When I climbed the stairs out of the subway this morning and began heading west to my studio, fog completely obscured the Manhattan skyline. I’m no stranger to fog, whether metaphorical or actual. In northern California where I grew up, fog was a constant. Each morning the fog would cover the mountains near our house, but by 11:00AM it would have lifted. I feel a certain nostalgia for fog. As I walked the four blocks to my studio this morning I thought about how, when we can’t see something we often assume it isn’t there or what we assume is there, actually isn’t. Had I not known fog was covering an entire thriving metropolis called Manhattan, I would not have been able to imagine it. That’s the beauty of fog, it usually lifts and when it does, it often reveals surprising things.
This has been my experience with my daughter and autism. Autism was, for a great many years, like the fog, obscuring the child within. I kept trying to lift the fog, thinking that if I could do so, I would “find” my daughter. Then I began to realize the “fog” was my thinking. The way I thought about autism was obscuring my daughter. My daughter has always been there, just like Manhattan is and when the fog lifts I can see her in all her magnificent glory.
Emma – 2004
Emma's Hope Book 
I like your viewpoint and the way you tied the fog together to the autism and appreciation of your daughter.
Thanks, I actually started FOUR other posts and just couldn’t finish any of them, this was my oh-to-hell-with-it-write-what-you-want post!
I guess you found the best formula.
Up here we rarely get fog, so I’ll use snow as my metaphor. When the clouds come down low, and snow starts to fall, as it did yesterday, all the peaks are obscured. I think of Emma as one of those peaks: way up high, so high as to be invisible when it snows, but when the sun comes out and shines on her, the true self is revealed.
I love when the storm passes and the following day it’s so cold and the sky so blue and the mountains are covered in blankets and blankets of gleaming white snow! It is so beautiful! XXX
That was beautiful. She is also beautiful.
Thank you so much. 🙂
Nice .
No fog today in your home town
Cold sunshine. The trees smell amazing .
Glad your safe .
Bronwyn
Hey birthday girl. Always happy to hear about the weather in my old neck of the woods! XX
(((Ariane))) Love your beautiful metaphor!!
((((Leah))))
Ohhh!! she’s so little!!!
I like a good metaphor =)
ox
And she had the cutest chipmunk cheeks!
Excellent analogy. Indeed, a fog hangs over much of society.
This post reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem A Cabin in the Clearing.
“Than smoke and mist who better could appraise
the kindred spirit of an inner haze?”
I’m reading Robert Frost’s poems to Em at night before she goes to sleep. Funny that you cited his poem!
Love this post. Beautiful.