We Go With Him

The More Talk About Poetry and Autism, The Better

I really wanted to go into New York on Wednesday to attend this autism symposium as a friend was speaking and the program looked intriguing. I thought of rescheduling the Latin tutorial I have on Wednesday morning but decided not to as I had recently done that when Charlie was on spring break. As things turned out, only half the class (i.e., one student) showed up.

It only rains and it pours: Thursday, I went with Jim into New York and, over lunch, had a tremendous talk with Patricia, Katy and Kristen of Easter Seals.

We got back in good time before Charlie's bus. After an eagerly called for bike ride, I went to hear Priscilla Gilman read from her book The Anti-Romantic Child and found myself thinking about autism, poetry and my two favorite Romantic authors, John Keats and Heinrich von Kleist, and time and lyric poetry and the sublime and beauty. And, about the happy coincidence of Autism Awareness/Acceptance Month and National Poetry Month.

Jim has referred to Charlie on his bike as 'poetry in motion.'

With all this ferment of activity, Charlie is still awake with 2am nearing. He can (I feel sure) sense how today was very different, full of too many good ideas and great talk, much of it centered upon no one less than himself.

 

27 Miles (Literally & Otherwise)

 

Sunday morning, Jim and Charlie biked 11 miles with an uphill start in Jersey horse country under a gray sky. In the afternoon, they did 16 more only this time, the gray sky became a steady rain. They were past the half-ride mark and Jim did some improvising so they wouldn't have to walk their bikes over the old iron (and not terribly wide) bridge.

Also this weekend, I finally got myself to write reviews of some books by parents of autistic children.

I'm ready to sit on the couch and read a book (not about autism, though).

Charlie himself is still up as the clock turns past midnight.

Storm and Clean-up

The majority of the books you see are mine. They have been stacked in piles in a corner of our dining room since April, when Charlie got it into his head that all the bookshelves must come down. Jim has been enjoining me to go through the books and take out the ones I need so he can pack away the rest for the basement and we can reclaim a quarter of the dining room. I have been waffling and then, on Wednesday afternoon, Charlie, mad (understandably) that we had removed most of the 'blue Disney' album he has been excessively, obsessively, and only listening to for what seems like weeks -- and also not pleased by a trifecta of no dad home, Thursday off for Rosh Hashanah and ongoing days of wet weather -- threw his iPad, cleared tables, scattered the book piles, threw plastic containers.

Yes, our house is still furnished in such a way that a boy in a behavior storm can storm in, with mess created but that's about it.

Charlie stood for a long time, unmoving. I said something about him helping to pick things up 'when he was ready.'

After several minutes, he got his iPad and sat staring at it on the couch, then played one song, Paul Westerberg singing 'Born For Me.'

Then he got up and picked up some things and we restored the house to order together with one bonus: I finally weeded out the books I want to keep upstairs, and those due for boxing, and the basement.

 

In Memoriam Clara Claiborne Park

There's a little memorial to a mother of a child on the autism spectrum, Clara Claiborne Park, over at Care2.com by me. Park's 2002 book, Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism is one of my favorites; her first book, The Siege: The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child, was published in 1967, one of the first (if not the very first) accounts by a mother raising an autistic child at home. Charlie was just being diagnosed back in 1999 when Jim and I caught a segment on autism on some Oliver Sacks documentary. Clara Claiborne Park and her husband, a physics professor at Williams College, were interviewed, as was their youngest daughter, Jessica. I remember seeing the Parks walking around the town, Williamstown, where they lived and Jessica Park's paintings of their house and many buildings around it and felt a little frisson. 

Just five years prior, I had lived in Williamstown, on Route 7 which (I think) was referred to as Jessica Park's favorite route. I'd won a dissertation fellowship and was, indeed, finishing working on it, and applying for academic jobs, mostly in the Midwest. I'd met Jim that year (1994) and he was in his first year in a new position himself, at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm sure I saw Jessica Park working at her job in the faculty mailroom in Stetson Hall, and that I walked past the Parks' house several times. 

