Noticing

Pushing Coraline along in her pram in our favourite park last weekend we passed one of Coraline’s preschool classmates going past on his bike with his grandpa pushing him. I recognised them from the queue outside preschool each morning. As we passed each other he shouted out, “Coraline”.

The way he said her name was infused with exhuberance, happiness, excitement to see her and an air of, “oh look Coraline’s here”. I can still hear the way he called her name out. That was it. The moment passed quickly as we each kept walking in opposite directions. It made me so happy. He knew her name. He knew who she was, and he was so happy to see her. She was one of his gang that he knows. It made me feel, Coraline is loved by her classmates.

When I drop Coraline off to preschool it is a silent world as we wait in the queue though I know she is happy to go in. When we go home it is a silent walk home, punctuated by squawks or her pressing buttons on one of her musical toys. I don’t know how preschool was or what she did, though the teachers do say briefly. These days, due to Covid times, we all wait in a distanced queue with quite quick drop offs and pick ups. I know from Coraline’s mood she enjoys each day there. I was explaining this to my friend who Coraline and I were on a walk with at the time. I said to her that the little boy was from Coraline’s preschool and I see him and the other kids calling out and running about together in the queue each morning at preschool, and that Coraline sits in her pram in the queue as she is not yet standing independently or walking. We observe the other children with curiosity and interest. “It’s about being comfortable in our difference,” I said to her. She liked that. Her son has been diagnosed with ASD. She had said to me earlier on our walk, “My son did not talk until later, and I am grateful for what this taught me. Now I don’t take it for granted. I think, otherwise, I might have taken it for granted if he was chattering away from day-to-day, and I would not have been so fully present when he was talking, which I am now.”