We Go With Him

2 + 4 Day With a Dash of Anxiety

Plans for a decidedly lowkey birthday party and Jim slipping into New York to celebrate a friend receiving a Master's degree in the evening were enough to instill enough anxiety in Charlie to gamely go on two long bikes (in Jersey horse country, where we indeed saw lots of horses) and request four walks throughout the day, all at his usual top speed pace.

An hour and a half before Jim came home, Charlie cleared the books off the piano and threw a box of Classics books.

Then he waited, tense, in the brown chair and the tenseness eased up, Jim came home, and Charlie ate a huge snack after not having eaten much since the morning (worrying, no doubt, about Jim's impending absence).

 

Oxymoronic

With Charlie, it's so often a matter of completely opposite extremes all at once.

Thursday was a hyperenergy - fatigue kind of day. Up all night, walk at 5am, conking out in the brown chair in the hour before the bus came. Great day at school, happy bike ride (with my parents, for the first part), a little grocery shopping, a walk. Another walk. Tears and Charlie getting that pre-storm look on his face because, if he felt anything like I did last night, his head must have been feeling mighty fuzzy.

He stayed in his room after extra-elaborately arranging all of his items on the bed after removing them from their floor array. 

And he slept through the night and got ouf bed after the bus had pulled up (and kindly waited).

Home Saturday

 

Once and always pals.

It was wet and misty Saturday morning and then the gardeners came and started edge-trimming and yardstuff-blowing. Jim moved the white car back so they could drive the lawn-mowing car into the yard behind our house. I had taken both bikes out in anticipation of our usual Saturday trip to Jersey horse country and moved them into the street by the sidewalk after Jim moved the car.

Charlie suddenly demanded a long local bike ride and Jim was happy to oblige. With the damp air and Charlie having a small cold/throat/nose thing (our suspicion; he's been rubbing at his nose), he was teary at points but got through it, even amid some horn-honking cars (Charlie and Jim, and two Italianish men, had the right of way, but four people and two bikes cannot argue with one car).

After lunch and a quite short rest, Charlie was game for another long local ride; Jim has declared them likely to have ridden 100 miles this week, provided that they do 20-something more miles on Sunday. A ride (of the white car sort) into Jersey City for some Vietnamese food and two walks rounded out the rest of the day, a homeday that no one expected or intended but that we all very much enjoyed -- nothing beats hanging around (i.e., cultivating) your own backard.

 

The Very Early Bird

 

Charlie was in a great mood all day Monday, even though -- who knows, maybe because! -- he woke at 1.30am, 2.30am or 5am: He was awake (as signalled by knuckle-cracking and turning on his iPad) at all those times. By 5.45am, he and I were out for a walk.

By 8.30pm, Charlie was in bed after the usual good rounds of his routine: Bus, school, home, waiting for dad to come home, bike ride, dinner.

I think he may be on the verge of waking right now: If these very early wake-ups are going to be the new sleep pattern for awhile, good thing they've coincided with the end of Jim's and my semesters of teaching.

 

Talk Around Here Is Never Cheap

 

If Charlie really was awake since around 2.30 am on Saturday morning, small wonder that he was tired by 8pm. He and I had walked at 5.30 am and he and Jim had done 24 miles in gorgeous spring weather.

Charlie hung around by my desk kind of looking like he wanted to say something (asking for a walk?) but didn't. His face suggested he was thinking about it, maybe searching for a word or enough words to express that (my supposing) he was thinking of asking for a wa lk and felt compelled too but boy was he tired. Jim suggested he sit in his brown chair and Charlie did for ten minutes, head slumped. Then he slowly got up.

'Bedtime?' said Jim.

'Bedtime,' was the response and Charlie was up the stairs and slumbering away by 9pm.

12 hours later, he still is.

 

Soundtrack to Saturday Morning (Reality Show Version)

 

Charlie was up at 5am this Saturday morning. Actually, he may have been up since 2.30 am as I heard sounds from his room then; he'd gone to bed around 9pm and been soon asleep after a good day at school, a solid 12 miles of bike riding in cold spring weather, and a great deal of dinner.

He and I have already done a walk, I've gone jogging, he's consumed several apple slices, I've made coffee and I think I've heard about dancing with Henry the Octopus and Slim Dusty in the country where the atmosphere is great about three times, Noah building the arc once and K.D. Lang talking to herself and having great distress for her health at least twice. And now here's the business about tying me kangaroo down sport, a song Jim heard some time around 1963, when his family had just moved from Pittsburgh to Cheshire, Connecticut.

On the Wiggles version (the only one I know), Rolf Harris (who wrote the song) is himself singing. Charlie also had the song playing in the car last night and I asked Jim, ha, when you first heard this song did you ever thing you'd be hearing it about 50 years later under these circumstances?

Obviously, Jim said no. And he also said, he's very glad to be hearing it with Charlie.

Another Wednesday Has Come and Gone

 

Wednesday has been decidedly unpopular around here as it's the day Jim teaches all day.

Meaning that (taking a more Charliesque view of things), it is the Day Without A Bike Ride.

Happily, with the spring semester almost over, there remains but one more Wednesday, next week's. I was feeling wary after last week's book throwing and fit of soda dumping. That Wednesday had begun with Charlie in smiles and so did this one: Would these remain?

