Oliviero was seven years old when my husband and I welcomed him into our home for the first time. A beautiful boy with large dark eyes. We were disarmed by his behavior: he did not speak, he did not listen to us; he desperately sought water faucets and pieces of string to fuel his repetitive games to the point of excitement.
That day, we settled for preventing the worst. As for knowing how to welcome him, keep him occupied, help him progress, understand him: other highly qualified people knew how to do that, progressively, with patience, conviction, and respect. Brick by brick, with the faithful collaboration of his parents, they helped Oliviero build himself, to become who he is today.
Nicole S.
Shadows of the Past and Light of the Present
On a hot summer afternoon in 1960, from the ship's rail carrying us home, Irene and I—then barely twenty—watched the Egyptian coast recede toward the horizon with nostalgia: a low, flat strip that the sunset painted in colors reminding us of desert sand at the edges of which we were born. The few coins in our pockets and the countless projects and hopes dwelling in our hearts were the only baggage we carried with us as we set out to marry and begin a new life together. Soon Italy welcomed us with its unfamiliar coastal profile of green mountains, their peaks brightened by the first light of dawn—almost like an allegorical invitation to overcome the difficulties of the many climbs the future held in store for us, strengthened by the sense of unity proper to a Christian family, which our parents had passed on to us.
On a winter evening in 2004, a clear sky full of stars wraps itself around a Tuscan hillside where a farmhouse gathers our entire family to celebrate Oliviero's fortieth birthday. The flames crackling in the great fireplace illuminate his face, and through it shines a joy he cannot express in words—the joy of being surrounded by us, his parents, by his brother and sister, by their respective spouses, and by his little niece Elsa, who with grace and a touch of flirtation already adds to her first words "Uncle Oli," "Grandpa Beard," and "Grandma Irene."
Two images that mark the boundaries of a span of time during which the carefree early years of our marriage gave way to anguish over autism—diagnosed in our firstborn son Oliviero's earliest years—anguish that overwhelmed and deeply wounded us, clouding our vision of the future. The initial feeling of total rejection of this reality, experienced with guilt, awakens no shame in us now, thanks to the understanding we have gained over the years that to refuse also means the will to react, to improve, to progress, and to reconcile the grave responsibility of being parents to an autistic child with respect for our own personal ambitions and expectations for the future. It was this harmony of thought between Irene and me that was able to ease our anxieties and add, over the course of our lives, to the warmth of a fireplace's flames the warmth of Oliviero's affection, of his siblings, and of our entire family.
First diagnoses, first tests, first disappointments. Disappointments and discouragement in feeling alone with our grief, alone in the midst of a society still full of prejudice toward mental disability.
Alone, even when we had to distrust the boasts of healers and charlatans, and to understand from our son's gaze that we, his parents, were his only point of reference in a world chaotic and frenetic beyond his comprehension; his trust in us could not and must not be betrayed. "Stereotypies," "instability," and countless other terms fill pages of sterile knowledge from those who genuinely had no answers for people like us, confronted daily with autism.
Oliviero educated us in his own way, forgave our mistakes, and made us ever more careful in our choices and decisions.
1970. The first cries of a new life filled us with joy—cries that soon evolved into sweet words: "Mama!" "Papa!" Alessio was born, and his burst of energy infused us with new strength, opening before us vistas of the future that fulfilled dreams and hopes long deferred. After his first steps, another life announces itself: his little sister Manuela, who smiles with grace at her noisy brothers. While mama and papa were at the office, all three kept busy at home with a wonderful paternal grandmother, who devoted herself with the dedication of another era to a thousand loving cares for her grandchildren and their parents. Soon the children spontaneously added protective gestures toward their older brother to their games, feeling themselves unconsciously part of responsibilities larger than themselves. A part of their simple childhood innocence fled, maturing quickly—and in this lay their contribution to acquiring a strong sense of responsibility that would accompany them throughout their lives.
Integration! The early 1970s—then only an ideology. Ideologies, under the pretext of sharing ideals and concepts that individually everyone accepts—such as integration for all in society—distort sound convictions and crudely advance policies without genuinely considering the interests and needs of those who must endure their consequences. For the most severe cases, generalizing one method creates discrimination, making a plurality of free alternative choices impossible.
