It was the photo that first draw my attention: the big sister and little sister, with their bed-head hair and pink-and-purple pajamas, hugging each other happily. It was like a scene straight out of my house, and I'm a sucker for stories about sisters - so I began reading. The Huffington Post piece was, indeed about two close, loving little siblings - but, more specifically, about the writer-mom's concerns over how her youngest daughter's autism has affected her daughter Phaedra.
Neither of my girls has autism, but Janel Mills is such a gifted writer (and her older daughter, with her maternal, sensitive ways, reminded me so much of mine) that it wasn't difficult to feel what it would be like in this mother's shoes. And this portion of the story, with Mills' beautiful, simple description of what was going on in her younger daughter's mind, brought me to tears:
One day, as we were driving to my mom's house, Bella started having a full-blast, take-it-to-eleven, screeching meltdown because she dropped a toy somewhere in the car and neither she nor I could reach it. Phaedra hates the car meltdowns most of all because she can't go anywhere to escape them. Listening to Bella melt down hurts her physically (the screams are LOUD) and emotionally (she's a sensitive soul). When we finally pulled into my mom's driveway and I got Bella her toy, Phaedra asked me with a shaky voice why Bella reacted the way she did. I must have heard this or read this somewhere, because there's no way I was this clever on the spot, but this is what I told her:
"Everyone has a cup in their head. We pour all of our feelings, like happy, sad, mad, scared, anything, into that cup. Most people have regular-size cups. When you pour out your feelings into your cup, you have more than enough room for them. Bella has a cup, too, but her cup is little. When she pours her feelings out, her little cup can't hold all of them, and it overflows. Does that make sense, honey?"
Apparently it did, because she uses this story to explain to others how Bella is different. She shares it with teachers, friends, basically anyone who will stand still and listen to her talk about her family.
"My sister Bella has a little cup."
Previously: “No, I’m not ready yet”: A sister’s translation for her brother with autism and A mother’s story on what she learned from her autistic son
