The Runner

I think about my life choices.....

And so.

We embark on a trip to a foreign land.

The destination: Bucharest, Romania.

The foreign land? The airport.

Foreign to whom, you might ask.

To a six year old non-verbal autistic little boy.

Airports and airplanes equals loud announcements that slice through the skull, crowds that surge, lights that hum too brightly and tight spaces.

Long waits in security lines, potential flight delays, and once you have boarded, the dealbreaker. The inability to leave the plane mid-flight IF an imminent or full blown meltdown occurs.

Who knew.

At 6am in the morning, after roughly 3hrs of fractured sleep, we begin.

What’s on the menu?

For me: the coming hours will be a smorgasbord of high anxiety, (carefully contained) with a side dish of dread.

For my son: overwhelming sensory overload.

But he doesn’t know that.

Yet.

As a carer to my son, my role will stretch well beyond being his mother.

I will be Educator: explaining his brain to strangers who don’t ask, but look.

Translator: turning behaviour that seems “weird” to the masses, into a language that they can understand.

Pacifier: soothing my child without surrendering who he is.

Gatekeeper: absorbing the sharp edges of ignorance so they don’t reach him.

And restraint.

Always restraint. Every time.

It holds steady in the face of stares, sighs, dirty looks, whispered commentary, amid the quiet of societal assumptions and judgement.

I also have a wingman.

My seven-year-old daughter, Alyssa.

These days there are visual supports. Sunflower lanyards to discreetly signal a need for extra support, early or last-boarding options and pre-booked specific seating.

But thirteen years ago?

Nothing. Nada.

You took your chances when you chose to travel abroad, praying for the best, all while trying not to drown in your own cocktail of neurosis and unpredictability, stepping into the public arena anyway.

Or.

You simply did not travel.

Or.

Chaos happens, you survive it and… you live another day.

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“I told you he’d do that! Why didn’t you listen?”

My voice reverberates in the huge echo chamber in the Arrivals Hall, sharp and disbelieving.

The airport security guard blinks. His face performs a slow shift, bleeding from pale pink into a deep crimson hue that creeps just under his hairline.

“I…” he sputters, “I…I …”

Moving quickly, thinking quickly I spin on my heel. I scan the chaos beyond the barrier to the land of trays on a conveyor belt filled with coats, electrical devices and bags. Tired travellers keen to go onward to Passport Control and finally meet friends and family wait for their possessions.

With razor sharp eyes I locate my seven-year-old daughter.

I take a deep breath gearing up to emit a deep bellow, but then…

Alyssa is bent over, slipping on one shoe, the other dangling from her hand while idly looking for her pink sparkle bag.

She senses the shift in atmosphere, my distress transmitting through the air like static, and stands.

Her eyes flick to the left just in time to catch the blur of her six-year-old brother, a blonde whirlwind that has discovered freedom.

He runs full throttle towards a long grey empty tunnel.

Alyssa doesn’t pause.

She drops the shoe.

And bolts.

“Yes, Alyssa—go, go, GO!” I scream at the top of my lungs, cutting the air with my arm, my voice ricocheting off the cavernous walls.

She doesn’t look back. She knows.

Their figures become smaller and smaller then they vanish swallowed by the tunnel’s gaping mouth.

I stand there, willing myself not to run through the security gate, protocol be damned, shoeless and belt-less.

I turn slowly to the man, now marinating in his own uselessness.

The same man who waved my son through, blithely ignoring my advice steeped in knowledge and experience.

He’s autistic. He doesn’t understand boundaries the way you think he does.

Let me go with him. Or let me go first.

But he hadn’t listened, and in hindsight, I hadn’t allowed for the language barrier.

Now, he stares into the dark void where my children have disappeared.

“He just… he ran,” he says, blinking in disbelief. “He just..ran.”

He looks ashen and appears undecided whether he should now run after them.

I breathe deep, hands planted on my hips, grounding myself against the urge to shake him… or worse.

I think about my life choices, do I really want to go toe to toe with this imbecile, see my children again outside of a prison cell? Spend the night trying to translate ‘missing children’ into Romanian?

He looks back at me sheepishly, now very unsure, all arrogance dissipated.

“I told you he’s autistic remember, one minute ago? The bit where I explained that after he walks through that” I jab a finger at the security gate, “he doesn’t know to ‘stop’!”

He fidgets, his face drained of authority.

“Ah, he’s aww…tiss?”

I nod slowly. Look who’s cottoned on.

Silence.

Behind him I become aware of a hundred eyes staring at us, passengers mid-removal of belts and dignity, watching the unfolding drama like its free theatre.

He looks down; lips pressed thin, now seemingly with nothing to say.

I want to scream.

I want to leap through that barrier and find my kids.

I want wine. A friend’s hug.

I want.. a holiday.

But I stay silent. I let my glare do the work.

I’m too exhausted to educate. To explain my child to a world that keeps insisting on misunderstanding him.

And I know that my child needs me regulated more than righteous.

He steps aside, the weight of his failure heavy in his arm as he gestures wordlessly, for me to pass.

I walk through.

Not victorious, just a mother with no time for ego, and children to retrieve from the bowels of this godforsaken airport.

Chaos happens.

You survive it.

And then… you live another day.

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