We Go With Him

'Stay Here'

From the moment he stepped off the bus on Wednesday, Charlie was on the hustle to go out, get out, get in the white car, go here and there -- what has become the demanded routine so often and especially on the long Wednesday afternoons and evening when Jim teaches late. This time (with one more Dadless Wednesday to go next week), Charlie and I did 'stay here,' in the house, with not even a walk, with nary an excursion, last week's having not gone so very well.

Obviously, Charlie was not happy about this. It was not fun. But a no-brainer 'tis that being in the house is better than in a moving vehicle in traffic with a nerve-ridden teenage in severe angst and with a definite history of fight-or-flightness.

Exhausted from the effort to keep it together, Charlie conked out at 6.45 pm for an hour. He still wanted 'go to' when he woke but his expression showed he knew he was just asking. He went into the kitchen on a sudden and asked me to heat up bagels from the freezer and eyed a bowl of apples till I handed him one.

Jim took a taxi back from the train station in Newark and, a moment after he'd entered, Charlie smiled, said 'bedtime,' and went up to bed.

All in an April Week

 

It's been quite a week. Charlie had his own many things to deal with -- for the past several months it often seems that his emotions are directly pegged to prepping himself then actually getting through Jim's teaching late on Wednesdays. The miles of vigorous exercise he puts in must help but it always seems something more is needed and we (Charlie included) all guess at what that might be and don't quite ever seem to figure out.

(I suppose one could say this for la condition humane en génèrale.)

After days of this emotion matched with exercise, Charlie was tired on Friday, asking continually for 'blue mat' while doing speech therapy at school. His teachers honor the requests but try to keep Charlie up and doing his work. We do try to get him to sleep at night, but.

What with it being once again so warm I turned on the air conditioner Friday afternoon and then the mugginess breaking with a pelting rain as we did the very last leg of a long walk in the evening, Insomnia till after 6.30am Saturday morning was not unheralded.

 

Further proof our car is actually a room of our house

For the better part of two hours on Wednesday night, Charlie and I sat in the white car in the driveway, awaiting Jim's return from teaching The Dead (Joyce's text and the film adaptation) to his class on Christianity and art. We were quite comfortable (I mean in the car, I can't vouch for Jim in his classroom!) but then we spend so much time in the car (in motion, more commonly) sitting in a standing (albeit heated) vehicle was rather comforting.

Charlie talked for almost the entire time, calling out declarative phrases of predominately proper nouns and quite clearly echoing some things I said, most of it on a properly upbeat note as he was indeed doing good, a phrase he says with relish.

It took some work, and experiences, earlier this week to get to that point. Charlie has had what could be called post-grandparents visit anxiety. Tuesday, after banging a bathroom door, he was not 15 minutes on the bus to school when he called for my parents and banged his head. That night he brought down the two suitcases that he sees as marking my parents' visiting soon (they will next be back after two months).

We unilaterally decided to drive Charlie to school the rest of the week and he was able to take the bus home all right Wednesday. He and I spent the afternoon driving around New Jersey a bit too much (on the first scent of in-the-car panic, I gave Charlie his calming medicine -- he'd said 'I see GongGong PoPo') and walking a bit, and then sitting in the car. First Charlie asked ardently for food of all sorts, then as I pointed out we'd gotten him lots to eat (and he hasn't eaten it all), he stopped asking but wanted to stay in the car.

We went to get Jim at 10.15pm. Back home, Charlie peaceably put away the suitcases and went straight to bed.

A Winter's Night in a Deep and Dark January

 

I texted a student on Friday morning and drove Charlie to school. He had a devil of a time going to sleep the night before, repeatedly calling out the names of restaurants and stores (a possible sign his stomach was in trouble). He woke and dumped a box of photos and tried to pull down the refrigerator and pulled down a shelf of clothing which is all obviously not good but it was good that he was telling us he couldn't take the bus to school before he was on the bus (which did show up). And as I drove Charlie in the white car, it felt like the so many times I've driven him to school since he first went in suburban Missouri.

