I’m Going to Teach You to Dance

Dearest Christopher,

Today, as we sit underneath the shade of a willow tree writing in our backyard, I’m remembering.

Actually, so many memories are tucked away in the shadows of my brain that it’s sometimes hard to choose which one to tell you about. But I think I’ll choose the one where I first saw you concerned for someone like yourself.

It started when you’d begun to have some breakthroughs, fewer meltdowns, some stilted conversations, and a love for family music.

Paula, a friend of ours, invited us to her little yellow house for dinner.

“I’m hoping you can come,” she told me, “because I’ve also invited a family with an autistic sixteen-year-old boy. He still isn’t talking, and his parents are getting desperate with his behavior and meltdowns.”

It was an interesting dinner.

We gathered around the overcrowded table, and their son, whom I’ll call Robby, began to bounce in his seat and wave his hands and really sort of roar.

You were still young, about nine, so you still had a little boy voice and little boy body. But this boy looked and sounded like a young man, so the behaviors were a bit startling, even frightening.

But you sat in your chair and watched him with an intrigued smile. You didn’t seem alarmed at all!

We tried to talk over the noise but didn’t get very far. At last, our hostess kindly suggested we sit out on the porch, “so the boys can play in the yard.”

We moved out to the rough wood porch, and Robby dropped down onto the ground on all fours and began to howl. His little mother rushed to his side and tried to lift him up, even though he was bigger than she was.

But you came over and dropped down on all fours like him.

“I’m a lion,” you said to him.

And you let out a roar, a bit like he was doing, but more distinctively lion-sounding.

Robby’s mother stepped back, surprised. You grinned at the boy and roared again.

I’d never seen you play like this with another child! But this was what we had done with you, especially a bit earlier in your journey when we’d had no communication. If you crawled, we crawled. If you rolled, we rolled. If you sorted blocks, we did it too. We were always looking for a window into your world, hoping that if we could step into your world, perhaps you could cross the bridge into ours.

So you crawled round and round Robby and roared. Suddenly, he was looking right at you. I hadn’t seen him look at anyone all evening, and he roared back at you!

Then you both crawled in a circle. He was no longer crying or roaring angrily; he was playing with you. His parents leaned over to me and said, “We’ve never seen him play like this!”

Then you stood up. “I’m going to teach you to dance,” you said.

Stretching out your hands, you reached toward him, and he lifted his hands. You joined hands, and he stood up.

Then you began to loudly sing, “Draw up water joyfully from the wells of Yeshua”—Jesus’ Hebrew name. It was an ancient Jewish song. And you and Robby began to twirl around in circles, leaping there on the lawn in the patterned shadows of the live oak trees.

You sang, and he laughed. It was a rusty sound, like his laughter was just escaping from a deep hidden well, but maybe it would turn out to be an artesian well.

Today, all the memories in my heart and mind seem to be springing up joyfully, and I can’t help but pass them along.

I hope you’ll keep on dancing in the sunlight, even when shadows cast patterns on your head.

With all my love,
Mom