Our workplaces, international in character, offered us the chance to seek answers not found in Italy in other European countries: answers to our yearning need to find for Oliviero a therapeutic educational environment that could shape, with respect for human dignity, his personality—disturbed by expressions discordant with his inner intentions, which we as parents perceived through the delicacy of his features and his rare smiles.
Other mountains to climb loomed on the horizon, even if to climb them a commercial airliner created, and still creates, with hundreds and hundreds of flights, an umbilical cord that would keep Oliviero always part of our family life, blending therapeutic and socio-therapeutic environment with the warmth of his loved ones' affection. Every three weeks Oliviero came home for a brief weekend. An enormous commitment of energy and perseverance for those of us who had to reconcile work responsibilities with the certainty of having found for Oliviero the environment and the workers who could welcome him and accompany him in harmonious development within the limits of his abilities. An island lapped by calm waters protecting him from the thrust of the "Great Current"—where, like twigs, we are battered by the waves of modern society's life and must have the strength not to succumb.
One Friday morning, the first flakes of snow fall on Geneva airport's runway. My professional experience tells me that traffic will be congested throughout the day. Flights canceled, passengers transferred to the flight that that same evening was supposed to take me and Oliviero home, occupying the few seats still available for those of us traveling without reservation rights. In the early evening the airport closes for snow. The forecasts offer no hope of improvement. There is one other way to get home: the train. The "Great Current" was about to test our physical and emotional strength once again. Train strike in Italy. No sleeping cars; at the border no one knew how the "odyssey" to reach Rome would unfold. It is midnight; the train, roaring, leaves Switzerland and crosses the Simplon. Its course stops five hundred meters before Iselle station; other trains are lined up on the tracks. Outside it is snowing heavily, but passengers are "invited" to descend onto the rails, sinking several centimeters into the snow, and to open a path to reach the station on foot, where an alternative bus service would take us to Domodossola. We board a train that no one knows when will depart. Strange figures appear in the dark compartments, once, twice, like predators sniffing out their prey. The odyssey continues with various endless stops. Late Saturday afternoon we arrive in Rome. Tears of repressed stress streak our faces. A few hours to spend with family, and already the next day Irene must take Oliviero back. More planes, more anxiety.
Oliviero is about to turn eighteen. The military district, which I contacted in advance about the arrival of the "draft notice," gives me vague assurances; Oliviero's case is not contemplated; he must present himself at the district for the call to arms. Everything will proceed quickly, they assure me. The "Great Current" was launching a new challenge at us. At the recruitment center, I present myself with Oliviero, but things are different from what I was told. We must stand in line with many young men who, like Oliviero, in underwear must be measured and examined. One of the examiners, in a white coat with insignia, detects in the chant that Oliviero hums to calm himself a kind of deception; he does not feel comfortable taking responsibility for an exemption for a boy who has two legs, two arms, two eyes with an evasive gaze, and a beautiful melodic voice. Oliviero is enlisted for three days at the Celio military hospital. Other examiners subject Oliviero to investigations. Only because of an organizational issue, given my insistent presence, Oliviero is given a "free leave pass" to go home to sleep, but the next morning at seven-thirty he had to be back in "the barracks." Violence—the kind with which a generalized system discriminates against those who only need social solidarity and respect for human dignity. In the end everyone is convinced: Oliviero is exempted from military service. Before leaving the Celio we are "invited" to collect his pay at the cashier: the wages for three days of humiliation and mortification.
For the law, Oliviero is now an adult. We parents can no longer act on his behalf to assert his rights through bureaucratic channels. We must proceed through legal means with interdiction. On the judge's desk lies a folder containing, among other things, dozens of "clearances" requested from all our relatives down to the fourth degree, bearing in clear letters the heading "Proceedings...Vincenzo against Oliviero." Father against his own son.
Three episodes from lived experience, chosen from among many, that make evident the paroxysms of ideas, the rights of some that distort those of others, behaviors which, when compared with human individuals who do not fit within certain schemes and models, can border on the absurd.
Many other parents, like us, have found in the complementarity of their union forces they never imagined they possessed: forces that allowed them not to be submerged, isolated, and annihilated by "autism that creates autism," and to give priority and space in their own lives to feelings, to the cardinal principles of the education they received, to the expectations demanded by their own personalities. Only in such a context is it possible to "integrate," to "care for," to "harmonize," and to find oneself again under a clear sky full of stars, surrounded by warmth lit by the flames of a fireplace.
Vincenzo and Irene Ruisi, 2005
===FINE===