But let's start at the beginning. My son Rowan was born seven
years to the day after I'd met my wife Kristin by a hotel swimming
pool in southern India. I was a country boy and travel writer,
born in Britain of South African parents; she was a city-dwelling
academic from California.
Despite our different backgrounds, we embarked on a magical
seven-year roller-coaster tour of the world which took us from
India to London and from Africa to Texas - writing, researching,
living, loving and getting married along the way.
In April 2001, Kristin announced
she was pregnant. And so it was that I found myself
two days after Christmas that year in a Texan hospital whispering
to my newborn baby: 'Welcome to the world, Rowan Isaacson,
with your blue, blue eyes. What adventures have you got in
store for us?'
I was soon to find out. Like most new parents, we knew nothing
about childcare. But we could not believe the gift of this
little being who was our son.
We obsessed about not rolling over and crushing him at night,
checking he was still breathing every ten minutes when he was
asleep, worrying that he might not eat enough.
Fat chance of that. Like nearly all babies, Rowan slept half
the time, googooed and gaga-ed adorably for most of his waking
moments and then pummelled away at his mother's breasts like
a miniature sumo wrestler before feeding copiously and going
off to sleep again. He hardly cried at all.
We were amazed at how easy this parenting business was. What
was all the complaining about?
Rowan was an early walker and began to say his first words
before his first birthday. Kristin and I were overjoyed, reassured
by his precocity, flattered by the reflection of what we fancied
were our own superior intellects.
When Rowan was 18 months old, however, my wife, a child psychologist,
began to get a little worried.
He wasn't pointing. Nor had he added any words to his limited
vocabulary, beyond echoing bits of dialogue from the children's
videos he watched (what autism experts call echolalia).
Nor did he show his toys to people, as many infants do. When
someone said his name, he would not look round.
Concerned that he might have some kind of speech delay, we
contacted the early childhood intervention services and organised
- responsible parents, you see - a weekly visit from a speech
therapist.
Rowan ignored her, but after a month or two he would say 'It's
Woody,' when holding up his much-loved doll based on the character
from the Toy Story films.
She found a link for 'likely signs that your child has autism',
put out by a wellknown university, and clicked on it.
There they were: not showing toys to parents; lack of such
gestures as pointing, reaching, waving, showing; lack of sharing
interest or enjoyment with others; repetitive movements with
objects; lack of appropriate eye gaze; lack of response to
own name; unusual prosody (rhythm and intonation of language);
repetitive movements or posturing; loss of words or other skills;
babbling instead of talking; no meaningful, unscripted two-word
sentences by 24 months.
Rowan had good eye contact. Apart from that, he had every
single sign. Suddenly, we had a 'special needs' child.
Our lives changed beyond recognition. Over
the next few months, Rowan became more and more dysfunctional,
until earning a living became hard for us.
My freelance writing began to tail off and I gave up my lifelong
passion, riding, keeping Rowan away from horses because he
was so unpredictable.
Our hope that our son would share a life of adventure with
us was dashed.
Instead, our life became a mechanical drudgery of driving
from one therapy and assessment appointment to another and
dealing with insurance companies, therapists and our son's
ever-increasing, inexplicable tantrums.
Once, in the street, his screaming even drowned out the noise
of a pneumatic drill. The crew operating it downed tools and
just stared in awe as Rowan, a tiny human decibel machine,
hurled himself to the ground and began maniacally thudding
his head and heels into the hard paving.
Sometimes his rages would be accompanied by projectile vomiting,
like the child in The Exorcist.
People would offer to call the emergency services. Or tut-tut
their disgust at these terrible parents who let their son get
away with such abominable public behaviour, sometimes stopping
to tell us we should be ashamed of ourselves, allowing a child
to behave like that on the street or in a shop.
It was small consolation to snarl 'He's autistic - what's
your excuse?' and then see them retreat, feeling guilty.
