And God Bless The Muffin Man, too.

Do you know the Muffin Man?

My son David does. He and the little pastry monster have been quite inseperable of late. Today is no different. My not-so-little darling has been belting out The Muffin Man's praises nonstop and with eardrum shattering gusto since four-thirty this morning.

That's eight hours. And by golly, by the time I get to the bottom of this page, I'm not only going to be ok with that fact--I'm going to thank God for it.

Given a typical life peppered by typically developing children, I'd probably have taken out the Muffin Man out with a meat cleaver by dawn. But raising David has been an adventure defined as anything but typical.

My son has autism. He's also thirteen years old. By most people's judgement, he is far beyond his nursery rhyme years. But when I say that David has grown up with autism, I'm not talking about the sometimes endearing set of quirks and oddities that define higher functioning persons who wear the same neurological label.

David has AUTISM.

Most days, no matter how I gild the seriousness of his condition with pretty words, there's nothing sweet or precocious about the neurological miseries he has endured. Much of his life has been a marathon of head banging, thrashing, screaming agony, the specifics of which he has been mostly unable to communicate.

But then, behavior is communication. Any tantrumming two year old can tell you that. And whatever it is my son feels during his self-directed rages, it has little to do with finding his happy place.

But children grow up, and as they do, their world views invariably change and broaden. Why would I think my son any different simply because he has autism? Why would I even consider limiting my hopes for his development in that way simply because he's wired differently?

Lately, something within him has shifted. We're seeing a softer, more approachable side of David. And in the absence of fluency with spoken words, he has developed a subtle language of his own. Most often his communications involve repeating familiar music such as nursery rhymes and commercial jingles in order to paint us a picture of what's happening with his internal landscape.

And even as I wrote the paragraph above, I wonder if I have lied. Was it really my son who changed, or was it me?

Perhaps I've simply learned how to hear him. In recent years, I have relaxed my insistence that he communicate in spoken words. Is it possible that in recognizing David's built in limitations, I became more willing to tune in to his more abstract attempts at connecting to others?

Today, my son has told me he is happy. I can hear the evidence of it in the score he has chosen to orchestrate his day. As long as he is singing this particular song, I know I am free to kiss, hug, and tickle him to my heart's content.

And if I close my eyes and listen hard, I can almost make out the individual words my son is singing.

Do you know the Muffin Man?

Do you know me, Mother? Can you hear by my song that for today, my world is comfortable enough for me to let you inside?

Yes, my darling, I know the Muffin Man....or at least, I long to know him.

But if I am to tell the whole truth, then I'm not sure that I do know David as well as my heart yearns to. At least not in the conventional kinds of ways any other mother might boast of knowing her son.

I can't say with any real certainty what David's favorite color is. I don't know what he wants to be when he grows up. He tried to tell me once. He said he wanted to be a toaster.

The words that I have so loved all my life have failed my child. But in accepting that shortcoming, I have also accepted that my child is so much more than a self indulgent reflection of myself.

He is my teacher.

David has taught me to hear beyond words. My son and the mountain of struggles he climbs each and every day in order to make himself known to us is also teaching me how to count the blessings I couldn't see before.

Dear Lord, Thank you for my beautiful son who is perfect just as you have made him. Teach me how listen better as he strives to achieve his unique purpose in Your Divine Plan. Help me learn the parenting skills I need to make him successful in his journey through this difficult life.

Amen.