As I was drying off in the campground bathroom -- a sort-of open place where you showered in little stalls then dressed quickly before you got exposed -- I heard a vehicle drive slowly by the doorway. It sounded suspiciously like my conversion van. Seeing as my husband had already left for work and I didn't have any children over the age of 12, I threw on my clothes to see who was stealing our jalopy. I had left the four kids snoozing in our locked camper, not a hundred feet away. It was 6:00 in the morning and the rest of the world didn't appear to be moving yet. As I peered out of the doorway, I saw our blue van moseying around the other side of the campground. My brain was going into freakout mode, wondering why someone would steal a van and then just casually drive around, when the exit to the freeway was in the opposite direction.
At the time, we were living like some sort of amalgamated hippies -- Scotch/Irish Gypsies living in an old, leaky camper with four children, about to move onto five acres in the country and build our dream home. We were holed-up in a campground across the street from an amusement park near Atlanta while we got our septic tank and electricity installed on the property. It was August of 1996 and the Olympics were in town. All the normal people were heading out for vacations and trips, while the Nortons decided to make like crazy people -- sell all our stuff, move into a sketchy RV and call in the previous twenty years of favors and love from all the friends and family we could muster.
This early morning, with misty Atlanta heat already rising up from the earth and enough stress emanating from our lives to choke a Titan, I saw my van departing right in front of me. I hid a little behind the doorway to see who this thief was, watching for when he came around the curve. From a distance I could see he was blonde and shorter in stature. What I didn't realize was that he was actually quite tall. For a twelve year old. Yes. It was our twelve-year-old son, driving about the campground like a boss. To this day, I am still shaking my head. On that day, however, the earth was shaking too. And maybe, just maybe, a few marbles shook when I got hold of that gremlin.
This ten-and-a-half pound man-child came into the world, after much pushing and tugging, screaming like a summer tornado. He had colic and reflux and didn't stop hollering until he was eating three huge lumberjack-sized meals a day. And you better have them there on time. His first sentence was "What's 'at?!" You had to tell him quick, and a hundred times over, until the next object came into view. He was curious about everything, the world his chemistry set. There was no stone unturned, no container unpoured, no underside or guts of any object not explored. When he was five and showing zero signs of caring about letters, numbers or school-type activities except where it came to things he could turn inside out, I consulted with a teacher who was a reading specialist. At the time, we didn't know anything about Asperger's or autism or ADHD. I just knew that he wasn't going to fit into anyone's "box" and that he was absolutely brilliant, in none of the typical testing-sorts-of-ways. She said that if we put him into a traditional school setting, he would be labeled and put on drugs. His creativity and unusual learning style would be suppressed and he would have a hard time adapting to "normal" school. Mind you, Ken and I were old-school parents who believed in children behaving, spanking and loving restoration. We homeschooled our children, starting with this wild stallion of a child, not because we were so worried about his tender psyche, but because we didn't want him to stop thinking or creating. At the time, few people were homeschooling and some folks thought we were nuts. But, bottom line with this kid was, he didn't know he couldn't do anything. He had been raised tinkering with construction and cars with his Daddy, Grandpas and uncles. He had been allowed to drive tractors and trucks across our yards. He had gotten his hands skilled and calloused working alongside said men. So at the age of twelve he thought it was cool to go look for his mom, in the family van. His response to me when he saw steam pouring out of my ears was, "I didn't know where you were!" The logic from a highly unusual pre-teen with access to car keys.
The good news is, somehow he made it to 32 years old, has a home, a wonderful wife and child, with twins on the way. He has been gainfully employed since the age of twelve and can pretty much figure out anything. All the cries we heard about socialization have gone to the wayside. Even though he showed symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, including anti-social behavior, he grew out of the bad parts and kept the good, partly because he was never coddled and was expected to adapt. The other part (well, probably all) has got to be God's mercy, because we certainly didn't know what we were doing. There's a lot of other stories that would take me reams to express about Jonathan, but at the end of the day, I have to believe it's a wonder we all survived. And back to that whirling dervish of a boy, in the craziness of those years and trying to raise him, I mostly think of his spirit underneath, the sweet eyes and his heart that wants to help everyone and fix everything. Miracles never cease.
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