Inappropriate THIS
Inappropriate this I love Caillou. For those who are unacquainted, this is a cartoon show about a little boy by this name, geared to toddlers. “Yes,and….” you might say. Well, my twenty-five year old daughter loves Caillou, too. That statement might seem unusual in the world of “typicals,” those whose wiring is neurologically consistent with […]
Caregiver’s Lament
I’m on the couch, somewhere in between sitting and reclining. My right leg is extended out in front of me, clad in a cast to the knee and elevated on an ottoman with a large sofa cushion on top. My left foot is resting on a stool. This is a position I’ve spent most of […]
The Man in the Grocery Line
Certain special needs are invisible, or really hard to spot. This can include Autism, in some people. That isn’t Bink’s reality, though. Anyone of the neurotypical persuasion who takes more than a minute to observe my adult daughter will understand that something’s up. The way she carries herself, her frequent self-talk and singing, her hands […]
BRIDGES
We are pausing on a bridge over the dwindling stream that crawls through our large, local dollop of green, Bird Park, because we always pause, she and I, on every little bridge that spans any river anywhere, so she can look down from first one side, then the other, at that liquid light which is […]
In Times Like These: Silver Linings of Caregiving
THANK YOU, TEDIUM In the midst of the interminable news; all-bad-all-the-time, chaos and tragedy, aftermath and predictions, close ups and sound bites that feed worry and starve hope, invite helplessness, inside this swirl, this modern quotidian, there is something else, not exactly calm, but steadier ground, and I, who have recently allowed my own […]
WHO WILL SING? Autism, Adulthood, and Home
WHO WILL SING? She gets older, this daughter of mine, as do I, and the heavy question behind each day, and woven now into each year: what about when I’m gone? She can’t live with you forever I’m told, and I know this to be true. Some of her peers, twenty-ish, thirty-ish, middle aged, […]
Yogabilities™: Peace as a civil right
When I tell people that one of my occupations is teaching Yoga, there are some common responses. Oh, I love Yoga! I take it at the gym/the cool studio in the upscale shopping center down the street or I can’t do Yoga, I’m not flexible enough. or, perhaps I read an article about […]
Welcome to Autismville
AUTISMVILLE I can’t tell you it is an unpleasant thing to live in the quirky neighborhood, on the far side of the river, a good ways from the thickest part of the frantic throng. Here, we are daily looking up, fixating and stimming on green minnow leaves that shimmer against the waters of the […]
Dots and Dashes
She speaks in code, Bink does, and I endeavor to decipher. She works rather hard, in her neuro-atypical way, at making sense of the world. As her mother and Chief Advocate and Interpreter, it is my dharma to help the world make sense of her. We walk parallel to the others, next to but ever […]
7 AM ( more autism awareness)
7am I entered your room quietly, with loving stealth, stood inches from where you slept curled into the warmth of your sleep nest, pausing one round moment to take in the sight of you, just to hug you with my eyes before we began the ritual we’d perfected over twenty four years of mornings. There […]