This constant barrage of noise, of emotional violence, of
utter powerlessness, became our whole life.
Our social life and sex life - for we were so exhausted at
the end of each day - began to fall by the wayside. The glue
of passion that held us together was starting to come undone.
Only one thing made our lives bearable, and that was the wood
at the back of our house. Whenever a tantrum happened during
daylight hours and we were at home, I would take Rowan out
there.
Immediately his screams would lessen and out he'd run, flitting
between the trees like some happy woodland elf. There, at least,
Rowan was at peace.
Then there were zoos. Our nearest town had two and we took
Rowan after noticing his intense interest in the wildlife documentaries
we brought home from the video store, not to mention his fascination
with any small bug or creature he found crawling outside.
The zoos were a success - but unlike in
the wood, he wasn't at peace there.
And then I cried, the tears coming silent and unbidden on
that humid June day, because I thought: 'He's got it. He's
got my horse gene. But he's autistic. I'll never be able to
share it with him. Never share this joy with my son.' It's
stunning how wrong a parent can be.
That same month I had to spend a few days away from home to
accompany a delegation of bushmen from the Kalahari Desert
to the United Nations in New York.
I had been involved with these peaceful hunter-gatherers for
many years, first as a travel journalist, then as an activist
helping them plead their case internationally as their homes
were swept away to make way for diamond mines.
The bushmen had timed their visit to the UN to coincide with
an international convention of traditional healers and shamans.
I arranged for Kristin and Rowan to join me there, wondering
silently if being exposed to so many healers might have some
beneficial effect on my son. I was swiftly disillusioned.
Immediately on being released into the midst of the healers,
Rowan ran amok, hurtling among the feathered, painted, exotic
delegates, screaming endlessly and obsessively flinging his
Toy Story doll over his shoulder with such violence that he
occasionally brained startled passers-by.
He ran wildly into the various ceremonies being conducted
and kicked over the healers' makeshift altars, scattering incense
and sacred herbs, while Kristin and I chased after him apologising.
Some healers were irritated. But others, including the bushmen,
asked if they could lay their hands on him.
'He's one of us,' said one healer from Zimbabwe,
running his hands lightly up and over Rowan's head and down
his spine, his gaze reassuring, steady.
To my surprise, far from losing it, as he usually did when
anyone unknown touched him, Rowan sat quietly, giggling, seeming
to enjoy himself.
That evening, Kristin and I took a walk through the woods,
Rowan running ahead of us, chasing birds that fluttered along
the trail, babbling his usual unintelligible nonsense.
It took us a moment or two to notice that the babble had all
of a sudden changed into a shouted, real word - 'Green!' Kristin
and I looked at each other.
'Green!' said Rowan again, from somewhere up the trail. We
broke into a run to catch up.
'Green!' He was sitting by an isolated patch of grass cropped
short by deer.
'Green,' he said again. 'Green grass.' Lucid speech that was
original and not just echolalia. Simple, but the real thing.
We were both stunned.
Over the next two days, Rowan started approaching visitors
and showing his toys to them - behaviour he had hitherto never
displayed.
He became calmer, less hyperactive. Had the combined efforts
of all those healers and shamans performed a miracle? The answer,
sadly, was 'No'.
When I got back home after the bushmen's meeting at the UN,
I found that Rowan had slipped back into his old nonsensical
babble.
His obsessions, emotional and physical incontinence (at three,
he was still not toilet-trained) were all as bad as before,
if not worse.
There was, however, one word he'd been saying each day as
he waited for me to come home: 'Horse.'
So that evening, in the dying evening light, I took him walking
in the wood once more. Straight away he headed through the
trees towards the pasture. This time I didn't try to stop him.
As soon as he was through the fence, he made a beeline for
Betsy. Just as he had before, he threw himself on the ground
in front of her hooves before I could stop him.
