To another special needs mother-writer, I once joked about writing a piece entitled: "They stared bad." She choked, almost spitting out the sweet southern iced tea she was sipping as we waited for the arrival of our lunch order. If you have a special needs offspring, you know what I'm talking about here. I knew pretty much from the start of our special needs journey not to let people's social rudeness bother me. I decided I had too much on my emotional spreadsheet than to add what I thought others were thinking of me and my mothering skills. I write more about that here: The Walmart Story: Every Autism Parent Has One.

Last night, while six loads of laundry remained unfolded, piled high in a great room chair, Grace and I lounged leisurely in the one venue in our burb that's not a beer joint/purveyor of fried food. Ahhh. It was Thursday night, the weekend was looming and we nibbled salad greens and sandwiches while more than one set of eyes seemed to be watching us.

I was giving Grace a particularly long rope, sending her independently across the small restaurant to the busing station, to the rest room, to refill her water (where I caught her at the last minute adding a squirt of "free" Sprite,) and to order a muffin. I had to rise from the table and supervise the latter. Purchase painstaking made with waded bills and change she still doesn't understand how to count, I sent her back to the table and waited for my cup of hot cocoa to be prepared.

When I followed seconds later, the woman at the table in front of ours grinned knowingly at me. (I get that a lot.) I had only caught that Grace was in her vicinity a few seconds earlier. Ruh. Roh. What had Grace done now? I smiled sheepishly and asked the woman just that. She said it was okay, then added, again smiling: "She sniffed me." It wasn't the first time in a public place Grace grabbed a quick sniff of someone just finished up at the gym, as she admittedly had. Whatever the scent, if it's unusual, Grace darts in for a quick inhalation. It's an autism thing.

The woman stood and asked if we had been in the paper. We had, I told her. (The Tennessean no longer has the link active.) She quickly added that she used to have a sister who had autism. She explained that she had died and then added that her mother died soon after. "How old was your sister?" I asked. "Fifty-two," came the answer. We both flushed, our eyes quickly watering, me adding–"She held on until your sister passed." In an instant I tapped into the secret heart wish that every special needs mother carries with her, hoping, praying that she will outlive her child.

The story that followed is one I hear often. A story of a world so different than mine. The surprise that my "disabled" daughter is "allowed" to go to "a regular school." Sad tales of "ignorance" and family rejection and lack of support–as this woman's mother had experienced from her family of origin. The woman in the restaurant continued that her mother used to question why God gave her a "disabled" child. But, the motherless daughter who lost her sister, said she knew. She believed God chose special, patient people to care for the differently abled. (The latter term, my choice of words.) I winced a little at the reasoning and the language, but knew to just listen. To be present. To hold the space. And to be open to the Gift that she would give me in this small interchange between us.

The sandwich shoppe stranger–"K."–continued on as if she needed
the catharsis of confessing these intimate thoughts to a stranger: "I loved her," she said, her eyes conveying the depth of that familial bond. "I am glad that I had the experience of having her in my family," she said of her special needs sister."Life is richer because of it….Do you know what I mean?" she asked hesitantly, pausing and looking into my face quizzically, searching for understanding. 

Without hesitation, I looked back into her eyes and answered: "Yes. I know."