For the most part, yes. There were two walks without too much running, in very pleasant cool spring weather. There was a moment of mild panic/worry when Charlie, around 8.30pm (about a half-hour after I had given him some melatonin), asked to go to the convenience store. This meant one thing: He wanted to get ice cream -- something we have been completely avoiding since realizing the very bad effect it has on his stomach and, subsequently, his head.

I talked about waiting for Jim to come home, maybe going tomorrow (but really, maybe not; Charlie being Charlie, going to the convenience store and getting vanilla ice cream are one and the same activities). Then I went to the kitchen as Charlie stood standing and thinking and whisked out a secretly concealed box of brownie mix.

We made those and I cut up some fruit and asked if he'd like the timer?

'Yes, timer,' said Charlie and ran upstairs to get his iPad.

He spent a good deal of the rest of the evening with iPad to ear, for over two hours. After 10.30pm we heard Jim's voice (he was on his cell phone) and I opened the door. 'Dad, dad!' said Charlie.

Once Jim stepped inside Charlie insisted that he immediately take off his shoes and socks. Charlie arranged them neatly, then stood looking at his iPad. I figured the timer still had a few more minutes. But what would Charlie request once the timer went off?

I readied 'why it's too late to go out now' explanations. The timedrbuzzed.

'Bedtime,' said Charlie and went up to his room without any further ado.

He was asleep at midnight after some video watching.

 

What We Did on Wednesday

 

Jim dropped off a load of branches shorn from the shrubbery above our driveway then drove to Manhattan twice and taught a total of three classes. Inbetween, he and Charlie went on a 14-miler.

Charlie slept in till 10am, walked, ate a hodgepodge of items including sushi and apples, stood on the sidewalk, stood in the house, kept his iPad going, asked for Jim, went on the bike ride, looked forlornly out the front door as Jim drove away the second time (to teach an evening class), stood on the sidewalk sadly, wanted to make brownies, stood on the sidewalk, stared at me, looked up brightly when I suggested turning on the timer, stared at the numbers for the next 3 hours while playing the Charlie Brown music album he had at first wanted nothing to do with (he likes the Bill Melendez piano and also a song in which the kids are singing 'Charlie Brown! Charlie Brown!'), ate rice and Chinese lop cheung sausage standing up and keeping an eye out the window, sat resignedly in his brown chair watching the timer, dozed off with his head almost touching his knees, rejected my efforts to pull the lever to set the chair to recline, looked at me big-eyed every five minutes after 9.30pm, got right up to open the door when I said I saw the black car pull up, demanded Jim take off his socks and shoes, wanted a bedtime snack while in bed, listened to the ocean waves album, didn't sleep till very late after asking me to put some Disney albums back on his iPad.

While Charlie was sleeping in, I worked my way through a German poem, wrote blog posts and tried on pulling together some ideas about neurodiversity and nepios, did some PR for a particular event next week at my job, cleaned the floor, scrubbed the stove, made more coffee, cut up the brownies, reorganized the freezer, emailed Jim's students when he got stuck in Lincoln Tunnel traffic on his second trip into New York, made a few plans for Charlie's birthday party (which will not be for over a month but I usually start thinking about such things about 2 days before the actual event), read a book on field archaeology whose author has a hilariously dry sense of humor about the likes of context record forms.

It was a home day (well, not exactly for Jim who had more of a driving-in-the-black-car day), not bad for a Wednesday and one in the middle of Charlie's Spring Break too.

 

Inevitable Long Moments of Waiting

 

Charlie waited for much of the morning in our front yard. I had left at a quarter after seven to teach and the word was, he pretty much stayed outside except for when he and Jim were riding bikes.

It gives you a sense of how we'll be spending Wednesday, when Jim is gone for much of the day to three classes to teach in New York.

 

The Things We Do To Mark The Time

After packing his lunch boxes just as for a school day, Charlie insisted on putting his book bag into the car before we drove to South Jersey for his neurologist appointment. He stowed the bag on the floor of the front passenger seat and asked  for it once we were on the Garden State Parkway. He ate his full lunch of sushi, crackers and a juice.

As drove (sitting for too long a time in construction zone traffic), the thought occurred to me that, if he wants to pack up his lunch boxes and book bag on Monday through Friday of next week, I won't discourage him. In the past, I would have, on the theory that Charlie packing lunch boxes meant that he figured he'd be going to school. Perhaps it is simply reassuring to him to pack them as part of 'what he does on weekdays.'

The neurologist visit itself was minimally eventful (i.e., good). No changes in medications as the current combination of four different ones seems to be working well. Continued attentiveness to Charlie's thymic state. The (psychiatric) nurse noted that Charlie was talking a lot more; on his own, he looked at her and the doctor to talk. He even walked down the hall with the nurse (and just the nurse) to get weighed -- three years ago, on our second visit to the neurologist, Charlie tried to grab at her.

As we pulled into our driveway afterwards, Charlie issued a loud call for his new 16-mile local bike route. Jim needed to rest first after a lot of driving (in more traffic on the way back home). Then away they went.

Charlie told me 'no' when I asked him if he'd like me to put some juice packs in the refrigerator. He knows the weekend is coming up, so no need to pack any lunch boxes. Then he told me 'bye,' meaning that I should go out of the kitchen. He proceeded to put the box of Capri Suns on the counter and drink the remaining five, leaving the flattened silvery packets in a neat pile in the garbage can.