Yes, it was a different time. And yet---yet, over the years, I've taken much comfort in thinking I was living in such close proximity to the Parks and to the small Massachusetts town that has been home for all of Jessica Park's life. In my mind's eye, I'm still often walking up and down the hills and down to the town's very quaint main street. I remember waiting in line at the bank and seeing a man with a 3-year-old boy leaning against his father's legs and thinking about how Jim would like to have a little guy (or gal) hanging around with him.

It's all a world away now. We've been once to Williamstown to Charlie but he's not a mountain kind of guy, needing rather the expansiveness of the ocean and, of course, all that water. But the little town and the Berkshires and the brick buildings (if you're thinking 'New England college,' Williams is quintessentially it) are imprinted on my mind. 

One thing I always liked about The Siege was the feel in its pages of how slowly time passed, how many of Jessy's days (and her mother's) moved at the same pace as ours, really slowly with not much happening. Well, of course things were happening, just they tended to be the same things over and over, or just variations on them. So it is in our life with Charlie:

Walks, bike rides. Videos on the computer. Music on the computer. Rides in the white car to convenience stores. Rides in the white car to school. Rides in the white car to the beach. Swimming in the ocean. Sushi. For punctuation, the very occasional plucking at the bass guitar. McDonalds. Bedtime, at some point or other. Trips to go grocery shopping.

But wait a minute. Trips to the grocery store with Charlie 'n' me were a routine occurrence once prior to a major mishap at one store over a red box of brownie mix. We just haven't gone to supermarkets at all.

Thursday, Charlie asked to get sushi and so he and I went.

He'd had a good day, even with adjustments. His teacher had asked that he wear a swimsuit to school so they could swim at 9.30am. Charlie indeed wore one and then it turned out that they weren't able to go swimming at all; he was unruffled. He took a long nap in the late afternoon and was ready for his usual 10-mile bike ride with Jim afterwards. And then, the request for the white car, and the sushi.

Due to the aforementioned still-recent past event and some others, I was a little dubious and texted Jim so he'd know where we were. Charlie smiled as we went into the store and got a shopping basket. What should I hear but the voice of Chuck Berry rockin' and a-rollin'---just what we 'needed'; Charlie has, in the past, had some 'interesting' reactions to hearing old Chuck on CDs in the car. 

Charlie found his way to the sushi section, where only three packs of brown rice sushi remained. He looked for a moment; I shrugged. He moved down the aisle and a got a pack of watermelon and then a container of vanilla soy ice cream. I also got a big watermelon (why not; it was less than $3.00 and we were there). I asked the clerk if there might be any sushi in the back storerooms and there wasn't. And Charlie and I went back to the car and drove home.

It was very mundane.

I felt extremely pleased but didn't mention it to Charlie who settled back down to using the computer at home, and then asked for, you guessed it, a walk.

Somewhere in Exiting Nirvana, Park writes about how, over the years, she put notes and jottings on paper, bits of this and that---all about her daughter---into an old suitcase. She drew on all these small saved recollections, thoughts, observations, in writing her second book. Exiting Nirvana is not a long book, especially when you consider how many years----Jessica Park is 51 now---it covers. I like to think that book is an excellent distillation of all those bits from Park's suitcase; the essence of her experience with her daughter; the essentials. 

With all my blogging day in and day out about Charlie (since June of 2005), I have the equivalent of several suitcases of notes, plus I still write in a journal (an actual notebook with paper). I have a lot to distill. But I keep returning to that image of Park sifting through those bits she'd saved in that suitcase over so many years. 

Life with Charlie has, I must say, graced us with a cargo we weren't exactly expecting and whose contents we've yet to fully unload and unpack. There's lots of good stuff yet in store---along with, most likely, a few items of uncertain provenance and dubious scent, though not just any old load of bananas---amid the crumpled bits and paper documents.

A bit about motherhood

I told Charlie I'd post a photo of my every day on my blog and am afraid I haven't done that due to technology/internet-access issues (some of the hotels we're at have only one computer with internet for everyone). Here I am standing beneath the Lion Gate in Mykines, which we visited on Saturday, March 13th.

I've been reading Vicki Forman's This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood. I started reading the book on the plane ride from New York to Athens and it's hard to know where to start writing about such a beautiful, sad, affirming, loving book. Vicki writes so clearly and so gracefully about Evan and Ellie, who were born weighing just a pound at 23 weeks' gestation. What to say about Ellie dying at 4 days old? About the long hospital stay and the five surgeries for Evan, a child with multiple disabilities, before he came home? About Evan passing on, on July 24, 2008. 

