A Boy and His Dad

Jake is missing his daddy. As he told me today, "Daddy is my best friend. Daddy needs to come out of the phone now. Come home to Jake's house Daddy! And big music show!"

Daddy has been deployed since June, and if you think it's tough for mainstream kids to get through a deployment, you have no idea how hard it is when your child is Autistic. Many people with Autism have a very limited - if any - concept of time. Hours, minutes, days, weeks, months... all are meaningless to Jake. About this time last year we figured out that a "day" had to be related in the time between the sun rises and sets. I don't say to Jake "you have school tomorrow" I say "When the sun comes up again, you have school!" When Randy left for his deployment, I made calendar pages for June, July, August, September and October. I put little school buses on all the days Jake has school, and little birthday cakes and balloons on relatives birthdays, and the holidays each have their own symbol. Each night we mark off the current day, and we look at the calendar to see what awaits us tomorrow.

Jake seemed to be doing pretty good right up until September. See, Halloween is his favorite "Daddy" holiday. Randy carves elaborate pumpkins for Jake and we decorate the house and we bake cookies and cupcakes, and then we get him in his costume and Daddy takes him all over the neighborhood, which is teaming with kids. Jake loves to ring doorbells and always tries to walk right into people's homes - he wants to check out there stuff! So by mid September, he was getting angry whenever we did the calendar. He stopped speaking to daddy when he called on the phone, and he stopped wanting to cross days off.

Randy knew right away that Jake was mad at him, and it was getting tough for him as well. He is the best daddy I know, and adores his little boy. So one night I had a talk with Jake, and finally he blurted out what was wrong - Daddy home for Halloween? Oh. So THAT was the problem. Randy is scheduled to return home in September of '08, and due to manning levels it did not look like he would be able to get home for a visit at all. It was with a heavy heart that I had to tell him that I finally figured out what was wrong - Jake wanted his daddy HOME for their holiday.

It as a surprise for all of us when a few weeks ago Randy put in for leave and got it - just a few days - spread right across the Halloween weekend. I was anxious to tell Jake that daddy would be home for him after all, and I promptly went and put daddy on the calendar for the day he would be home.

Yesterday Jake took me to the calendar and pointed at it and said "Make x's for daddy!" He thought if we x'd off all the days between yesterday and the day daddy is scheduled to come home, it would mean daddy could come home now. I haven't quite figured out how to explain to him that I haven't mastered time travel yet, but we can only accomplish so much in each 24 hour period!

Jake has been talking to Randy again every day. He wants to make sure that he's still coming home and that they will do Jake's other favorite thing, go to "the big music show." The big music show is the movie theatre, where they watch movies together and eat popcorn and sip on diet coke. Tonight he came up to me and took my hand and said, "Daddy helping people?" "Yes," I said, "Daddy is far away helping people." "Jake want daddy home now. Daddy is Jake's best friend," he replied. Yes Jake, your daddy is your best friend - and your biggest fan.