Won’t He Do It…Definolutely!
Growing up my sister and I had our own language that nobody else understood. We would make up words and then spend hours laughing at ourselves. The kind of laughing that made our sides hurt. It was a thing that we would always have, just for us, and to this day we still laugh at it.
When both girls were diagnosed with autism, in some way, I took comfort in the fact that they would always have each other. That even if nobody else understood them, they would always understand each other. Then when Ellie started to speak and Nia wasn’t showing any signs of being verbal, I wondered how this would impact their relationship. But it never did.
There were times when Ellie would say “I love you” to Nia and she wouldn’t respond the way we wanted but Ellie would say “it’s okay Mom, we have our own language and it doesn’t always have words.” In fact, to the rest of the world Ellie was Nia’s voice until she found her words, and even started making up her own!
This weekend I heard Ellie said “I love you Nia, do you love me?” and she responded “DEFINOLUTELY!” Then they both laughed. When I asked her where she got that word from she said, “I made it up of course.” Then they laughed again. They had the kind of laugh that lingers, the one that makes their sides hurt. And as they laughed my eyes filled with tears.
My eyes have been filled with many tears over the last few years. But more recently, the meaning of the tears have changed from lament to laughter and from despair to hope.
I want to answer the questions that the younger version of me would ask night after night with tears in my eyes as their screams pierced my heart.
Will it be hard? Yes!
Are there times you’ll want to give up? Absolutely!
Will you have a roller coaster ride with glimpses of good days and then a string of bad days? Most definitely! We still do.
Will they laugh? Like really really laugh? DEFINOLUTELY!
For this I prayed ❤️