We can’t wait to see how this project turns out. It’s been backburnered in favor of even more Scooby Doo drawings, but hopefully he’ll come back to it soon.
Month: March 2013
Saturday Moment: “Is THAT the Holy Child?!” The Pieces Fall into Place at Mass.
Our church as it looked in January 2013
For many reasons going to Mass is a production for us (I documented some of our more memorable visits), and so we do not attend as regularly as I would like. The politics of the Vatican in recent years did little to stoke my religious fervor but we do make frequent trips to the empty church to say prayers for those we love, and in particular to remember the young friend my son lost to leukemia last year. The choice of Pope Francis I last week led us to venture to Mass this past Saturday afternoon, in honor of the forgiveness, renewal, and the promise of a fresh start his papacy and this Easter season may hold for all of us. It didn’t hurt that our boy, after a sigh, seemed willing to brave the crowd if it meant a chance to recall his friend. So off we went, arriving early so we could get a seat with a good view of the altar and the Blessed Sacrament.
We usually sit in the front section a few rows back. Hanging from the vaulted ceiling high over and in front of the altar is a massive crucifix with a fairly graphic representation of Christ. It has always been there, in that spot. There we sat, with my boy and his iPod open to a picture of his friend. He had used the paint app to put a yellow halo on his head, and he held it up high so that it faced the Blessed Sacrament. As I reached up to lower his arm gently he looked at me in alarm, pointing to the crucifix as if seeing it for the first time.
“Is THAT Jesus?!” he said in a stage whisper. I nodded, two fingers presses to my lips to remind him to speak quietly and to keep myself from smiling.
“Is THAT the Holy Child?!” Suddenly, the connection between Christmas and Easter began to forge in his mind.
“What HAPPENED?!” I told him we would talk about it later but the questions kept coming.
“Is he dead? Who killed him? See the blood?” He turned the iPod so his angel friend could see, too. That almost did me in.
Finally, in the car I did my best to tell him the full narrative, Christmas to Easter, promising him that we will go back during Holy Week and see the stations of the Cross that tell the entire story of the Crucifixion. He was wary, and raised his hand, palm toward me.
“I’m good.” Then he thought for a minute, playing something in his head. I mentioned that we have a movie at home that tells the story of Jesus.
“Wait! I get it!” And then he did a perfect imitation of the announcer’s voice on the preview from one of his Christmas videos:
“JESUS of NAZARETH!! That’s him!” It only took, like, fifteen years.
When we returned home he bounded up the stairs to say hello to his sister. She came downstairs, laughing.
At that point he didn’t even notice the crucifix.
“What happened? He came up to my room, jumped on my bed and said church was AWESOME. He never does that when he comes home from anything, ever.” I told her everything, and she went up to his room and hugged him. A while later he emerged and called down to me, standing at the railing where I could see him.
“Mom, does Jesus make our hearts happy?”
His smile, his voice, and the way he had his hands clasped over his heart told me it wasn’t really a question.
The Mystery of 2009 Returns
Tonight we went out for an early dinner, and I could not convince the boy to tear his eyes away from the iPod. Usually he will at least look out the window at the cows on the hillside. Nothing doing. He met my eyes and said with frustration, “Mom, I am just too afraid of the world.”
“Why?”
“It’s just since 2009, when I was 14 and I saw the dates.”
“What dates?”
“Here, let me show you.”
He taps gently, furiously, and precisely on my phone, spending a lot of time on the Wurdle app, and then hands it back to me and sighs.
“Never mind, I can’t find it.” But then he takes it back and opens the calendar. Nothing remarkable.
“Dates. Birthdays. Worrying about death.” He hands back the phone and puts his earbuds back in.
Conversation over.
This is the beauty of blogging. I can go back to the summer of 2009 and see what I wrote – because the dates and the fear and this specific kind of withdrawal were all new to us then. But even after reading what I wrote then I don’t really know why all of those fears showed up today or how long they will stay – it could be as simple as the disruption of a half day at school or the disappearance of his memory bracelet from his dead friend. Or perhaps it is the big birthday that is coming up soon – or maybe it’s my worry about that reflected on him. He has my feelings before I do sometimes, I think.
Spring is coming; we’ll figure it out.
The ART’s “The Glass Menagerie” – a Southern Velvet Clash of Cultures, Lives, Centuries & People
Thoughts from our other blog on how old stories take on new meaning through the lens of parenting.
