One of my son's obsessions is smelling my hair. For some reason or another, Josh LOVES to smell my hair. His favorite thing is to pull my head to his nose and take a good long inhale and then tap it gently with his hands. Then he usually laughs and smells again.
The other day Josh was walking toward his school bus in the morning. When he was about 5 feet from the bus he stopped, turned around and then came back to me, saying loudly enough for the bus driver to hear, "Wanna smell Mama's hair!" What could I do? It was easier to let the kid take quick sniff of my hair than to convince him to get on the bus without it. Maybe it gave confidence for the day. I don't know.
I wonder if his sense of smell is important to him because he's visually impaired. That's what they say, right? That if you have a sense that is underdeveloped or curtailed that you start to strengthen other senses. I do know that when Josh was young, he had an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. High pitched sounds like babies crying or certain sirens made him scream and cry and hold his ears. We also went through eras where we put him on a "sensory diet" with routines where I would "brush his arms and legs" and do certain kinds of squeezing on his arms and shoulders to help him to feel calm. Yeah, I guess raising Josh has been quite an education in how the senses work differently for some people. Sensory differences are, after all, a huge part of the autism experience.
But I really have no idea why he specifically loves smelling hair so much but I do know that he has always been especially drawn to long, black hair worn in ponytails like I often wear my hear. Years ago we were at a one of the girls' soccer games. Hope was playing and I was managing both Josh and Anna on the sidelines. Josh seemed happy in his folding chair with his headphones and ipod so I allowed myself to wander a little distance away to be with Anna. A few minutes later I looked up to check on Josh and saw that he had gotten up and was walking toward another Asian mom with a long, black ponytail. It was clear that hair sniffing was on his mind. In that moment, time slowed down like at the high point of an action movie. I found myself yelling "nooooooooooo, Jossssssssssshhhhhhh". I flew through the air almost sideways like in a John Woo movie (but without the guns) in a futile attempt to keep my son from grabbing this random mom's hair and smelling it. I can't remember if the lady was understanding or not. My memory ends there.
Thinking about that memory makes me realize that Josh has been into hair for a long time. And we've been trying to train Josh to ask before he grabs people's heads or hair. I realize that having a young man say to you "Wanna smell your hair please" isn't exactly normal young adult social interaction but it's better to teach him to ask for permission / consent first, am I right?
The other morning I was helping him to brush his teeth and wash his face. Standing behind him I put my face up to his head and smelled his hair. It smelled just the way I remember it smelling when he was a baby. It smelled like sweetness and connection and intimacy and memory. In the split second post sniff, I was filled with deep love. It reminded me of that time when I felt like I heard God say, "Would you raise this child for me?" And like the first time, I said, "Yes, it would be a privilege."
