"C" is for Calvin, that's good enough for me!!!

Today is the first day of Advent 2010, and Calvin decided to mark the beginning of the season by giving me an early Christmas gift. I don't know how to present this to make it have the magical effect I want it to have, so I'll just go ahead and say it.

I found out today that my son knows how to spell his name.

My 4-year-old, who has autism and therefore doesn't have the easiest time getting out all that he knows and feels on the inside, has shown me, clear as day, that he can spell his God blessed name.

I'm still in wonderment, still processing this, but come along with me and I'll tell you how it went this morning.

At the end of his first 2-hour therapy session of the day, his teacher and I were debriefing as usual. But then she got kind of a "special" look in her eye, and it was like she was trying to find a way to tell me something, something really good, and wasn't sure how to put it out there. What she finally said was something like, "Has anybody pointed out that...I mean, it's really awesome...well, did you know Cal can spell his name?"

I kind of blinked at her like she'd asked me if I knew that Cal had learned how to split the atom.

She wondered aloud if he'd do it again. So I told her that while I totally take her word for it, I'd love to see it live and in person. I grabbed a pad and pen.

We sat down next to him on the couch where he'd retired with his trusty sippie cup. She started him off with the first letter, wrote it down, and said something like "Ok, Calvin, let's spell your name!"

"C!" he began, cheerfully.

Then, after a pause but unprompted, and with nothing but the first letter, "C," written down on the paper in front of him, he said...wait for it...

"A."

I started getting a little dizzy.

She wrote down the "A," then he said to us, all smiles, "L."

She wrote down the "L," and then he said, through a sip of juice and melt-your-heart grin, "V."

You see where this is going. And so on, with "I," and finally, "N."

I might add that he twinkled as he spelled his name. Because he did.

So...as his big sister, my big girl Grace, has become fond of saying, "What the...?"

Sure, I know the members of his wonder-team have all been working on the letters of his name. I know that we have some of those handy flashcards in his at-home classroom and on our bulletin board with his name printed on them. I know that we help him collect his other little cardboard thingee with his name on it when he gets to preschool. I know all this.

But holy shit, Calvin spelled his name!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Was I crying, you ask? I was too stunned, almost disoriented. His teacher left and I walked around in a literal daze for a while. Then I noticed my boy standing in front of the open refrigerator and trying to chew through the plastic wrapper on a piece of American cheese. Such a trooper. That snapped me out of it. I said to him, all apologetic, "So sorry baby, you really want that cheese, let me help you with that."

He giggled up at me and said through the giggle, "Yeah." A chortly little "Yeah," with undertones of "You silly Mommy, I love you so" written all over it, and then I was undone. Blubbering mess. And incidentally, I'm very lucky he didn't pick that moment to tell me that he would like a fully-loaded replica of Lightning McQueen for Christmas, because I would have sold all my superfluous organs on the spot, cleared out the garage, and put in a special order. Done deal.

When I'd pulled myself together and mopped myself up off the floor, I got to thinking those thoughts again--those thoughts that all of us who've gotten to know autism so intimately think day in and day out. Thoughts that go, "What else does he know...what else is locked up in there...what else...what else...what????

I mean, listen, I look into this beautiful boy's eyes every day, and every day I see brilliance shining back out at me. But it's not the kind of brilliance that can be marked on a score card or measured by a testing instrument or tabulated on a grid. It's a quality that has nothing to do with quantity. It's a language that sometimes sounds like unvisible pianos and violins...and tastes like your first M&Ms...and can smell like that time last summer I got caught in an out-of-the-blue rainstorm during a powerwalk. It takes on shapes like the snowflakes that were landing on my black coat one crystally morning over a decade ago when I was waiting for a train and was startled to see that they were shaped like...well, like snowflakes.

Know what I mean? I feel like you do.

And then, in the midst of all this mystery (which I pretend to be getting used to but you never do), he goes and does something like spell his name. With giggly glee, just like any time he finds a treasure like a hidden stash of toothbrushes to play with...or a fleshy belly to bury his face in...or someone who's willing to pick up his 50-plus pounds of everlovingness and spin him around like a planet.

I'm so bewildered.

But it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.