Snowstorms and all manner of events tried to sidetrack my visit to the American Repertory Theater’s production of The Glass Menagerie. After much ado I managed to go with one friend and meet another for a 2pm matinee on a snowy Saturday in February. I am not a theater critic – if you want to read a brilliant review of this play Ben Brantley is your man. I’m writing because it created a moment in my life I won’t soon forget. My memory of the play was of Kate Hepburn’s eccentric and rather monstrous Amanda Wakefield and a kind of over-the-top Streetcar Named Desire-ish play – sort of like watching a deep south train wreck in slow motion. I did not reread it or watch the movie again because I wanted to experience it in as new a way as possible – I knew that Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and…
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Saturday Moment: Going to the Movies is a Contact Sport
We are movie people. When our kids were small they didn’t have special showings for kids and people with autism like they do now. I think it’s great that they do, but we’ve kind of developed own set of tools and rituals that get us through the movie experience. For many years our boy spent every movie happily on my lap, with my arms wrapped around him and his hands firmly over his ears. That was how he managed the sensory overload of a loud movie. When he moved to his own seat he would do one of two things (after eating exactly half of his popcorn and giving the rest to Dad), lay his coat on the armrests and go to sleep half leaning on me and resting on the coat, or put his head on my shoulder and have me put my hands over his ears while he watched. I am in awe his use of sleep as a coping mechanism when he is overwhelmed or distinterested. How many people do you know who can sleep soundly – snore, even – through The Avengers, Thor, Iron Man 2, and 8 innings of a Red Sox Game at Fenway Park?
It’s been a lackluster winter for family movies (with the notable exceptions of Life of Pi and Lincoln, both of which he sat through, riveted and perfect) so we haven’t been in months. Finally, cabin fever drove us out of the house to see Jack the Giant Slayer and this time the boy and I found ourselves watching shoulder to shoulder as I waited for him to lean over and nod off as the beanstalk wound its way into the sky. But the lovely girl and the prospect of romance kept him awake this time, and he kept whispering to me “Do you think Jack will marry the princess? Are they in love? Are they going to get married? Will her father the king approve?” Usually the only questions I get are whether this is a short, medium or long movie, so the specific plot questions and the arm tapping and hand squeezing and his turning my head to look at him when he spoke to me were all new in this setting, and most welcome (but his brother did move one seat down).
If you sit in the front you can put your feet up and no one cares.
But the best part was when the grotesque giants made their first appearance and I instinctively raised my hand to cover his eyes and at the exact same moment he did the same, covering my eyes with his hand. There we were, side by side, with our hands clapped firmly over each other’s eyes, trying to keep each other from being scared. He knew it was funny, too, even as he kept his hand firmly in place until we agreed that we could look at the screen again.
I know it’s a milestone, whatever just happened there. It’s a new level of reciprocity and sophistication, a point at which he now wants to take care of me the way I try to take care of him. It’s what we wanted and worked for but not necessarily what I expected to happen, because at some point expectations get to be counter productive when you are raising kids, whether they are typical, autistic, or anything else. Goals are essential, but expectations just get in the way of seeing and responding to what is right in front of you, and if you are lucky someone will put their hand over your eyes during the scary parts.
Snow Day: Living by Snowlight
Breakfast by snowlight
I love the quiet of a house buried in snow. Skylights are blanketed so it’s a little cave-like and the only light is what comes in from the blizzard outside. And because it’s March there is a bit of warmth to the white, and the assurance that it will all begin melting tomorrow. The bitterness of winter is gone, in ways I cannot begin to explain right now (it is a snow day after all – we have some serious laying around to do). The boys are happy, and when Dad and daughter arrive later everyone will be home and “tucked up tight.” Those small phrases pop into my vernacular all the time (scripted speech? Probably).
by Gail Haley
The older the children get, the more we seem to quote the books we read to them when they were small. Perhaps this one most of all: A Story A Story – let it come, let it go.
A Trail of French Fries Leads the Way
A trail of fries
I took this photo in the parking lot of the Lurie Center in Lexington, Massachusetts, a branch of Massachusetts General Hospital that serves children and adults on the Autism Spectrum. These are iconic fries, a not-so-secret symbol of what it often takes to get an ASD kid to and through a doctor’s appointment; I can only imagine the tears spilled when they hit the pavement. The clinicians at the Lurie Center are among the best in the world and yet even the skilled and gentle support they offer can’t always extend out into the parking lot where worried parents and anxious kids struggle – sometimes mightily – to fit yet another specialist appointment into their lives.
But with this photo I see and offer up hope that persistence pays off. Not always, not when we want it to, but it is hard for me to adequately convey my joy at seeing these fries and knowing that they were not going to cause me the meltdown we once might have had just seeing them ice cold on the ground. My boy looked at them and remarked, “Someone’s been to McDonald’s!” and then danced – literally, with iPod – toward the entrance. Next to the door there is a wisely placed trash can, which he glanced into and noted, a little somber now, “There’s the box.” Some part of him knew and felt the pain of the child whose fries had met the wrong fate.
It was a lively day in the waiting room, with several families with antsy children waiting to be greeted by doctors and therapists. We recognized one clinician as she came out to greet a child. We knew her from work we did as part of a research group a few years ago, and she delighted at seeing our boy. He spoke politely with her and then began to tease me about what he wanted from me in exchange for being brave about having his blood drawn (more research – that’s another post – and the covet du jour was yet another Scooby Doo movie) that day. I saw her look at him, and at me and as she listened to us negotiate I saw on her face a measure of disbelief that this could be the same boy she knew in 2009. She looked at me and lowered her voice and said, “Do you know how lucky you are?” And even though I said yes, later I had to stop and take stock of how far we have come from our french fries in the parking lot days. Our challenging times are by no means gone but they are different, and it is best not to dwell on what they are like now – they will return soon enough.
I Wouldn't Have Missed It 