I need to finish This Lovely Life before saying much more. Except this: Motherhood---and how much more, mothering a child with many, many challenges---certainly takes us all on roads we never could have imagined, much less thought we'd be walking on. It requires courage and fortitude. It often comes with tears. It often feels like the days are harder and triumphs so very few, and it's not like we have arms like this shield, adorned with the head of Medusa, and once carried by a hoplite soldier:

Mostly what I feel we have is love and an awful lot of patience, perseverance, and some instinct that tells us, gotta do all we can do to keep this child going. No matter what it is we have to do, no matter what our own situation, or where we are.

Jim gave Charlie the phone when I called yesterday. I heard Charlie first saying "no" when Jim asked him about talking. Charlie did come to the phone and gave me a succinct "hi mom."

All this mother needed to hear.

Goings On: New DSQ on neurodiversity and a few more words from Charlie

Variations of the above scene---Charlie in fine run/walk form round our neighborhood---occurred morning (6am), afternoon (3.30pm), and night (8pm) on Monday, with Jim bringing up the rear. 

6am walk following a 5am wake-up (an early, but manageable, start, relatively speaking). 3.30pm after a good day at school. 8pm as a little night sortie seems much to agree with Charlie.

Not a ton else happened yesterday, which is very well by me. One thing of note: The publication of volume 30, no. 1, of Disability Studies Quarterly, on "Autism and the Concept of Neurodiversity". More than a few friends have essays in this issue. Mine is on The Disabled Speech of Asian Americans: Silence and Autism in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's Father of the Four Passages and I'm looking forward to reading, and writing, about the volume. Stay tuned.

While I was coming home from work on the train, Charlie used Jim's laptop to watch videos, a small bit of preparation for when I go to on a trip aboard with some students (it's happening in less than a month---!!!?!!!?!---I already miss my two guys). I've made up a calendar for Charlie showing when I'll be gone and---something that Charlie seems to be more concerned about, at the moment---when my parents are coming back, a few days before I leave. 

Indeed, Charlie's been talking quite a bit about Gong Gong and Po Po "coming soon." 

To which, yesterday in the car, I said: "Yes, they're coming in 15 days and they're going to stay with you and Dad while I go to......."

"Greece," said Charlie.

I guess that means I'm really going.

Gravity

It's here!

Gravity Pulls You In: Perspectives on Parenting Children on the Autism Spectrum, edited by Kyra Anderson and Vicki Forman, just published by Woodbine Press. And containing the writing of many parents, some of whom I've had the good fortune actually to meet and share a meal with (Vicki herself, Bruce Mills---we've met his wife and children Sara and Jacob too, Ralph Savarese, MothersVox, Kristen Spina, Barbara Crooker).

I've yet to meet Kyra in person. And also Mary, Christine, Emily, and many others. I've been very fortunate to get to know these parents and their families through their writings and, in many cases, through their blogs. Mary's blog was one of the first I read when I started blogging back in June of 2005 and I still remember the little frisson I felt on reading about her boy Bud and thinking, a mom like me! and she writes about it!. And then a long day  seemed less so, even though it was but 3.00pm and Charlie and I had already done summer school, a trip to the store, a trip to the playground, a trip to the pool and were now relieved to be back in the safe, if isolating, confines of our house.

Wanting, needing, to reach out to other families who have a child like Charlie, to individuals on the spectrum, and sharing stories about our long road of a life with our boy: That's why I got started blogging. A few too many posts on vaccines aside, it's remained why I keep writing here.

I want to write more about all the writing in Gravity Pulls You In, once I read through and reflect on all the pieces. A quick read here and there has revealed many sparks, many experiences that I know will ring too true with ours. My little piece is entitled "The Wages of Autism" and is stitched together from some of my favorite posts on my old "Autismland" blog, "The Wages of Autism," "Autism Hearts Club," "Ache." As you can gather from those titles, it's an essay about love and loss, and about the curious currency a parent finds herself gifted with in raising a child who, like Charlie, is different. 

