David and Goliath, revised

 

I am certainly not the first person, nor will I be the last, to view the story of David and Goliath as a metaphor for the incredible impact of surprise; when someone behaves differently from what you expected.

For those who don’t feel like trying to remember the story: Goliath was a giant, armed to the teeth, and full of bad intentions. He was chosen by the Philistines to fight the Jews. After all, he was their strongest warrior, and he was willing to fight to the end to establish who was boss. The Jews didn’t have anyone even close to Goliath’s size and power, and nobody wanted to volunteer to fight him. Then along came a skinny little shepherd, with no hidden weapons except for his intelligence. He was sent to fight with a few rocks in his backpack, and with all the area’s bookmakers predicting a quick victory for Goliath. David, however, surprised Goliath, and their audience, and, using only five stones and a ton of shrewdness, hit the giant’s forehead and cut off his head (gross, I know). Caravaggio’s famous painting shows the very moment in which a super excited David holds forth poor Goliath’s big head.

I once felt that my Goliath was called autism. That it had entered my son’s DNA like an evil spirit when Luca was nothing but a tiny embryo, with no arms or legs and no strength to fight it. The ogre had grown over the years, becoming ever more powerful and oppressive. 

To understand how to handle my very scary Goliath, for many years I observed a lot of little Davids who were dealing with the same giant as I was. Almost everyone approached him with anger, convinced that, somehow, they too would be able to cut off his head. People stared at it obsessively, from afar, while trying to find something in their daily life that they could point to as the cause of such a destructive force. Some blamed gluten, others vaccines, while others decided it was the mother’s fault, or maybe pollution. All these little Davids would yell on TV, desperately looking for scientific data to back them up. Everybody became anti-something, and those who didn’t agree with them just weren’t smart enough to understand, and were dismissed as unworthy of fighting the ogre.

Some of them charged incredibly high prices for massaging an autistic kid’s scalp (they called it cranio-sacral therapy), while others imposed horrible diets on their kids, sometimes even dangerous ones, in the attempt to massacre autism. But so far, at least, no one has defeated anything, save perhaps their fears, and even there, with mediocre results.

As I was observing these people, and reading their interviews, I also spent a ton of money to have a “therapist” massage my son’s scalp. He loved it! Only over time did I understand that I am not the fighter type after all, and that I was not going to spend the rest of my life trying to kill autism. I decided that the other parents becoming warriors was just a selfish and offensive way of saying that they didn’t want a kid like the one they had; they wanted a “normal” one, and the only way to get it was by killing the ogre. They’ll probably fight for the rest of their lives, convincing themselves that it’s for a noble cause, that it’s a war worth fighting.

It took me a while, but I decided that the most powerful weapon was an unexpected and less obvious one. I’m talking about the power of surprise. I unexpectedly started appreciating my Goliath simply because he was a part of my Luca. He was part of him the same way Luca’s hair, his very low tone body and his little hands are. Luca is all of that - autism included. 

Luca and Goliath have good days and bad days: they share an obsession for music, goldfish and pizza, and they both hate red meat. They also need to be cuddled, and, even if such a powerful giant is supposed to hide it, they too are at times afraid.

I love my sweet Goliath. He makes Luca who Luca is. Without our giant, who knows who my kid would be. So, I am most grateful for his presence. As time passed, the big and scary giant that entered Luca’s DNA when my son was nothing but an embryo, has become not only harmless, but a great teacher: he taught me and my family the amazing power of acceptance, of empathy and of the beauty that exists in a strange family like mine, which is weird but full of love.