When I'm Sixty-Four

"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world"...Heather Cortez

Oh is this picture ever a reminder of how time flies!  My son and I both look quite different today!  This was taken in the Bahamas twelve years ago, but it remains one of my favourite pictures of us.  He's still my baby, though now nearly as tall as I am, and he still makes me feel special on  Valentine's Day...

Though it's a challenging journey we are living together, my son and I don't let autism get in the way of enjoying a good time together, at least when the setting is right.  Yesterday while my husband had to work and my daughter had a birthday party to attend, we were on our own to have a great afternoon.  And we did.  Though it was simply a long walk to the swimming pool, an hour of sliding and splashing about, and sharing a slush puppy, my son helps me remember what life is all about..making someone happy. I know those simple moments yesterday touched his life just as much as it did mine.  He allows me the opportunity to see life from a completely different and often humorous perspective.  I need that in life.  I never thought I could ever be so blessed as to have a child so uniquely wonderful as he is.

That's not to say that my life is without worry about his future.  Everything is fine "right now", but a concern I share with many autism families is "what will happen to his future as I age?"  To be honest, it's something a little painful for me to even think about.  Sometimes I wonder why my special child ended up paired with me as his mom...what do I have to give that's extra special?  I thought about this yesterday as I climbed up to the waterslides a total of eight hundred and forty stairs in thirty minutes...maybe what I have special is endurance! LOL!  Maybe I'll be like Roberta McCain (US 2008 presidential candidate's mother), who's still going strong at 99!  In fact, I hopefully inherited some of my grandparent's genes from my mother's side, as they both lived well in their nineties too!

As my son shared a piece of candy with me yesterday while we walked home, a cute little song got stuck in my head (as I've written about previously, this frequently happens to me), a song by the Beatles, written in my birth year 1966,  "When I'm Sixty Four". How does it go again?.."will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?"  It's a cute song.  When I'm sixty-four, I will be twice my son's age - he'll be thirty-two.  When he's sixty-four, I'll be ninety-six.  Well, perhaps if I keep up the exercise, remember my sense of humour and promise to let not my heart be troubled - I may just make it!

Here is the song "When I'm Sixty-Four".  It's technically a couple's love song, but I've heard about it being popular as a mother/son dance at weddings..who cares - it's a cute song to enjoy on a Monday, so here it is:

Cheers and have a great week,

Linda