Valentine's Day having just passed, it seems more than appropriate that I just got my copy of Gravity Pulls You In. I reference "love of the Valentine's Day sort" at the start of my essay, in the context of an Intermediate Latin class I taught in the spring of 2006. There were only three students, all female, in that class, and our translating of one of Cicero's orations on the Catilinarian conspiracy de-, or rather e-, volved into a musing on the god the ancient poet Sappho called "Eros the Bittersweet." 

Life raising a child with as many challenges as Charlie can indeed be  "bittersweet," tinged with moments too lovely and beautiful, and others that are pretty, very difficult. I wish some things---many things---could have been easier for Charlie. Wish we could figure out how to quell the neurological stormsin his head more quickly, more effectively. Wish he'd hit puberty laterather than early and been a skinny guy who Jim could still piggy back in the odd moment. 

But we never, ever, wish for a boy other than Charlie to call our son. 

It's been four years since I wrote the blog posts that became my essay. We live again in the house in which I wrote them. Charlie goes to a different school----a "separate" school, for autistic children---now. He's almost as tall as Jim.

After snow days and a long weekend, the three of us were not happy to find it snowing Monday night and Tuesday morning. But no text declaring "school is closed" appeared on my phone and so up to the Big Autism Center we headed at 8am. Jim's figured out a new route that avoids a major road-work-traffic-jam-creating-snarl; now we drive through some woody hills. Thanks to said snow, it was something of a winter wonderland, the tree branches trimmed in fresh snow. Charlie was already glowing at the prospect of School! and he remained that way on telling us "this way, this way," as drove into the school's (large) parking lot. An aide who's not in Charlie's class appeared and asked if it was ok for him to take Charlie to his room and Charlie went right in. 

Great day, with a random yelp here or there---something new Charlie's been doing, that (we hope) is serving as an occasional "replacement behavior" for other ways to express his pent-up feelings. After school, we shopped, went to Walgreen's, walked (Charlie really wanted to snack first, but he ended up being fine getting in some exercise beforehand). He told me "dad here, dad here" when I explained Jim had to work late in his office. My own mind was swimming amid planning an information session on scholarships for Thursday, more preparations (like insurance and passports) for the Greece trip and a meeting with students (today), a recommendation to write. And then Charlie, after taking himself to bed at 7pm, wanted a walk at 8.15pm.

It was cold and windy walking across the snow-packed field and the word gravity, gravity, kept entering my thoughts.

..... [Gravity] does pull you in, not just to the center of the earth, but to the center of yourself, if you let it. (p. xiv)

as Kyra wrote in her Preface.

This low-gravity parenting journey has me floating in space, sometimes feeling light years away from the known or the familiar. And yet, as I move into the vast expanse before me, I only need to look to Bud for a cue to reorient and realign my orbit....... (p. 82)

as Mom-NOS writes in "Live via Satellite: A Parenting Journey."

How grounded we are because we're on this long road with Charlie, Jim and I know, down to the soles of our shoes all snowy and muddy from round-the-clock walks. How, too, glad we are to have this grounding. Often when I'm so tired I don't think I can do one more thing, knowing I need to be there for Charlie, knowing Jim's always ready to spring up to go out with Charlie, I find I have veins of energy I hadn't known I could tap into.

The three students I wrote about in "The Wages of Autism" are gone from my college, one having transferred after only a year;  one now in graduate school; one teaching full-time and engaged. Yesterday morning I was teaching another Intermediate Latin class, with three students (one young woman, two young men). I had asked how the long weekend had been. "Over," said one student and we all opened our books to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as told by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses. 

We paused over a sentence with the word gravior, the comparative degree form of gravis, "serious, heavy, weighty," the students noted the definitions. 

"But it's comparative so that means it's.....," I said.

"Graver," one student (the student who'd said "over") answered, almost under his breath.

"So heavier, serious-er," said another student, as she wrote in her notebook.

"Yes, and weightier," I said. "More weighty."

Yes, being the mother of a child like Charlie does mean life is gravior for me than in the days when I first read Ovid, and Cicero, and Sappho, and worried about not having a date on Valentine's Day or the calculus test tomorrow. 

And the strange and lovely thing is, this gravior life rests lighter on our shoulders. Even when the ground shakes, we know how to shift our weight to sway so that, while we may fall a little, we're still standing.

