JUSTICE AND MERCY

During our five years of childlessness, our holiday card photos included our cats. First, we posed next to a wreath, then our decorated tree; in year three, we stood in front of pine-scented boughs on our fireplace mantle. In year four, I wanted a picture with the cats next to the cactus our neighbor had dressed as Saint Nicholas, but they were tired of this degrading ritual and hid. My husband tolerated this weird cat stage in my life but said, “You know, even if our cats could talk, they wouldn’t. Still, I don't think they like Saguaro Santa.” I was broody and had a reservoir of affection I needed to express. In the absence of any more appropriate object like a hoped-for child, I lavished my devotion on our cats. Yes, I doted on them in a way that gave our friends and family the creeps.

The following year, our first son was born. Our cats were unceremoniously demoted, once again, to the status of pets. Instead of giving them tasty tidbits from our plates or encouraging them to pile into bed with us, we ignored them. Eventually, we had three boys, and our lives were filled with school, sports, music, video games, friends, and homework. Our days were long, and the years short. I worked at an autism research center, and my husband taught philosophy. He was the one who had philosophically named our cats Justice and Mercy.

Our boys were always there, with their boisterous soundscape, and our cats were always there, like soothing elevator music, until they weren’t. Tender-hearted Andrew was so overcome when Justice, riddled with cancer, had to be euthanized that the other pet owners in the vet’s waiting room cried along with him. Our mourning was short-lived, and Justice’s bowl was still full of Purina cat chow when we brought home a black and white tuxedo cat from the pound. And our new cat, Zorro, brought home kennel cough. He recovered quickly, but I was reminded we had another cat when we heard dry coughing from under our bed. I stayed up all night, squirting water into Mercy’s mouth with a needleless syringe, and gave her dollops of baby food she licked from my finger with her pink sandpaper tongue. She lived another ten years under our bed.

We didn’t mean to expose Mercy to feline infectious tracheobronchitis, but these things happen. As parents, we hoped to do better and tried to avoid exposing our boys to unreasonable expectations, judgments, comparisons, strict, permissive, or stupid ideas, junk food, mean neighbor kids, solipsistic social media, gruesome video games, and provocative adult computer sites. Still, it was all too easy to track these things into the house, like toilet paper stuck to your shoe. And that’s not the only thing that got dragged into the house.

When our kids were four, six, and eight, we buried Gus, our fancy rat, in a sock next to the purple bougainvillea in the front yard because, by then, we had two dogs in addition to our cats and didn’t want them digging him up. So, I was surprised when Andrew announced one afternoon, "Gus is back and he's in my bedroom."

Over the years, Zorro offered us a steady stream of birds, snakes, lizards, and field mice. This time, it was a dead gopher. We were his surrogate family, and Zorro was acting out his natural role as provider, knowing we would never be able to catch a delicious gopher on our own. Of course, we didn’t want those gory gifts. I've often wondered if good intentions are the most essential thing, even if what we do isn’t perfect or turns out to be awful. And what about good intentions that go nowhere?

Two of our sons, Ben and Danny, pretty much raised themselves. But what I did or didn't do for Andrew, who has autism and needed more practice learning to talk, tying his shoes, and making friends, was sometimes careless, even awful. Not because I wasn't trying but because knowing what to do or not do didn't come naturally. Or maybe, like Zorro, I did what came naturally. My childhood nickname was “white tiger.” When I was three, I had flaxen-blond hair and tantrums, and so did Andrew. When he roared at me, sometimes I roared back. I think I’ve messed it up, this mothering thing. But what can I do, the past is behind a locked door.

When we first met with our consultants at the University of California in Santa Barbara, they confirmed Andrew's diagnosis. Then they said something to ease my heart: "Andrew is charming, and there is a lot to work with here.” And that’s when the work began. They told us to focus on the positive, stay consistent, put play on the schedule, give everything time, make everything fun, take Andrew everywhere, and get support. These are great strategies when raising any child, and I would do anything to help my kids. Still, when I was overwhelmed and afraid, it was hard to follow their advice, especially the part about making everything fun. Andrew's teachers had trouble with that, too. During recess, he hunkered down to play alone or walked the perimeter of the playground while classmates joyfully galloped by. During the night, when all I could recall was Andrew’s social disconnect and loneliness, I’d flip from side to side like a fish out of water. Worrying silently felt like the blazing desert sky above my head and shifting sand under my feet.

One early morning, two-year-old Danny banged on the door, saying, “Ma Ma . . .” And there he was, standing with The Very Quiet Cricket. I collected all three of my boys, each with a bowl hair cut like a golden helmet shining in the morning light and a stack of their favorite books. We piled into my bed. I sat propped against the wall with a pillow and opened If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Andrew wanted to read it over and over. I read it once, then slipped it out of sight. Our consultant's words echoed in my mind, “Don’t get stuck, keep everything moving, teach your kids to take turns." So, everyone chose their favorite books, one after another. While reading, my anxious thoughts had to wait for paragraphs to end, and by the time I’d finished the twelfth story, the pounding of my troubled heart had quieted. Andrew and I both practiced patience.

