My Boy Sherlock

You were three when we first realised there was something wrong… you'd always been a quiet and unsocial child, always preferring your own company to that of your brother.

You would never play, but sat in the corner of the nursery for hours on end… starring… unmoving… thinking. It used to drive me to despair, trying to figure out what was going on in that mind of yours.

My little boy…

My boy Sherlock…

I'd have given up anything to keep you safe, both you and your brother Mycroft. But the hardest part of being a mother is coming to the realisation that you can't protect your children forever… eventually there comes a time when you just have to let go and hope for the best… at least shut away in your own little world you were safe for the duration of childhood tranquilities, and the innocence of dreams.

When you started school… that marked both the beginning and the end… the other children didn't understand your genius, and so you were always such a lonely child, my baby boy… but you never seemed to notice, being alone never seemed to bother you.

You never spoke, and so took your lessons in silence, reluctantly memorising your letters and numbers just to please your long suffering teachers, who pushed you tirelessly for hours to try to get you to conform.

Still, you never did your homework.

You never socialised with the other children.

You never uttered a word, except to scowl angrily, and tell anyone to 'go away' if they ever dared to disrupt your trail of thought.

There was always something seemingly far more intriguing to occupy your mind… and you used to have this remarkable knack of seeing things which you couldn't possibly have known, or which couldn't really have been there… but somehow they always were, it just took my baby boy to find them.

You would find interest in the most unseemly of things.

Autism they called it, of a high functioning sort, but even so we never knew if you were ever going to be able to read and write… and our whole world fell apart on the day of your diagnosis.

Of course we were then to find out that it wasn't that you weren't capable of achieving everything which your classmates set out to do, but instead that you chose to disregard them as unimportant in the whole scheme of things… you were destined for better things.

Whilst they were busy whittling their young lives away, learning letters, and numbers, and arithmetic – reeling off academic technicalities like tiny, mindless machines, you were watching, waiting, biding your time, until the moment was right to prove your brilliance.

You were seven when you stormed into my bedroom, early one Saturday morning, Agatha Christie book in hand, and raving about the inconsistencies in the plot – of how easy it had been to figure out.

Apparently you'd been up all night reading… and I realised then that you were special… my life would never be quite the same again.

For I no longer feared for your future, after that day.

I no longer lay awake worrying all night that you weren't meeting your attainment grades, or on a par with the rest of the children in your class.

One way or another I knew you'd be alright.

You'd prove them all wrong in the end.

My boy Sherlock.