 

Of Books and Letters

One of my cousins had a little girl over a year ago. He sends me photos and updates about her regularly and I am (finally, at long last, and way overdue) packaging up some books to send her. They are old books of Charlie's, story books, nursery rhymes, one with geometric shapes and patterns. All were read to Charlie at some point or another; I can't say for sure about Charlie himself reading them. I can count the number of books on one hand that have interested Charlie enough for us to come upon him turning the pages on his own and it's been many years since he did even that.

And we have a lot of books here, shelves and shelves in the dining room, the living room, and all around, not to mention what's in the Jim's and my respective offices. Some of their shelves do contains picture books, board books, those DK books with the crisp and clear photos, story books. I've had a hard time letting go of any of them, always hoping that someday, one day, Charlie could read them.

I remain hopeful, for all that Charlie will be 13 in May and still has yet really to read a book. He used to turn the pages of Goodnight Moon while reciting what each page said, but I'd have to say this was mostly due to his having memorized much of the book, thanks to multiple readings---this was the one book he regularly wanted to hear read out loud---and he had a tape of the book that he (and we) listened to over and over. Efforts to interest him in his other books, and in ones from the library, were not successful and became increasingly trying (and a lot of pages got ripped and taped up, leading to a phase of Charlie being exceedingly fascinated with asking me to apply wads of Scotch tape on the torn paper).

Needless to say, Charlie's recent willingness to write has been something heartening. I've been sometimes going over the words and phrases on a growing pile of pads and pieces of paper, a couple of days after he's written them. When I've sensed Charlie getting agitated because we can't find a video or toy he wants to see on the Internet, I've pointed to a phrase we wrote together: "We can't find it." Somehow seeing the words, and the words he wrote, seems to help. Maybe putting the threatening notion of "can't find it" down on paper--giving it concrete form---is making the whole idea of "can't find it" seem more manageable, less amorphous and scary?

Charlie may not be reading words but he seems to have much more understanding of what words, and in particular the written word, can do. Monday night I tried a variation on writing a word and having him copy it; I dictated "M-o-n-d-a-y" and he wrote each letter, slowly and clearly listening. As he wrote, I thought about how "Monday" in our household has become more and more a day lacking the negative connotations popularly affixed to it. Charlie looks forward to Monday because it means back to school, back to routines, back to a predictable and familiar way to fill the space of a day after the looser-ness of Saturday and Sunday.

While last Monday got a little crazy (I forgot to put Charlie's bookbag in the car; it was the first day Jim both drove Charlie to school and picked him up, and that I worked late; the weather brought a downpour, raging wind, and warmer temps all in a few hours), this Monday was almost clockwork. Charlie was up by 7.30am. He and Jim dropped me off at the train. Charlie was happy going into school, suddenly upset in morning circle, soon over it, and the aide told Jim when he drove up at the end of the day that Charlie'd done very well that day. Jim and Charlie went on a long walk and were still out when I came back home. Charlie was still game to go out for a ride and to make brownies. Between sessions on the computer, we talked about how, in addition to being Monday, it's a new month, February.  

One of the books I'm sending to my cousin's little daughter is a Miss Spider ABC book. I'd hung onto it, wanting to keep it until Charlie knew every letter. He does still say "p" when he sees a "b" or a "d" and types "t" when I say "i." We've got a way to go with Charlie forming the round and straight parts of those first three letters (and with a couple other letters like "y" and spacing his letters out) but he definitely knows you dot your i's and cross your t's.

And he does, yes, know his ABC's.

It feels really good, at long last, to say that.

Another Curious Incident With Dogs

No, I could not resist that title----read Mark Haddon's novel some five years ago, and still remember it down to its details.

Dogs figure significantly for Christopher, the protagonist of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: The "curious incident" of the title is adolescent Christopher's discovery of his neighbor's black dog Wellington stabbed on the lawn with a gardening fork. Christopher's determination to find out "whodunit" leads to him finding out a great deal more about his parents and, perhaps?, about people. The novel ends with his father giving him a present of a puppy.

