I think you can guess at least some of my wishes.

Number One.

I wish Jamie were alive.

(Hey, this is a wish, why not go all out?)

I want to hold Jamie again, be smiled at by him again---that shy smile, that reminds you of a deer it's so hesitant, so precious. I want to walk with him again, swim with him again. I want to be scratched and bitten by him again. I have no idea how I would handle him at eighteen---he towered over me at fifteen...but past the raging hormones of adolescence, most autistics settle down.

As long as it's a wish, why not wish him cured of his autism? To talk, to tell me he loves me? Yet...would that really be Jamie? Would I recognize a talking Jamie as Jamie? I might make it a two-part wish---to come back as an autistic child, only to have it wear off in two weeks...and for him to be as fully functional as any other eighteen-year-old.

Yet is that being selfish?

How many of you saw the BUFFY premiere this season? Of Buffy being brought back from the dead? Of how she would never bring herself to tell the friends who brought her back, via witchcraft---that they called her back from Heaven?

Would I do the same for Jamie?

God, and only God, has the wisdom to choose in this instance. I don't.

Which brings me to Wish Number Two.

That Eric be cured of his autism.

That a miracle cure be developed to cure anybody of autism, so all will be spared that most puzzling of conditions. I would wish for Eric to be able to communicate with us, to tell us when something's bugging him, to l us he loves us, or hates us, or can't stand us---anything's better than maddening hand motions (no, sign language didn't take) or the occasional scream.

For him to be whole. I don't love him the less for his autism, but I can wish him better....to be able to function as well as any human.

Surely wanting my son to be whole is not--wrong? Any more than wishing a blind son to see, a deaf child to hear, a crippled child to walk?

Third wish: very cliched, but I would wish to be wealthy. Yes, I know the bit about the camel through the eye of the needle, etc. Yet it would free us from so many cares.

The first two wishes would be miracles; but this would only be extremely unlikely. With wealth, I could hire someone to watch Eric at all times, giving him much more freedom. We could have an isolated home with high fences that he could roam without doing harm to anyone.

Brian would be able to do anything his bright mind conceived. The sky would be the limit.

This is selfish, I know, but I could spend all my time with my family, and not worry about cubicle-dom and work that is (sometimes) interesting but not essential to me.

I could contribute to charities, to good works and be magnanimous, in ways that would really make a difference...

I know the only way to wealth is to work for it. That nothing is given you that easily...still, it would be my wish.

Hah! There's some truth to the old stories. For myself, three wishes would be enough. So let me make a more general one....to benefit everyone.

I wish for peace in the Middle East. That the Palestinian-Israeli conflict come to a peaceful end, with a mutual respect for each country's boundaries, and a shared Jerusalem. That there be no more suicide bombings or border skirmishes. That somehow, they learn to live together!

I know, I know. But that's not a miracle, just, like the wealth, extremely unlikely....

I suppose my fifth wish should be a cure for AIDS, but although a horror and a plague, it's not quite the death sentence it once was, and there are many other things that need to be cured.

So instead I would wish we would come in contact with Another Civilization, out among the stars---a peaceful one, one interested in lifting us to their level, one that would give us so much knowledge that many diseases, including AIDS, would be cured, as well as giving our psychology its Copernican revolution. That would open the universe to us, give us an idea of our true place in the cosmos.

And that our civilization would survive the shattering shock, rather than be swallowed by it, as many of the native American cultures were swallowed by Western civilization. That we might have something to contribute...

That's my fifth and final wish.

So, if you ever get Alladin's lamp---email me, please.