Charlie did make it home on the bus after a quiet, tired sort of day and I had taught de septem regibus Romanis and talked to the neurologist and nurses while in motion and at the checkout line in the store. Jim was soon home, there was a short cut bike ride as snow had started falling in 22 degrees and then a throwback trip to a really good local hamburger place.

At 9pm Charlie announced 'give' while standing in the living room and took the lined-up suitcases back upstairs. He seemed a little more at ease but then was in High Anxiety mode, saying phrase after phrase and looking at me to echo them and reaching for Jim's hand, for what felt like over an hour. He did keep the soft comforting weight of the new afghan my great aunt Renna had made for him on his lap.

(I used to spend many feverish and/or asthmatic hours lying under her afghans on my parents' couch.)

He is a boy no one was sure could talk. He lives with two very verbal people, no wonder Charlie turns to words when he is in distress. None of the words said as much (i.e., Charlie has yet to say something like 'I feel nervous / nervous pangs coming on'). But they were words and the refrigerator stayed in the neat alignment Charlie had himself restored it to.

Then Charlie, wide-eyed, said 'bedtime' and ran up the stairs (I hovered) and was sound asleep within minutes.

More on the Language of Things

 

Minus 4 Celsius occasioned a short ride but it is not like anyone else was bike riding.

Arctic blast of cold aside, it has been an interesting week. The bus aide called us about ten minutes after a groggy Charlie boarded the bus Thursday morning. He had yelled 'Gong Gong Po Po,' thrown the contents of his book bag and lunch boxes, banged his head on the window and backs of seats. We sighted the bus on a street by the Parkway but it wasn't pulled over and there were no police cars with sirens flashing around. Charlie was sitting quietly in his seat at the back of the bus when Jim boarded (stepping over watermelon and sushi) to take him off.

"We'll see you tomorrow," said the bus driver.

We took Charlie to school. I walked ahead to tell the aide what had happened and off went Charlie. He had a good day and ate a hamburger and a few fries from the cafeteria, a bit of a first. We picked him up smiling and the bike ride was called for.

Charlie has been wearing the same clothes since Tuesday. This evening, I took care that he made the switch to something else.

As I said to the neurologist, a clear sign of Charlie having an increase in anxiety is elevated OCD, manifested through things.

 

Pleasure and Pain: The Box of Routine, the Beach Isn't the Same

When you're expecting to see this and this and this at the beach and you see (as we did on Saturday) this --

-- pretty much a pie of sand where a parking lot, a washroom and a path and a sea wall and a slope down to the beach where Charlie has gone since he was a few months old.

Sort of analogous to pausing over the ghost of the little guy in the face of the here and now.

Again and again, we've seen this new year bring change.

For one thing, more and more familiar 'establishments' have shut their doors after the hurricane.

For another, Charlie has seemed to be irked at the very routines and patterns he has boxed himself into. Things that had been his delight (the bike path in Jersey horse country) have evoked occasional instances of distress (ditching the bike and running four times on a Sunday morning ride).

I have long thought that Freud's pleasure-pain principle captures Charlie's experience of things, places and people he feels strongly about. His love for the beach and the ocean waves is equalled by his distress at leaving it. His delight at my parents' visits -- he enjoys their company, surely -- is fraught with dread as he worries over their arrival and departure and isn't sure what to make of the disruption to his routine from their visits.

At this point in his life, Charlie understands that he can't have what he wants all the time and 'has to wait' and delay gratification (in keeping with Freud's reality principle). But managing how he feels is a work in progress. Expressing how he feels, a quite huger one.

Kids like Charlie are so often thought of as all and mostly Id. At 15, Charlie has absorbed a lot of Superego and (since I've started with the Freud-speak, may as well keep going) his Ego is slugging its way out, not always in the most graceful, spotless of ways but (at this point in our lives) Jim can be very quick of foot on gritty bicycle paths and I am not half-bad at cleaning up messiness.

 

The Last 2 Lines of 'Easter 1916' By Yeats

We drove down to the beach where we used to stay at the beach house on Saturday morning and drove on sandy streets and sand hills (they really gave the right name to that hurricane) and Charlie said 'no bike.'

