OUT OF DARKNESS

I have a picture on the wall above my desk, a picture of a small boy, in a white short-sleeved shirt, on a brown horse, wearing a black riding helmet. It’s not easy to make out his face, but it’s obvious he is focused on where he is and what he is doing. He is looking toward his right, downward, toward three young adult women standing off to that side. One of them, a teenager really, loosely holds a lead rope attached to the horse’s bridle. The horse’s body is facing the camera, but its head is turned to the boy’s left, in the opposite direction that the boy is looking, and the horse appears to be nuzzling a fourth woman who stands close by, her hands on her hips, looking at the boy and horse, a white ring through her black hair shining like a halo.
I shot the photo inside a dim riding barn, but, because sunlight streams in through an open doorway, the boy, the horse, and the women are highlighted against a black background. The horse nearly shines, his bridle sparkles silver, sunlight glints off the boy’s helmet and the brown hair of two women, while the face and one arm of a third woman, facing the boy, taller than the others, her hair tucked beneath a red kerchief, is bathed in bright sunlight that comes over the boy’s shoulder, one hand slightly raised, one finger pointing.
The horse’s name is Snuffy. Three of the women are volunteers at an equestrian therapy center, the other is one of the owners and teachers. The boy is my son, Daniel. He comes to this place once every week, where he spends a little less than an hour on horseback, developing his coordination, muscle tone, and confidence.
I like the aesthetics of the picture: the colors and the light, the accidentally black background, the sense of frozen action contrasted with the gentle passivity of the horse, the clustered poses of the people. One friend has described it as "nearly Rockwellian." I also like it for the story behind it.
My son's face is not clearly visible in the picture, but if you could see it, you would notice, want to or not, that it’s not quite right. The eyes are a little off, the mouth and nose too small. He’s been that way since he was born seven years ago. Actually, he is better now. His skull fused while still in the womb, so that instead of having a soft spot, his growing brain pushed against the bone, trying desperately to find room, turning solid bone into nothing more than papery thin Swiss cheese. He was born with bulging eyes and a "conehead," requiring major operations at three months, six months, and 18 months, surgery to open up, reconstruct, and brace the skull and pull the forehead forward. Three different times that we were led into pediatric ICU area, where we saw our little guy, ensnared in tubes and wires, a pale yellow cap, like a puffy shower cap, on top of his head, his eyes swollen shut, immobilized by drugs and swaddling, his soft breathing accented by the quiet beep and whir of machinery.
He has recovered from that surgery now and, as I said, he looks better. He will have at least one more surgery, in two or three years, after the face bones have set, to expand his nose, pull his mid face forward and make him even closer to "normal," whatever that may mean. Bu that will be primarily cosmetic surgery, for his benefit and ours, mostly ours, in case he should begin to feel self-conscious about his appearance, an appearance we never notice until someone, usually a kid on a playground or at a mall, points it out to him – or us.
Ironically, I would be thrilled if he did feel self-conscious, even as I tried to reassure him. Because his damaged skull is not our little guy’s only birthright. Something else happened to him when he was in the womb. If you were in the photo with him, and you looked him fully in the face, he probably would not look back at you. He doesn’t make eye contact, at least not for more than a second or two. Nor does he usually talk in full sentences. He seldom plays with children, other than his "typical" twin sister.
My son, you see, is also autistic. Technically, somewhere "within the autistic syndrome." That means, essentially, that he’s not a textbook autistic child, not fully locked away from us, not wandering alone in his own world. He is with us, in his own way, on his own terms. On a few levels he is like any other seven-year-old, busy with school, swimming and playing. He loves to read and has a great appreciation of slapstick humor. He’s quite bright, numbers and calculations get his immediate attention. Still, he is different in so many ways. He is not yet potty-trained and has absolutely no interest in the idea. He seems impervious to what other kids think of him, on that and so many other issues. But he is not without his own fears, wants and needs. He simply doesn’t express them well or often; his laugh is infectious, but his tears, rare as they are, will tear your heart out because they are so honest. One thing I know about our little guy, he has never lied to me, not because he is a saint, but because he is incapable of grasping the concept of picturing the world as other than it is. He is without guile or guilt, contentedly what he is because he can conceive of nothing else.
Back to the photo. These four people, like so many others, therapists, teachers, doctors, relatives, babysitters, parents, and us, have come together, been brought together, in efforts to reach this guy, to draw him out of his world and into theirs, to give of themselves to give him, this sweet little boy, who, in his innocent way, is as naively accepting of all efforts as is the horse in the picture, taking what is offered, absorbing those efforts into his own world, and, rarely but sometimes (more and more lately) beginning to reach back out and invite others in.
When that happens I know for certain that good can arise from unwarranted and incomprehensible injustice, that we can, when the need and the opportunity arise, give freely of ourselves to try and make it better, and in so doing, find beauty within ourselves. The picture reminds me that sometimes, seemingly quite by accident, in an apparently random configuration of otherwise unrelated people and events, we can make a beautiful picture against an unknown and uncaring blackness.