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I love being a parent.

That statement isn’t shocking. I had a feeling I would love being a parent even before I was one.

What some may find shocking is that I love being a parent to my nonverbal son. Even though he has “severe autism,” Lucas is one of my two favorite people in the world. I don’t know who I would be without him.

Misery loves company. When people hear that I, with a ready-made reason to be miserable, am happy, they start to bring up things they think might sway my positive outlook.

Aren’t you worried about his future?

Sure. I’m worried about what Lucas will do when I’m no longer here. That’s not just a possibility, but a hopeful probability. I want my son to outlive me by many years. The thought of it can whip my head in both directions.

For starters, my heart breaks for him. I don’t know how he would experience grief. And, to be completely frank, it rips me apart to think he might just feel like I stopped showing up one day. Even now, typing it out, I shudder at the thought. How can I explain something as deep as life or death to a boy who still struggles to get his socks on correctly?

I have no idea. It kills me.

Of course, the worries don’t end with “life after Dad.” Lucas’s future is up in the air across the board. His adult life is just as hazy to me now as his teenage life was when he was a toddler. The hardest part of special needs parenting is the unknown. And there’s a lot of unknown.

I’m also concerned about his short-term future. The older he gets, the more I think about what’s appropriate and what’s not. Missed milestones that still felt within reach years earlier now feel like they’ve slipped through our fingers. We’ve passed the point where it’s expected he’ll reach them and moved into the space where I’ve accepted that he might not.

Make no mistake. I smile and laugh and tell you about the beauty of raising my son. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried. It doesn’t mean I have no concerns about who he’ll be tomorrow.

My smiles, though, aren’t fake. They are a statement about our present, not his future. They are a reflection of what I’ve learned so far, and how that knowledge eases the darkest visions of what’s to come.

When I say I appreciate my son’s autism, I mean it in the present tense. Lucas is the sweetest and most loving person I’ve ever known. My days are filled with random hugs, kisses, and laughter from him. It’s impossible to get through a day without Lucas making you feel better.

Does that mean things aren’t difficult? No. That’s silly. In fact, that’s a big part of why I appreciate him so much.

If Lucas required no special care and made me smile, it would be great. I could say, “He’s a good guy. Of course he’s great.”

But my point is that raising Lucas can get rough. Between future worries and present responsibilities, there are many aspects of our life that another person might use to justify their own misery.

The fact that it’s all true, and I still run to him when I need to smile and be lifted up, speaks volumes. The good parts of having him in my life far exceed the negatives.

Still, I’ll get those people trying to pull me back into their version of reality. Questions about long-term care and a life without me are brought up to make me confront something I’m already confronting all the time.

Maybe I don’t complain about it as much. That’s because I don’t think about it as much. I learned when he was little that the future will always arrive. When it does, it becomes the present, and you deal with it.

To make my son’s eventual life a current obsession would be a mistake on so many levels. I know this because I already went through it.

If you had asked me in 2013 about Lucas as a teenager, I would have thrown up. Even the thought of future events was fraught with images of a boy struggling. I envisioned a worst-case scenario with a young adult I didn’t even know yet. So my mind filled in the blanks.

The person I pictured is not the one here today. Keep in mind, I’m not even talking about achievements. Many of the things I told myself he needed to do by this age, he hasn’t. Still, he’s perfect. I know that now because I know him now.

But I didn’t know then. I just guessed at who he would be.

It would be the same thing now to obsess about our life in ten or twenty years. I don’t know that guy yet. The scenarios I’m crafting are based on guesswork. And they’re far worse than what reality will show. I know this because, as I said, I’ve already lived this once.

Whether we’re talking about special needs parenting or anything else, the only thing we truly have is right now. And one thing has always remained true for our family:

The future has always been terrifying. The present has always been perfect.

By the time we reach the next point I’m afraid of, it will be perfect then too.

So ask me questions. Try to make me confront whatever it is you think I’m avoiding. Then sit back and read some of these posts. Autism Appreciation is real. I’m proud of the world we built together, and I’m confident that tomorrow will be just as perfect.

How My Child With Autism Stopped Hating Haircuts

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