Birthday Lights

This is a happy story.

Our autistic eleven-year-old son and I have had a years-long ongoing battle over lights. Not every evening, but often enough, he will go through the house and turn off the lamps so that he can sit in the dark. Meanwhile, the other six people in the house prefer the lights on. Cue the battle and echolalia script to convince him to turn lamps back on—at least a few of them.

As I write this, it’s 6:30 a.m and he has been up for a while. Not long ago, he came into our bedroom with a, “Mom! Mom! Can you get up now?”

“Sure.”

I eased my thirty-eight week, grand multipara geriatric pregnant self from the bed as he rushed me along, and I followed him downstairs. I waddled into the living room to discover that every. single. light. in the house was on, including random ones like the wall sconces.

He waved his hand around the room. “I turned on the lights!”

Immediately I understood why he wanted me to come downstairs. I pulled him into a hug and kissed his cheek. (He always resists physical affection, but I did it anyway.) “Yes, I see. This is very thoughtful of you.”

He said a bit more about the process of turning on the lights, and which lights. Then he said, “Today is April 9th!”

“Yes.”

“And it’s Saturday!”

“Yes.”

“And you know what that means?”

I did, but I went through the Q-and-A anyway. “What does that mean, Ben?”

“It’s your birthday!”

He turned on the lights for my birthday.

Best birthday gift ever.