But, while I was practicing patience, I also felt pressured to do something, anything, to help my son. So, over the years, we consulted speech, physical, occupational, and behavior therapists. Andrew was enrolled in language-based computer classes and Kumon. He participated in a school lunch bunch, structured-voluntary-frequent and motivating social play dates. He sang with the Phoenix Children’s Chorus, and earned his Eagle Scout Award. And when my husband sat down to read the newspaper, I thought we should be doing more interventions. He told me, “Just relax. This is a relationship, not a class.“

It turns out Andrew inherited more than my white-blond hair and tantrums. In July of 2024, I discovered I’m a carrier for NLGN3-related syndrome. This X chromosome deletion was passed down to him from me as well. As of 2021, doctors knew of only ten people in the world with changes in the NLGN-3 gene. I wonder what number Andrew was. I believe in research, yet my understanding of what caused Andrew’s autism has led to an undeniable judgment of myself. There is a gravity to genetics that’s not easy to budge.

The literature that came with the report from SPARK, a study collecting hundreds of thousands of DNA specimens from individuals with autism and their parents, was meant to reassure me. “No parent causes their child’s NLGN3-sydrome because no parent has any control over the gene changes they do, or do not, pass on to their child. Nothing a parent does before or during pregnancy causes this to happen. The gene change takes place on its own and cannot be predicted or stopped.” Still, I wonder why this happened to Andrew. I wish I was wise enough to see reason in the missing bits.

Over the years, fighting for a better life for my son has been a kind of parental therapy. And it goes without saying that I wish I had control over the gene changes I passed on to my child. But, at some point I took a deep breath and did what was infinitely more complex and essential, accepting our lives as they were and are. Andrew has told me, “Mom, you shouldn’t feel bad you gave me autism. It's not your fault, it's not my fault, and it's not a tragedy.” He has found his way to wholeness and is proudly neurodivergent. And I am proud to be his mother.

Yes, we are who we are, because and despite parents, teachers, and therapists best intentions, and what experience has softened or exaggerated over time. And we change for all sorts of reasons, not always out of choice. Mercy became a different cat when she was twenty years old and developed feline dementia. It was as if nature gone array had overwhelmed her underlying nature. She forgot she was a recluse and became exceptionally social. Poor old cat, she also started leaving tiny teeth in her bowl and developed the kind of breath that could remove paint. When she wandered into the living room, mewing plaintively, I'd pick her up, and I could feel how thin and brittle she was. During a late-night monsoon, Mercy hobbled into our bedroom and died. My husband gathered her into a plastic bag and dug a watery grave for her next to the house. When I heard he’d buried Mercy in the bag instead of slipping her naked into the muddy earth, I suggested, with the best of intentions, that he rebury her without the bag. All I could think about was how cats decompose in plastic bags when it's 117 degrees outside,

If I were a naturally kind person, I would have faced the thunderstorm and helped my husband exhume Mercy and rebury her au natural. Zorro, our tuxedo cat, brought so many dead creatures into the house out of love; I could have taken at least one out for the same reason. But white tigers don't like getting wet. For a while, my husband was resentful that I didn't help him during Mercy's double internment. Still, he’s never been one to hold a grudge.

There was a “lot to work with” as we raised all three of our boys, but now that they are grown, I think we had little to do with how they turned out. Each of us takes our shape, primarily within and against the cage of reality bestowed on us at our birth. Our sons are a mixture of their dad and me and what they’ve chosen from the world to make their own. Looking back, I remember when something happened and did not completely unhappen. Like when five-year-old Danny confessed en route to Toys R-Us, that he and Ben had “borrowed” Andrew’s allowance, since he wasn’t keeping track of it, but he’d decided to give it back. How Ben and Danny included, encouraged, and stuck up for Andrew when they played jail-side-and seek and Super Smash Brothers with the six other boys in our cul-de-sac. When Ben, who has more “cool” gene than anyone else in our family, participated in Andrew’s high school FRIEND program.

In the end, it is all about memories, their sources and magnitude, and, of course, their consequences. I'm finally figuring out how to be a better mom, but it's kind of a joke since our boys are 35, 33, and 31. Nowadays, our kids sometimes ignore my advice, not that I offer much. I even ignore my advice now and then with good results. Our adult sons are in charge of themselves, so we’ve stepped back into the wings. Or more truthfully, we've accepted that the world is spinning out from under our feet, taking them toward a future we’ll never catch up with.

From the distance of age, I can see it all from above, how desperate I was to do the right thing and do enough of it to help my kids, especially my son with autism. Sometimes, I feel the burden of second-guessing the lessons I taught on purpose or by accident. My intentions were always good; at least, I intended no harm. Steven is philosophical, and when we talk about the many details of our lives together, mostly it's humor and joy, not sorrow or regret, that shines through.

Perspective helps. The universe is not merely the stars, the moon, the planets, flowers, grass, trees, animals, Justice, and Mercy but other people. These are my people, and we made a home for one another and memories, both bad and good, in our small corner of the cosmos. If we don’t swing wide the gate, no other power will or can.

Sharman Ober-Reynolds - Literary Bio: I was born in Los Angeles and completed a master’s in fine arts at Arizona State University. For over thirty years, I worked in health care as a family nurse practitioner, primarily in autism research. I am the first author of The FRIEND Program for Creating Supportive Peer Networks for Students with Social Challenges, including Autism. In 2023, I was the first-place recipient of the Olive Woolley Bert Awards and have published creative non-fiction in bioStories and Adelaide Literary Magazine. I live and write in an old house in Salt Lake City with my family and Cadoodle.