We have a moment with Alex one evening after bath time. (He'll be 14 in June and still has a "bath time"!) The witching hour of bed time (he still has a bed time!) and Alex won't go to bed.
"Alex, bed!"
"Two!" he says. "Two, two. Red two!"
By the dining room table sits a box of Legos that Ned left there. Alex charges toward it, but it's time for bed and there's no time for Legos. "Alex, bed!"
Alex does this thing when he's pissed: He lunges with his forearm in his mouth. He bites and -- this is incredible to believe considering his weight of about four sticks of butter when he was born -- he slams into me and sends me back a step. I push back harder than he expects I will, I think, and his foot catches on the chair nearby and he wobbles.
"Alex, go to bed!"
You can't say he started it, not really, Jill will later claim. No, but I don't like getting shoved and a lot of other people don't, either, and Alex needs to learn that even if he is pissed and biting his forearm.
"Red two!"
I have no clue what this means as he begins raking through the plastic Container Store bin of Legos. His hands rasp and rasp through the Legos until the sound drives me ask what I find myself asking all the time, if seems: "Alex -- what??"
"Red two, red two!"
Up comes Ned. I turn to him like Kirk turns to Scotty when stuff begins to happen to the Enterprise. "Ned, see if you can find out what he wants, please?"
Ned bends down. The brothers paw through the Legos while I hold the flashlight and we all want to go to bed except Alex. It begins to feel like a moment when it's hard to believe this time won't mean a thing someday.
"What'cha buildin', buddy?" Ned says to Alex, plowing right in and raking and raking with his older brother. Alex comes up with a few red ones. Ned looks at him. "Two," Alex says. "Two."
"He's building a two!" Ned cries.
Yes he is. A couple across and a couple more diagonally and a couple more across and there's a two. It does look more like a Z, but I've learned you take what Alex can give you when it comes to autism. He then makes a one that looks a lot like a seven, but I say nothing.
"Cool, Alex!"
Alex takes the new Lego letter and number to bed -- he won't, in fact, go to bed without them -- and he wriggles down under the blankets and goes to merciful sleep only when the Lego things are beside him.
Posted by Jeff Stimpson
at 4:07 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 20 April 2012 4:10 PM EDT
