It’s hard on a mom…
In my last post, I promised to tell you about the low this week. I put it off a couple of days—it’s amazing how much easier it is to write the highs than the lows . . .
TJ’s been driving for a couple of years now. At first, he drove only within a couple of miles of home, and as time went by and he gained experience and confidence, the circle gradually got larger. And more complex—we live just off of a major interstate and he’s slowly built up the experience and comfort with interstate driving. (This is exactly what we did with our other kids, by the way.)
He headed back to college via the interstate on Wednesday. It had rained overnight and was still a bit dark and drizzly, and he was involved in an accident on the interstate. He and a tractor-trailer bumped—not sure exactly how—but the impact shot him across two lanes of traffic and into the median, where the cables separating the east- and west-bound lanes stopped him, peeling most of the metal off the driver’s side of the car in the process. Oh – and as he crossed traffic, a Dodge Ram clipped him on its front driver’s side, too.
Not a scratch on anyone involved, which is a miracle! And I mean that literally—you don’t often see “large truck,” “rain,” “interstate,” and “three-car accident” in the same sentence unless it also includes at least some personal injury. But not this time.
But still, it’s really shaken him up. Most people are involved in at least one wreck in their lifetimes and although I don’t know statistics, I suspect that the odds for younger drivers are higher. And here, given the road conditions, the accident could have happened to anyone (though he got the ticket—more on that and our experiences with first responders later, as well.) He’s had a hard time sleeping and putting it out of his mind to study for finals. He’s seen his school counselor a couple of times, which helps. He will get through it.
When I say that living with autism is waiting for the other shoe to drop, I mean the opposite of a victory in the realm of autism—something happens because of autism that brings the world crashing down, at least momentarily. But as TJ gets older and more independent, I’m learning that the other shoe may not be autism-related at all. Instead, like every one of us, life happens to our kids just because they’re living. I’m realizing that even if I can work to minimize the impact autism has on TJ’s life, but I can’t stop bad things from happening. The more he lives his own life, the more vulnerable he becomes to the just-life stuff.
It's hard on a mom.
