Lesley is my only daughter and was born premature, low birth weight (about 2 pounds), the first of the twins (her brother was born 30 minutes later) and both have a form of autism known as Asperger's Syndrome.She is 16 years old now and the bravest soul I have ever met.
Lesley attends the local high school but will never get a regular diploma because she cannot do high school math. She will receive a life preparation diploma, I think, after she does her 12 years but her dreams, her hopes of a future life, extend far beyond the limits of our small Southern city.
Lesley wants to travel the world, beginning with the United States. She researches various areas of the country and reports all of the attractions and features to me, puts photos of different places on her computer desk top and asks me what I think of them. She talks of sailing around the world in a one-person sail boat (with a small motor in case of dead calms) and she wants to live alone, with perhaps a friendly dog for company.
Lesley also has a knack for writing. She has written several long stories of at least 12 chapters about the adventures of various brave animals or people from another dimension. Lesley loves the characters of Severus Snape and Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series, as well as Strider (Aragorn) in "Lord of the Rings." Not having grown up with a father (I divorced him many years ago for his cruelty and lack of support) she instead created an idealized one for herself out of parts of these heroic figures. Her only friends are the ones she makes up inside her head. She is lonely and cries about not having real-life friends, but I tell her to find friends, you must first be a friend, so we are working on her "people" skills, how to make eye contact and smile and say "hello" appropriately.
Lesley also has a penchant for science, both biological and chemical, and would like to bring alchemy back to the realm of viable scientific research if possible (I tell her it is not but, oh well.) Bottom line, her imagination is great and flexible and expands her world much farther than her actual education will allow.
My quest is to help enable Lesley to reach some of those distant stars to which her imagination and interests incline. I cannot bring fictional characters to life but I can show her how to create some of her own and perhaps turn it into real stories that can be read by others (currently, all versions get shredded before I can read them.)
Or perhaps I can help her get the GED and continue her education in some real scientific field, like animal science or botany. Whatever I can do to help her, she deserves the very best I can offer so she can one day do her best on her own.
Robert Browning once wrote, " A man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" Subsititute "girl's" for "man's" and there is my little Lesley, my only daughter and always my little girl. May God give me the strength and wisdom to help my daughter reach whatever heaven she desires. No one deserves it more.
