I stopped making excuses for Jack pretty early on. Sometimes people don’t need to know everything. In fact, contrary to everything you see on social media (and ironically, within the contents of this article), the less strangers know about you, the better. People are allowed to be different. So, I stopped explaining. I stopped apologizing. I stopped caring. If Jack doesn’t care, why the hell should I? And let me tell you something: Jack. Does. Not. Care. 

Jack, now 6, almost 7, does not care what anybody else is doing around him. Sometimes I wonder if he even notices. He has an agenda, and it will be executed regardless of the circumstances, environment, or elements. Jack is a honey badger. If I had to choose one word to describe him, it would be “unbothered.” It’s actually quite admirable. My fiancé quickly learned that being Jack’s mom required a certain level of DGAF, that she had not previously achieved. He helped her learn that. 

Jack helped me learn patience. I have had to afford him way more slack than I ever have his older brother. I had never been a patient person. I was a manager for 20 years, and my expectations of my employees were always crystal clear, and my evaluations were always concise. I wasn’t a hard-ass, but I didn’t like to hear why something wasn’t done. I just wanted to hear what was going to happen to get it done. Don’t tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby. 

Speaking of the baby, Jack was born under somewhat unique circumstances. Our first son (RJ) was meant to be a natural birth, but after 24 hours of fruitless labor, we opted for the cesarian section. By “we” I mean “she,” although she was polite enough to check with me to make sure I was okay with the decision. What was I going to say? “There are no quitters in this delivery room. Don’t tell me about the labor pains…” While I was a manager at work, I was very much an employee at home. 

So, “we” opted for the c-section. Then, when Jack was set to join the game, we opted for a scheduled c-section. This is a fairly standard sequence of events. Once you break the seal, right? While it is absolutely possible to have a natural delivery after having a cesarian delivery, we chose to do it this way. It made the most sense. What we had not considered were the potential concerns of this process. By scheduling the delivery, you are potentially estimating on the wrong side of your 40 weeks, which could impact some late term organ development, i.e., lungs, brain and liver.  

When Jack was delivered and the cord was cut, he was taken to the toaster oven thing where he was brought back up to temperature. The nurses invited me over to inspect, and I was pleased. Side note: Jack was big. I mean, big-big. 10lbs, 12oz. I’m not sure natural birth would have ever been a real option here. As we stood over Jack, the nurses were whispering to each other with varied looks of mild concern on their faces. One nurse flicked his foot surprisingly hard. It felt unnecessary, unprovoked and somewhat personal if I’m being honest. 

“Is everything okay?” I asked. And they reassured me that it was. But their words betrayed their faces. One nurse radioed out some hospital lingo that sounded like she might have been ordering a military strike. Within seconds, an older doctor entered the delivery room, taking my place at the head of the toaster oven. He surveyed the situation quickly. 

“How big?” He asked. Perhaps he was with Guinness Book? 

“10lbs, 12oz.” One nurse replied. He shook his head in a way that felt annoyed. It was at this point that I realized that he was probably not with Guinness Book. He disconnected a few cables from the toaster oven and pushed it out of the room (with Jack still in it) without saying a word. I looked back at Mom to see if her level of concern matched mine, but they were still stuffing her uterus back in, so she was incommunicado. I stood in place while the world whirred around me. We had done this once before, about 18 months prior. This one felt different. 

It turns out, Jack wasn’t breathing particularly well, which means he wasn’t crying, which was why the nurse was putting cigarettes out on his toes. He had excess amniotic fluid in his lungs, and Dr. Guinness was the guy in charge of wringing him out. In natural birth, the pushing forces out a lot of that fluid. In scheduled c-sections, sometimes your baby can be born extra wet (like an over-sauced chicken wing), so Jack spent a few extra days in the NICU, crisping up. 

A year or so later, we started noticing some things about Jack. He wasn’t as chatty as his brother was at this stage. He would say “mama” on Tuesday, but by Wednesday, that word would be gone from his vocabulary. He didn’t so much “play” with his toys as much as he just organized them and lined them up by size and color. He clapped his hands ferociously. He was very temperamental. Mom and I weren’t worried, per se, but definitely alert. When we brought it up with loved ones, they were almost offended that we would even think that way. “No! Jack? Never. He’s a normal boy.” Mom and I were pretty certain something about Jack was amiss, and we were pretty certain what it was, but nobody would even so much as humor the idea. Even our former pediatrician. Former. 

“Well, he doesn’t talk as much as his brother did because his brother probably does a lot of the talking for him. Pretty standard for a second sibling. The toys? He’s just reacting to the shapes and the colors. Nothing to be worried about. The clapping? He likes to make noise. It’s what kids do. The temper? I dunno, maybe you’re getting the terrible twos early.” 

It all made sense, but it was very laissez-faire. I’m sure he dismissed us as helicopter parents and internet doctors, but we knew something was… different. 

As Jack aged, we kept skipping the expected milestones. Comparison might be the thief of joy, but it is also the mother of diagnosis. Where RJ was, Jack simply was not. Not close, honestly. But Mom was vigilant. Where everyone else let us down, she lifted us up. She pushed and prodded and pursued every angle to get to the confirmation that we needed. We saw many specialists. Developmental psychologists, early childhood therapists, special needs diagnostic… people. It felt like we were climbing the Mortal Kombat Arcade ladder. Each fight was more taxing than the last. The process was entirely too complicated.  

In our penultimate battle with Dr. Goro (a four-armed man-beast with a ponytail and loincloth) we uppercutted him through the ceiling of a Shaolin temple, and he diagnosed Jack with Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder. In layman’s terms, Jack does not know what the eff you’re talking about, and he does not care to reply. This was an answer, but it wasn’t the answer. On to Shang Tsung. 

After over a year- please take a moment to re-read that- OVER A YEAR, we arrived at Shang Tsung’s throne. Dr. Tsung was a powerful sorcerer who could steal your soul and take your mortal form. We deposited countless quarters into the machine, replaying this battle ad nauseum until finally, at long last, we vanquished Dr. Tsung with a flying bicycle kick, and released the souls of those who had been previously damned to The Outworld. 

“You guys might want to sit down.” Dr. Tsung warned, with surprisingly warm bedside manner for an evil tyrant who served under the ruthless Shao Kahn. “After all of the diagnostics, and tests, we can say with a good deal of certainty that Jack is autistic.” 

“Oh, thank God.” Relief. We felt a great relief. We weren’t crazy. We had an answer. We had a starting point. We had a new purpose: to learn everything that there is to know about autism and become the greatest special needs parents that the earth-realm has ever seen. Dr. Tsung was stymied by our collective cool. 

“Oh. That’s… not the response we normally get.” 

Well. I guess we’re just different.