And again the miracle happened. Down
went her head in voluntary obeisance. She began to lick and
chew, spontaneously submitting to my autistic son.
'Horse,' he said delightedly as she snuffed at him. 'Horse.'
The following day I went to see my neighbour, Stafford, and
explained the eerie connection I had observed between his mare
and my son. He gave me the key to his saddle room right then
and there.
I broke all the rules - I had to. The first time I took Rowan
to the barn to saddle up Betsy, he went berserk.
He was climbing on the gates to the stalls, knocking over
bottles and pots, repeatedly slamming the door to the feed
room, chasing the barn cat, yelling, squealing and swinging
his dolls round and round in both hands like medieval balls
and chains, thumping them into the big brown mare as he ran
up and down the barn's central alleyway.
But she stood like a rock, moving not a muscle, even when
he darted in and out under her belly as I placed the heavy
saddle (an outsized one with room for us both) on her broad
back.
He pulled hard on her tail as I was tightening the cinch and
grabbed at her lower lip even as I slipped the bit into her
mouth.
'Do you want to get up?' I asked him, not expecting a response.
'Up!' It was the first time I'd received a direct answer to
a direct question. I bent down, scooped him up and put him
in the saddle. Immediately, the flailing and shouting stopped.
His grin was so wide it seemed to stretch
off the sides of his face and into the air on either side.
I put my foot in the stirrup and swung up behind him, one
arm holding his solid little body steady, the other picking
up the reins.
I clicked my tongue and Betsy walked past the open gate towards
the wide pasture. Then I paused, reining in for a moment, wondering
which direction to take.
'Go!' said Rowan, impatient. 'You want Betsy to go?' 'Go!'
he repeated. This was amazing. 'To the pond? Or to the woods?'
'Pond!' I'd never experienced back-andforth conversation with
Rowan like this. So to the pond it was, Rowan giggling with
delight as Betsy, a bigstriding horse, walked briskly out across
the pasture.
Once at the water, we stopped again. A blue heron was standing
at the far end of the pond. It regarded us nervously, then
flapped its great wings and took off.
'Heron,' said Rowan spontaneously. He must have recognised
it from books or wildlife videos. But again, this kind of commenting
on his environment was new - completely new. Scarcely able
to believe what I was hearing, I turned Betsy around.
'Shall we go back to the barn or to our house?'
'Back to the barn!' Was this echolalia or a real directive?
We set off back towards the barn, the long green pasture stretching
away before us. Then an idea hit me. It wasn't safe, but. .
.
'Do you want to walk or run?' 'Run!' Again, this could be
echolalia or did he mean it? Either way, he might as well know
what the word meant. 'OK,' I said, and clapped heels to Betsy's
sides. Taken by surprise, she reared back on her hind legs,
then rocketed forward.
Rowan shrieked, clung to me and laughed maniacally as the
ground flew by beneath us in a green blur. I prayed to God
that Betsy wouldn't stumble, shy or trip. Seconds later, we
pulled up at the barn, Rowan's laughter pealing off the walls.
'Run!' he ordered me. 'More run!' I could hardly believe this,
but run we did, Betsy flying forward, Rowan laughing and laughing,
his voice high and bright on the dry October breeze.
We pulled up at the gate to the barn. 'Whoa, Betsy,' I said.
'Betsy stop,' said Rowan. Then, quite spontaneously: 'That
was fun!'
I dismounted, lifted Rowan down. 'More Betsy!' he protested
as I put him on the ground. This was more cognitive speech
than I'd ever heard him utter. He began to cry.
Betsy stood, not moving a muscle, head down in the submissive
gesture.
'Don't worry,' I said. 'Betsy's tired now. We'll give her
a bath with the hose, then come back and ride her tomorrow.
Then we'll give Betsy some food.'
'Give Betsy some food!' Rowan laughed, abruptly changing mood,
jumping up and down as I put away the saddle and bridle.
Before putting her into her stall to feed her, I made a suggestion.
