Hearing in Color

What my son taught me through rainbows, the playground, and loving every part of a butterfly house except the butterflies | No. 002

Rainbow on Hazel St., Missoula, MT (a photo I snapped in 2015 on a phone that was basically a potato, but for some reason the picture turned out pretty anyway and I’ve always loved it.)

*This post is an expanded and adapted version of an earlier April 2024 post from my personal social media account.*

“This music fills my head with colors.”

My 8-year-old recently said this while listening to one of his favorite movie soundtracks. He often likes soundtracks more than the movies they go with and listens to them for hours on repeat while in the bath or playing with toys or bear-crawling around the living room.

He creates collections and categories of his favorite toys and has tubs of tiny plastic sea and land creatures. When he loves something, he loves it with his whole being, to the point of total obsession. His current fixation with the creatures happens on Saturdays and Sundays before anyone else in the house is awake. He fills up clear Tupperware containers with water and puts a drop or two of food coloring in each container, one tub for each color of the rainbow, minus indigo. He lines up the tubs on the kitchen counter and then puts in a categorized collection of animal creatures into each of his “exhibits” and admires and takes care of them all day.

He knows how to pursue his passions with wild abandon.

Photo by Jordan McDonald on Unsplash

He loves insects and all creepy crawly critters. He doesn’t read at the same level as his peers, but he’s recognized printed words like “chrysalis,” “pupa,” “katydid,” and “larva” for years. When a local tropical butterfly house and insectarium exhibit opened this year, we were so excited to take him.

He was enthralled by the interactive video showing various insects molting. He curiously peered into the cockroaches’ and crustaceans’ habitats and looked under the microscopes at the slides showing close-up wings, antennae, and shells. There were stuffed insect toys and dress-up costume wings. He loved it as much as we thought he would - until it was time to go into the tropical butterfly house section. Double glass doors separate the tropical and temperature-controlled sunny room where dozens of butterflies fly freely among the shrubs and plants. You enter into the large room, walk along the room’s path, and observe the butterflies. One might even land on your shoulder or settle on the back of your shirt. They are both large and small, brightly colored and camouflaged, still and active.

Our boy took one step in behind us, and then he immediately scrambled and pushed past the crowd behind us to get out. I caught him by the arm before he made it back out the double doors and tried to pick him up and explain that it was all safe and okay. The lovely elderly volunteer next to the door said he could sit with her and look at a handout with pictures of all the butterflies in the exhibit before getting closer to them. He pushed against me, wiggling and protesting to get down and far away, wanting nothing to do with this fascinating room of butterflies.

Since that first trip, we have visited the facility a dozen more times. He loves the insectarium section, but he still has not entered the butterfly room since that first day. Every time I ask him if he wants to see the butterflies, he says, “maybe next time.” Perhaps it’s because when you enter the butterfly room, the temperature is immediately warmer and more humid, it’s sunnier and brighter, there are new sounds, the butterflies create unpredictable flying patterns that zig zag and dart every which way, and everyone is standing and walking a little closer together. It’s a jarring and quick change for the senses.

But maybe that’s not why he dislikes it in there; perhaps it’s some other reason entirely that he can’t articulate. Initially, I was annoyed we were at a butterfly house (and had purchased an annual membership because we were so certain he would love it) and then he wouldn’t go near the butterflies. But then I really watched him. He was enjoying the facility, in his own way, at his own pace. Wasn’t that the actual point? Someday maybe he will see the butterflies again, but it will be on his own time. He won’t see them because he reaches a certain age or someone else convinces him it’s not so scary. He will do it because it’s the time he’s ready to do it, no sooner and no later.

He knows how to go at his own pace in life and follow his own intuition.

Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash

Every word he hears and says is literal and any stranger, yes any stranger at all, is just an opportunity for a new friend. This can be scary at times, like when a boy who doesn’t know that bad intentions exist in this world walks up to a stranger and nearly sits on their lap. I wish he could stay small and young forever so that when he approaches any child at the playground and asks them to play, he is called sweet (and not creepy or scary) by their observing parent. Sometimes my brain will anxiously spiral to the future when he is 17, 18, 19 years old and he likely will still be asking toddlers on the playground to play, and then I wish with all my being that I had a magic potion that could stop him from growing and aging. I look at him, the boy who will likely physically outgrow my husband one day not too far away, and fruitlessly hope that maybe he will always be 4’2”, teeth missing, offering his snacks and a grubby hand to every child he meets.

He knows how to sincerely include other humans, with absolutely no bias or discrimination.

He recently has become a big fan of singing, and belts out “Peace Like A River” and many other songs his fabulous music teacher teaches him at school. He actually doesn’t mind most loud noises, except he’s not a fan of barnyard animal sounds, babies crying, and the vacuum. We can usually avoid barnyard animals and we can vacuum when he’s not around or he can wear noise-muffling headphones. Sometimes though, we can’t avoid a crying baby.

If we’re in public and he hears a baby crying, he can’t move on until he knows the baby is okay. We’ve had to practice again and again and again knowing that babies cry for all kinds of reasons, not just because they are hurt.

The first time I saw him cry was when we had been his foster parents for only a couple of weeks and he was about 6 1/2 years old. We went to a restaurant with a kids’ play area, and a baby was playing directly behind him. The baby was in the new phases of just learning to walk and toddled unsteadily, chunky legs wiggling like jelly. Plop. The baby’s diapered behind plunked down on the ground, the result of a momentary loss of balance that happens to all humans new to walking a thousand times per day.

The baby began to cry, and my son’s face crumpled like a devastated cartoon character. He was watching the baby cry and he started to cry too, saying “sorry, baby” and he couldn’t stop himself. I picked him up and assured him the baby was fine, but he was so distraught that even the baby’s parents came over to gently reassure him it wasn’t his fault and their baby was okay. He didn’t believe any of us, and he cried well after the baby had stopped. He’s now a little more able to tolerate a baby crying, but even two years later, when he is sad, his whole face melts, the frown bending down into a perfect arch to his jaw line, eyes turning huge, and fat tears rolling down his cheeks. It’s the saddest sad face I’ve ever seen.

He knows how to give open and free empathy and compassion.

But his happy face is the happiest face I have ever seen. He has a Three Stooges sense of humor every hour he is awake, and making him laugh is the world’s easiest task if you can make any silly face, goofy sound, or even a slight verbal suggestion that you might tickle him. He has never met a person he won’t give a chance and lives in laughter and silliness and the present. It’s impossible to ask him to do anything even mildly fun and hear “no” for an answer.

He knows how to joyfully live in the only moments we are guaranteed, the here and now.

He is autistic, and I can’t imagine loving him any more than I do.

April is World Autism Awareness Month.

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash