A Reflection on the Behavior of Creek Water and the Mirror of Myself as the Mother of an Autistic Boy

Haze blurs his profile.
I grip the thin stem of hope.
Current keeps moving.

I came across this photo from a camping/hiking weekend in December 2018 this morning, and it opened something in me… or awakened it.

In the photo, the woods are one giant lens flare: the late-fall sun punches clean holes in the canopy, throws every leaf into over-saturated neon, while the creek becomes a mirror so sharp you feel you could step through it into another forest.

That’s what this last year with my son has been doing to the dial inside me. Faith cranked so high it hums, reality just as loud, and me caught in the bright slash between. I used to soften one side or the other: pray the hard parts dimmer, work until the wonder felt manageable. But the creek refuses to choose between glare and reflection; it holds both, lets them ricochet until you can’t tell which side of the surface is real.

I can see now that I am – or prefer to be – the creek. I practice that same double exposure of my roles, but it has all blurred and blinded me in recent days. In reality, all it adds up to is the fierce mother part of me – scheduling therapies, ordering visual timers, and trying to learn an entirely new language that has no words – and the gentler, whole me. The part of me that still leaves room for hope and comfort in the impossible color of his laugh when a dragonfly lands on his sleeve.

Balance isn’t compromise; it’s letting the light stay blinding and the shadows stay knife-edged, trusting the picture only makes sense when neither is edited out.

Onward.

c.