'Give Betsy a hug and say thank you for letting us ride.'
Without hesitation, Rowan opened his arms and hugged Betsy's
head, which was hanging low enough for him to reach. Then he
gave her a kiss.
As he did so, an expression of extraordinary gentleness came
over her - a certain softening of the eye, a blissful half-closing
of the eyelid with its long black lashes.
Something passed between them, a directness
of communication that I knew that I - passionate horseman though
I was - could never experience.
We watched Betsy finish her grain, then snort, give her brown
body a shake and walk slowly back to the pasture where the
other horses stood watching.
As she reached the gateway where they clustered, Betsy's ears
went back and, teeth bared, she ran at them, scattering them,
planting two back hooves hard on the rump of a young stallion
who didn't get out of her way quickly enough.
It was as if she were saying: 'I might be gentle with the
kid, but don't think I'm not still the boss of you all!'
'That was fun!' said Rowan again. Was that from a film or
had he thought it up?
Either way, he was using it appropriately, telling me what
he thought. The door into Rowan's world had opened a tiny crack.
From that day the germ of an idea began to take root in my
mind and once there, it refused to budge. Might there be some
way of combining the only two things that had so far helped
my son: horses and shamanic healing?
Was there a place in the world that combined
horses and healing at the centre of its culture?
The horse itself had, I knew, evolved during the ice age somewhere
out on the great Mongolian steppe. Some research revealed the
word shaman, meaning 'he who knows', originated in the same
area.
Mongolia. The place where, 6,000 years ago, the horse had
first been domesticated. A country where, I now read, shamanism,
along with Buddhism, was the state religion.
What if we were to take Rowan there? Get on horseback and
ride across that vast, primordial grassland from healer to
healer, shaman to shaman? What if Rowan's autism, instead of
shutting down our lives, instead of signalling the end of all
adventure, of all fun, could be the gateway to the greatest
adventure of all? 'No,' said Kristin, when I told her of my
idea.
'No way. Absolutely not. I can't believe you'd even suggest
such a thing! You must be mad!'
'Maybe now's the time to do something mad,' I replied.
'Rupert! We have an autisitic child. And you're saying that
somehow we're going to fly to Mongolia, get on horses and ride
from shaman to shaman? I'm supposed to seriously consider this?'
We went to bed angry with each other that night, and I knew
better than to raise the subject with her again. Instead I
started dreaming - and planning. I contacted shamans and began
a correspondence with a Siberian healer who told me about the
beneficial effects of washing in Mongolia's sacred waters.
I found a young documentary-maker named Michel who offered
to accompany us to film the journey if we went ahead with the
plan.
I emailed a tour operator in Mongolia, a man called Tulga
who specialised in unusual, back-of-beyond trips, to ask if
he could find out which shamans we might see and whether they
thought they could help a boy like Rowan.
Gradually, slowly, a plan began to take shape. Kristin moved
from 'No way!' to 'We'll see'.
|
'Hell!' she said one night, finding me hunched over
the computer, obsessively tapping the names of Mongolian
lakes into Yahoo and Google. 'You're really going to
do this, aren't you?'
'I am,' I replied. 'I mean we - we are.' Next morning
there was an email from Tulga saying that if I wanted,
he could bring his own son on the trip with us. He
had been thinking it over, he wrote, and it seemed
that the two boys might get along. I doubted it. Rowan
had never made a friend and couldn't relate to other
children.
Kristin read the email over my shoulder. 'All right,
Ru,' she said. 'I'll come. I don't know how we'll make
it work. But if you can pull it off, I'll be there.
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?'
She laughed. 'Who knows, maybe the
shamans will be able to toilet-train him!
The first major hurdle had been
cleared. We were going to Mongolia.
|
From The Horse Boy: A Father's Miraculous
Journey To Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson, published by
Viking on March 5 2009.
Story sourced from The
Daily Mail
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