My friend Elizabeth King Gerlach's book of compelling vignettes about her son, entitled Just This Side of Normal. Available at Amazon.com. See below for her other book, or go to her site: http://www.fourleafpress.com/ for all of her amazing work.

I love this bracelet for a special month around here, made with findings from Artbeads:Artbeads.com

Then here are the game pieces by the fabulous Tari Sasser of Claybuttons.com. Tari Sasser of Claybuttons.comYou can order them in two sizes, with loops on the ends if you wish, and in many more colors than this, as she makes them to order for you! Tari just filled an order of a hundred for a lady who is involved with autism. I am so proud to know this!

Actually, the month of April is not all that foolish for us here (despite the way it starts, with April Fool's Day), but rather, an exciting and serious month. Each year, parents and family members, and caretakers of people with autism as well, get together and mark April as Autism Awareness Month.

Although there wasn't a day that didn't go by which wasn't complicated and difficult when our children were younger, there wasn't much of a feeling of accomplishment in the world community for years and years concerning autism. Nobody was sure what it was, we were getting jokes about our children being "artistic" 'way after that should have passed by. Every UPS guy who came to the door had to listen to my question "Did you happen to see Rainmain at the movies?" when he appeared puzzled by my childrens' behavior. Then the light would dawn and he would nod and grasp why my son or sons were shrieking like crazies, and racing around clad like little animals in what was supposedly a regular family house.

This continues to be complicated and we often have what I would call hard days. Or weeks...

When the organization called CAN came along, things started to fall into place. Our first famous representative from CAN was the lovely Rene Russo. She had just been in the movie "Tin Cup". CAN was a group based out in CA, and stood for Cure Autism Now. The head of it has a son with autism and is a film director. Where regular people cannot get things done, Hollywood people actually accomplish stuff, if they want to. CAN was great. It pulled everyone together finally and we got some publicity. AND a bit of money finally, for the first time, for research.

Our next representative was Anthony Edwards from the TV show ER. He was enourmously popular. They knew how to pick good people with an air of compassion to represent us and soon we were not hiding in the background any more. Regular people began to know what autism was. It was freeing. Phew! FINALLY.

Previously, just to note what driven people do in desperate circumstances to assist other fellows in arms:

My friend wrote her watershed book, Autism Treatment Guide, by Elizabeth Gerlach, listing every single treatment available for autism, and her beautiful book of personal vignettes, Just This Side of Normal.

We didn't know we were home free until every show on TV had a kid on it who played a child with autism, at least once a TV season. It was interesting to watch for us, not silly.

We were popular. A popular cause.

Now as a group, we are mostly under the aegis of Autism Speaks. They are a great organization who used to be a part of CAN in some way but I am not certain how. Anyway, they blended and then took over.

I am proud to be a mother, and Jim is proud to be a father, of a couple of severely autistic kids. This has been a hard year but we will keep going. This is our month. Happy Autism Awareness Month to all of us.