Aurora 2022-Final

Sara Allard

Patricia Henney

Early Morning Blue Heron

then said the boy was acting that way because he has something called autism. This was a new word I had never heard before; not during school, church, nowhere. Since it ended with that “-ism” sound I heard a lot in the park’s nature center, I figured it was important. After Mom followed up with a “Well, you have it too,” it became more important than I could’ve possibly imagined. Now I knew: the reason I needed to tap my toys had a name. In fact, everything I thought only happened to me, seemed to have a name. The “tapping” is called stimming, and autistic people do it to calm down or even just have fun. The yearly existential dread of the Halloween aisle was called meltdowns—and 90% of the reason I had them was because the world is louder and scarier to an autistic’s sensitive ears. All the effort it took for me to sit still and focus on school was autism’s clingy little sibling called ADHD. That day in the park, I learned that I wasn’t the only one who had these experiences and, most importantly, it wasn’t my fault. Now imagine what a visit to the sanitorium must’ve been like for a TB patient when they were new. This likely wasn’t the first time she struggled to breathe, and she had long accepted that she’d be forced to hide away in her room because this was the only thing that would help—no matter how much she hated being separated from the trees, the creek, and the healthy people who got to play and philosophize in both. She probably arrived at this newfangled treatment center expecting more of the same, only for the doctor to tell her that she wasn’t alone and that everyone at the sanatorium would meet her where she was instead of pushing her away. This acknowledgment alone healed her more than any of the fresh air and sunlight—although I don’t doubt those helped too. I know, because this is the exact same healing I got at McCormick’s Creek—even on the exact same steps.

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