Regarding Our Michael

April is the month that everyone everywhere decides to turn their eyes on autism.

The Autism Society began a nationwide awareness campaign that led to April being named Autism Awareness Month starting in 1984 (it is also Alcohol, Child Abuse, Facial Protection, Donate Life, IBS, OT, Sarcoidosis, STI, and Eye Safety month. There aren't enough months for everybody to have one, so we share.)

The goal is to layer this awareness and acceptance into our consciousness so that all year long we are more informed and compassionate toward those affected by the condition. As someone that works and lives ASD through my son, April becomes a month long tribute to one of the hardest aspects of our lives. And honestly? Sometimes I get dang sick of talking about it.

When I sit down to write these posts, thinking about I will pratter on about today, I get annoyed and frustrated because it feels like I have exactly two things to talk about: autism and diabetes. Which sucks because while they don't define our lives, the threads of them are so woven into the every day fabric of our existence that I can't talk about any one thing without one of the Big Two creeping their way in.

I feel even worse when  I don't have all that much to say about my darling and wonderful baby Benjamin. It feels like he is getting the least amount of air time, as he has reached an age of less dynamic change and there is not anything actively amiss with him. Outside of anecdotal cutesy things he says, and tales of toddler horror (like when I had to drag him out of church for calling me a "bad mommy"), I feel like I don't have a ton to update about him. He is ridiculously cute with his big head and his long hair, but there is only so long I can rhapsodize about that.

So much of our lives are dominating by these two realities though that sometimes it feels like we as individuals get washed away. No one so much though as my dear, sweet husband Michael.

Michael is the calming, bolstering support that enables our family functioning. He turned 31 this month, quietly and with little ceremony. That's how he does most things--he isn't one to draw attention to himself.

Today, I wanted to tell you about my Michael.

He is probably tired of this story, our story. But I am not sure I have recounted it here yet, and it is one of the most important for me to remember.

We met in October 2005. I had just started going to Lubbock Christian University that August, and had found a niche of friends within the social group, LOA. I was finally on the path that I had been preparing for as long as I could remember: learning about the great love of my life, Medicine. And I was not going to let anything distract me.

There was a small coffee shop not far from campus called Koffee Kup where we liked to study. I had gone a few times with my new friends, and Beth invited me to go. I had my Biology midterm coming up that I needed to read up for.

Back then, my clothing style could be summed up by "massive hoodie"--I was 110 lbs worth of girl in an an extra large sweatshirt that hung down halfway down my thighs. My hair, never worth the effort to fix, was wadded up in a rapidly collapsing half bun. What little makeup I owned was saved for church and special occasions, as I had never purchased so much as a lip gloss and was completely reliant on gifts and rejected items from my sister's collection.

For all the world, I looked like a smallish boy walking to Beth's car with my giant textbooks, aided in fact by my boyish moniker, "Andy".

Michael was already with the girls in the car; I was the last to come. He had been harboring a crush on one of them and did not like the idea of another guy encroaching. How perfectly male and territorial he was, irked by this misunderstood concept of me.

Of course, I was not a boy. That became, I hope, rather apparent when I got into the car. I couldn't claim to be an attractive thing, with my braces and unpolished look, but at least not a threat.

I remember he was wearing this black button-up shirt with red detail on the arms. With his dark hair and dark goatee, he was so attractive, in that early-2000's look that is endearingly dorky now. He still has that shirt, though he no longer wears it; I just haven't the heart to give it away. He caught my attention, though I still retained the last lingering threads of my high school relationship.

He had brought his laptop, and showed me this ridiculous Poke the Bunny game, which sent me into peals of delighted laughter. He said he fell for me in that moment, wanted to make me laugh for the rest of his life.

Of course, I don't believe that.

Every Tuesday, he and his roommate AJ would invite us girls over to the Living Center parlor to watch "House, MD". Michael would carry down this purple blanket for me and Sarah B. to cover up with; I was always cold, and it always smelled like laundry soap and sunshine. During visiting hours, we would go up to their dorm and watch them play video games on the original Xbox.

I had broken up with my high school boyfriend and was sort of seeing this guy. A passionate letter writer, I had active intrascholar correspondence with all of my friends (the most pretentious way to say note passing). It kept my hands busy during lectures, and it is so much fun to get a handwritten letter. While cleaning out my closet recently, I found my box of all those letters that had been sent to me during that time.

Michael's letters came in two varieties: flourished calligraphy on thick parchment paper, or illegibile chicken scratch on scraps of torn notebook paper; there was no in between. We played the Question Game, where we would write three questions to the other person, then answer the questions they had sent to us. Random trivia stuff like favorite color, the story behind the coolest scar you have, do you play any instruments, mixed in with deeper, more personal queries: what relative you are closest to, what was the saddest moment in your life, what is your biggest fear.

The guy I had been sort of seeing and I parted ways. A couple of days later, I got a letter from Michael: he asked if it made him a bad person that he was kind of glad that I was no longer dating that guy, and if he could ask me for a walk around campus.

That first "date", I came down the stairs of the dorm to see the most....hideous beach shirt I have ever seen. Electric blue with orange buggies around the edging, and it was on the guy I had agreed to go walking with. He had looked into his closet full of clothes (which was almost exclusively plain black t-shirts) and thought, "Yup. This is the one. This'll win her."

I admit, I considered for half a moment sneaking back upstairs.

Two years later, tripping over the hem of my too-long dress, I married that goofy man.

We have been married for eight and a half years now. He still makes me laugh, every day; still looks at me as if I am the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He's the guy that has kept up a correspondence as the Tooth Fairy with Emerald since she has started losing teeth and plays video games with her every morning. Watches "Star Wars" for the third time in a row with Benjamin and answers every question, never losing patience. Stays up all night with Gabriel when he can't sleep and rocks him when he cries.

With the Big Two dominating so much of our lives, he is the one that makes sure that I am always taken care of. People hear my story and ask in wonder, "How do you do it all and stay so calm?"

That's easy:

Because of Michael.


--Andie