Friday's "incident" took Charlie and me past and over several lawns in our neighborhood and somewhere beyond it. It was around 4pm when we went on an after-school walk; a bit later than usual owing to some bumper-to-bumper traffic due to roadwork and a stop at the bank. It was also very cold---27˚ or so degrees Fahrenheit, less when the wind blew---and, Charlie having not wanted a long walk yet this past week, I figured we'd do our usual short one and soon be back in a nice warm house.

Rounding a corner, I noted Charlie had stopped running pell-mell ahead and was walking at a measured pace. Sure enough, I spotted a golden retriever and a woman. Charlie slowed his pace even more and I saw that the dog had stopped and was sitting on its hindquarters, and the woman leaning over the grass with a plastic bag. Charlie turned and started walking slowly in the opposite direction, then stopped and stood behind me. The owner pulled on the dog's leash and the dog started walking and then stopped, I think because she or he heard Charlie making some low-toned noises as he walked, eyeing her or him carefully. The dog looked back, walked a bit, stopped again, and over and over until her or his owner crossed the street.

We approached the front lawn of Nemesis Dog. Seeing it empty, Charlie tossed me a bright-eyed look over his shoulder, and kept on walking. I said something about it being, as it was, cold, then pulled my coat hood over my hat and was glad Charlie has been agreeing to wear gloves lately and a parka over his fleece jacket. Ahead of us, the golden retriever and her or his owner had stopped to talk to a man (I think golden retrievers as pets were the subject of the conversation); Charlie and I kept walking, for 4 1/2 miles. 

From time to time, Charlie sprinted fast into the wind, me jogging after with my hands in my pockets and all the while shaking my head for the nth time about one of the oft-heard claims by proponents of a "vaccine-autism link," that autistic children, having been "injured" by vaccines and injected with "toxic" substances are "damaged," ill, diseased---a "toxic waste dump." (Yes, I had the UK General Medical Council ruling about Dr. Andrew Wakefield as "dishonest" and "irresponsible" on my mind.) I know the proponents of the notion that vaccines can be linked to autism have commented here and there round the web and who knows where else that the various "neurological storms" and such that Charlie has are (1) sure signs of something very wrong with him and (2) even surer signs that there's something wrong with us, that we haven't tried to chelate the autism out of him.

Alls I can say is, from a health perspective, Charlie is (to use a phrase Jim pulls out from time to time) a physical specimen. Robust, athletic, with lots of stamina, seemingly less susceptible to colds and the like than his parents, glowing with health as we walked in the cold and wind.

It was twilight when we got back home under the glow of a fullish moon. I did some cleaning up in the kitchen while Charlie had dinner (watermelon and sushi----got his four food groups in today). 

Then he got the stuffed brown dog and the stuffed black dog that he's been insisting on sticking in the car on his rides to school and placing on his bed at night. "Garbage brown dog" Charlie told me, most solemnly.

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"Maybe just put them away. Then if you want them, you can get them."

"Garbage brown dog."

And Charlie very carefully pushed and packed the two dogs into the garbage, tied up the bag, put on his shoes and coat, and dumped the bag in the garbage. "All done brown dog, all done," he announced when he came back inside.

"Ok," I said. 

"All done," said Charlie. And then: "Bedtime."

I helped him gather up his blankets and the worry beads and, after he brushed his teeth, tucked him in.

Half an hour later, I could still hear him and went into his room. Charlie had covered himself completely in one of his fleece blankets. He pulled the blanket down from his face on hearing me and said:

"Brown dog."

"What about the black one?" I asked.

"Black dog. Brown dog."

Once I had retrieved the dogs from a Top Secret Hiding Place (I had already sneaked out and pulled them out of the garbage can), they were soon positioned with their tails towards Charlie, who was asleep in a matter of minutes.

Charlie has thrown away prized possessions (like his iPod and headphones, a few months ago) before. There's a bit more going on with this curious incident of the dogs, though, I think. Charlie definitely seemed affected by seeing the golden retriever go about her business on the sidewalk and then looking at him so intently: Maybe finding dogs doing such other things made him wary of his (albeit toy) dogs? And the "brown dog" looks very much a Golden Retriever pup Charlie and I saw on the internet.

After threw away his iPod, I snuck it out of the garbage and hid it in, though not (as you may gather) very well. I think I'll have to keep an eye on those two dogs for the nonce, and on the garbage can. Should the dogs go missing again, I'll know whodunit but as for why he dunit---that's still a mystery of a truly curious kind. 

