Me, me, me, and the Mission to Lars

Here's a really vain photograph of me Djing (definitely really badly, more playing records in public really) at the kiddy festival, Camp Bestival, last year. I found this randomly and my first thought, given how much I am concentrating on Tom and his relation to my world, and the world in general, my first thought was, Jeez, I have had a big ol' go at the Buffet of Life, I definitely took The Big Plate. I have gone back, again and again, for more. I am a fat fucker with life.

My Dad gave me some amazing photos of Tom this weekend but I can't make my scanner work, so I've gone for my default setting: ME.

What hit me about Tom this weekend was how much he enjoyed being included in, and an important part of, normal life. I know I said this before, and it shames me every time I go there, but it's been too easy not to think about Tom while I've been slurping up all the good times. And when he was here at the weekend all I could think was I love you so much, I want to protect you so much, I feel guilty, and finally, I know he'll step up to the plate with his Metallica challenge.

I spoke to a woman from the Fragile X Society tonight and she said that she thought we'd have massive problems getting Tom to face his ultimate dream, to meet Lars.

But I honestly, perhaps stupidly, believe that Tom can break through his autism and his communication barriers and his fears, and just fucking fight through all the challenges that stand between him and meeting Lars.

We're going to take it baby steps, take Tom up through a ladder of his heroes, from Uncle Pete to Lars, and when he finally gets there he'll have a new confidence that has nothing to do with diagnoses and medically imposed restrictions, he will have been on a big heavy journey, in the strictest tradition of the roadtrip genre, and he will arrive at the destination a better, bigger lived, man. And we, me and Will, as his family, will have grown to know him better.

It will happen, and it will be good, and it will be important, in its own small way. All of us have big things to face here, not just Tom, but me and William too. When the TV channels rejected us one of the reasons was that we were not emotional enough.

How anyone can suppose this won't be emotional. Jeeez

Five gins in, so possibly this is a crap post.

But it's all real, for me.