a little 2-lap jog around the neighborhood, and now clean up to get ready for church. D approached me with a look of slight anxiety. He was having one of his “Luke dilemmas” and needed some affirmation to relieve his fatherly guilt. It was a packed Sunday with an evening booked up for church meeting and thus he was not able to do their long bike route across the river. It would incur an extra hour just from the car trip itself. Years of majoring in guilt for both children, I have developed a coping mechanism more skillfully than the father. I gave him a boost of assurance: “He will be fine – just do the biking somewhere close.” After another dose of lecture “you are not to live for his happiness alone” from me, He called out to Luke from the bottom of the stairs to the TV room and proposed the alternative in an optimistic tone as an effort we both knew to convince more himself than Luke. We heard him reply ok. I arched my eyebrow, “see?” in short for “how easy is that”.

So that was it. At least I thought. They left shortly after for Luke’s Sunday music rehearsal and I continued on with my usual routine to get ready for church. “Sabbath rest” does not apply to an old woman like me or I seem to be violating it every Sunday before I head out to the door. Then the phone rang. Usually it meant something has been forgotten: Luke’s music or our nursery duty reminder. This time was neither. D’s voice was one of those “you won’t believe what happened”. They were making their usual Sunday round, the sacred 7-11 stop for D’s coffee and Luke’s donuts, when the father noticed the son’s unusual dejection. Donuts did not do their trick – that itself was an alarming signal. What’s wrong? D asked, only to be replied with “Nothing”. Our perfect son who lives for our approval is no mystery to read – you may not know what bothers him, but you would always know when he is bothered. Another round of “what” and “nothing” went on. Finally upon D’s insistent inquiry the truth came out. Luke said in a melancholic tone: “you ruined my day”.

One of those impulsive sentences that we have reserved unless we are provoked to retort back, it surely is not anyone’s favorite for both the giver and receiver. Silence set in between D and me just like that. For a brief moment, we were lost in words. Quickly enough, I came back with an incredulous “Really?”, which both he and I understood why and where the curiosity came from. Yes, really. He affirmed. We ended our call finally with an unresolved mystery hung in the air.

He would turn 25 by October; a full grown adult to say the least. As perfect as he may be in our eyes, he still has his moments or room to err and sin. I have always thought of the nursery rhyme “There was a little girl who had a little curl… when she was good, she was very, very good; but when she was bad she was horrid”. That just about summed up Luke’s life – 99% of “very, very good” and 1% of “horrid” – in the form of tantrum, absurdity or even insanity when no words or actions can console or resolve. But that sentence surely does not fit in either end. It was in fact normal and, yes, so appropriate.

So why the puzzle? What could possibly confuse us after dealing with the worst of “horrid”? For one, it was not one of his sentences. Moreover, it wasn’t his usual pattern of handling disappointment. Emotional outbursts: yes; logical expressions: not for people like Luke. I could think of all the sentences he has spoken all his life – all of which have been learned or coached products with little room for exception. Even the tone itself at times comes formulated or robotic. Autistic people do that. they are the stereotyped imitators. I recall him at 2 years old when he started talking how simple and minimal his vocabulary was. For the longest time before we found out the final diagnosis our communication had always been one-directional: words, phrases, numbers went freely into that mysterious bank of brain and yet little came out in a functional or meaningful way. He talked very little; at best he echoed.

Over 20 years of schooling and coaching, words continue to be his tormentor. I believe he is afraid or terrified to express himself with the exception of his interests or fixations. We have had the hardest time with him telling us what bothers him when he is plainly distressed. His fear to disappoint us outweighs his own disappointment thus the only mean with which his predicament may be resolved is also his gravest evil. In his world, emotions contain a black-and-white happy or sad while words are perceived in 2 simple categories - approval and rejection. In a nutshell, approval makes him happy and rejection makes him sad. Thus our almost-perfect son perpetually struggles with his own and our imperfection in a world that is anything but perfect.

Back and forth from the past to present, I was thrown into another whirlwind of emotions while I pondered on the 4 most ordinary words in a most extraordinary disclosure. I thought I had this simple and innocent creature figured out, but “you ruined my day” thwarted out all my expectation. What overwhelmed both of us, confusion included, was this exquisite sensation –surprise, gratefulness, and joy… I was thinking how this little shadow of life could continue to tug my heart like that, but most of all I wonder if anyone ever begin to understand when he said “you ruined my day” he made my day?