Once Upon A Very Unwild, Rainy, & Happy Saturday

Jim and I thought taking Charlie to see Where the Wild Things Are would be a good thing to do on a very, very rainy Saturday. We all slept in after a somewhat sleepless Thursday night. Charlie took awhile to wake up (and to transition out of sleeping mode), then got out the bikes while Jim made a post office run. The rain started falling again while Charlie and I were on the lookout for Jim but the clouds parted, the sun glimmered, and Charlie and Jim biked off. It did start to rain again on their ride home, but the bagel they brought me was still nice and dry.

I've been thinking of taking Charlie to see Where the Wild Things Are since hearing about the movie earlier this year. The last movie he and I saw was Kung Fu Panda in June of 2008. Charlie generally seems to follow movies and videos with live action and actors better than animated cartoons, and I felt hopeful that Where the Wild Things Are might appeal to him. But as I parked the car this afternoon, Charlie told me "no movie." As it's been a while since we've seen one, I suggested a compromise: We walk by the movie theater and then he could make a choice. He was amenable to this and so we got out and dodged raindrops until we came to the theater.

Even from the outside, I realized that we were approaching Sensory Overload Territory. Lights flashed from the video games in the lobby and the concessions stand and even from the street we could smell the popcorn and something cotton candy sweet. I pointed to the movie poster; Charlie glanced at it and said "no" yet again and I could only agree with him, and that our $30 (factoring in the price of two tickets, a soda, and popcorn---maybe it would have cost more?) could be better spent. We went back to the car and I mentioned a couple other places that we might visit. Charlie chose Target and we spent a happy half-hour wandering aimlessly and checking out all the DVDs and CDs (and one quick pass through the shoe section). Charlie chose a Disney Classics CD that he used to have; it got so scratched and smudged that it became unplayable a long time ago. He said "no" when I asked if he'd like a soda and, once home, he helped himself to what he found in the refrigerator (leftover Vietnamese noodles and some lactose-free ice cream), listened to part of the first song of the CD, and was content to spend the rest of the day at home while it thundered and poured outside.

Over the years, I've read Where the Wild Things Are to Charlie numerous times. I'm not quite sure what he made of the monsters or of Max in his wolf suit; the part of the book that usually made his eyes brighten up was when Max is in the sailboat that takes him to where the wild things are. The detailed lines and somewhat muted colors of the drawings never appealed to Charlie as much as the brighter colors and simpler forms in a book like Goodnight Moon. Also, the text of Goodnight Moon is written in something more like verse with rhymes, and is very much a listing of what's in the great green room, and not so much, like that of Where the Wild Things Are, a story.

We indeed read Goodnight Moon many more times to Charlie and at his request than we ever did Where the Wild Things Are. To this day, Goodnight Moon is the only book that Charlie has himself taken up and turned the pages of, often while "reciting" the text. (He sometimes asks me to write out a few phrases from the book for him, like "cow jumping over the moon.") And so it was that, after many readings, I finally acknowledged that my interest in Where the Wild Things Are was greater than Charlie's; that it was I who loved the book's last page which notes that, even though Max has been gone for a good long time, his supper is in his room "and it was still hot." 

Charlie, you could say, was being a good sport to tolerate his mother reading a book that she liked and wanted him to, I've so liked Where the Wild Things Are because, what can I say, I've often felt I'm (like Max's mother) the mother of my own "wild thing," if one can be allowed to use the term and understood to mean nothing disparaging by it, but rather much affection and indulgence. Charlie, my boy, has a great deal of Max in him. When he's in the midst of a "neurological storm," there is something more than a "wild rumpus" in our house or car. I'm quite sure that various neighbors and passers-by have harumphed under their breath that Charlie, overcome by anxiety and whatever is going on in his brain, is some misbehaving' wild (monster?) child, with indulgent, clueless, pitiable parents who need to do a better job controlling him.

All I know is that, however "wild" the moments and the ride with our boy, Jim and I always make sure that he not only has his supper, but that it's still hot. We're fine with  some wildness and even "wild rumpus" sort of activity here and there knowing as we do what a very great, special, lovely, etc. etc. etc. boy we've got.