my own little Rain Man.

i watched Rain Man a couple of days back.... and in the middle of the movie, i felt the familiar tears streaming down my cheeks.

the movie brought back my worries.... my doubts... my confusion... my fear of the future for my son, Dale.

On the 20th, he will be assessed again by a Developmental Pediatrician... and i'm currently feeling like he was gonna take the board exams... what if he 'fails'? what if the doctor says that he still cannot be transferred to a regular school? what if she says he cannot live a normal life?

But just like what my cousin told me... just like the board exams, you get to have another try.... if not next year, then we still have the next.

there's not a day that i do not think of Dale's future... will he be able to finish school? will he be able to get a job? will he be able to get over his fear of rain? marry and have kids?

don't get me wrong.... Dale is not like the children with autism you see on tv... he does not have too many peculiar traits... he does not rock back and forth... he does not look like one at all...

but he does get scared when it rains... even when it isn't raining yet... he slams the door shut, closes the windows, and draws the blinds down when he sees the sky turning gray...

he says it's gonna rain... like a weather man.

and it always does.

and he cowardly lies down the sofa and covers his ears with a pillow, or with his fingers... and just lie there for hours on end.

and when i remove his fingers he will start screaming at me.

i asked him once why he's scared of rain... he says because it brings thunder... and he's scared of thunder... that it hurts his ears...

and the thought of how much it hurts him hurts me, too.

How long will this go on? How much more pain will my son endure? Why him? Why this?

But everyday, I still thank God for his successes and failures...
days when he reasons out...
days when he talks to me on the phone...
days when he looks at me when he talks...
days when he does not get sick...
days when i wake up in the middle of the night and i see him breathing...
days when he says something funny, and knowing that it was...
days when he tells me what date it was yesterday, today, and the next day...
days when he remembers how many of his classmates were absent the day before...
days when i ask him something about the peculiar things he does, and he reasons out, and then i, feeling like a fool and ashamed of myself, finally understands why he does them, because it wasn't really peculiar to him at all...
days that go by that he does not have a seizure...

Even with all the bad things that happened to me and my family... I still am grateful.

...everyday I thank God for my own little Rain Man.