You cannot stop an object already flung in mid-trajectile and we drove back home and Charlie called for a local bike ride, which he and Jim are on now.

Last night, Charlie said 'no yellow jacket' and 'blue coat' and wore that blue vest on a cold ride, with lights.

About midway through some car rides (the longer ones especially), Charlie has been debuckling himself from the center seat he has occupied since he was 2 days old and we brought him home from Missouri Baptist Medical Center and sat behind me, saying 'push' so I pulled up the seat and he had the legroom he needs. (I have been the same height since I was about 13 and prefer having my seat pulled up.)

'Taco' he said last night in the midst of not a litany but more like a suite of verbalizations of the things he likes to eat and the places they are and various grandparent references (both sides of the family, with Jim's parents recalled mostly through their now-changed-ownership house). 'Cindy' he bellowed in the car this morning on the Parkway, the name of a verbal behavior therapist at a center I used to take him to when he about 8. It was Disney on the way down the Parkway with a dash of Wiggles 'at Wiggle Bay' as we approached the ocean and then Abbey Road, touched off with Sugarcane Harris, on the way home.

These new spins on routines so rigorously followed by us all were not surprising given that the week was spattered with change and my return to teaching the smallest part of it.

'Hi 'has often been a word Charlie wields when he is agitated (it is no 'polite meaningless' word); this week, his repeated utterances of it, along with vividness of face, were him in the full-pitched ardor of his age. I kept doing the laundry and Jim and I have both been doing a lot of reading.

Agitation Sunday

These photos suggest it was just another Sunday bike ride on the Jersey horse country trail.

But in reality (what the pictures don't tell), the 16 miles was more of an impressive feat than usual as Charlie had spent the previous evening unable to sleep and broadcasting agitation by deleting all the music from his iPad and then, after it was restored, listening to agitation-signaling music (including Arcade Fire); had coughed and yelled "Rocco Portia" numerous times in the car en route to the bike trail; somehow made contact with a plate when a woman at the general store put out her arm holding such and it broke -- evoking a bad memory when, around two years ago, Charlie had once run into the same store and grabbed a plate behind the counter and thrown it; barely touched the cake in the car; gone running at top speed as soon as the car door opened, Jim at his heels; twice jumped from his bike on the trail and ran. Jim was always right there for him.

It's winter, and Charlie has over a week off from school (he quite knows and said "no school tomorrow" as we passed the area where his school is on the way back home from the bike ride), and we are spending the holiday as a threesome.

At home, Charlie watched me mix the batter for sugar cookies and requested a local bike ride, which proceeded without incident.

Very proud of this boy.

 

One Less Thing To Worry About Until Next Year

Considering that this fall began with Charlie wrent with anxiety on a Wednesday afternoon knowing that Jim would not be home, due to work, for hours and the police had to be called, it is a very fine thing to report that Charlie managed his last Dadless Wednesday of 2012 peaceably, and even after a school day when he had been in high anxiety mode throughout (his teacher noted that Charlie is probably having pre-holiday-break anxiety; his teacher is, we think, very right). 

How the Numbers Add Up

 

It's been 8 bike rides for a total of 60 miles since Friday for Jim and Charlie.

5 1/2 hours of me waiting in line for gas.

Counting Monday (the Big Autism Center announced on Sunday night that it's not ready to open due to accessing road conditions and fuel), 6 days out of school for Charlie.

25 miles of biking + walking on Sunday for Charlie, with me on all the walks, Jim on 2 and Jim (of course) on all the bike rides.

Fewer than 1 million New Jerseyans are without power tonight. Sounds good unless (of course) you're among the thousands (like some of our friends) who are still without.

0, the days we lost power, putting us in the category of ultra lucky dogs who could get slammed in the next storm-round but all's fair. I don't think we'd leave our house in that instance, though, as Charlie would rather shiver in known environs -- last time we were to stay overnight in a hotel, he almost ended up sleeping in the car as he wanted to get back to his own bed so badly. 

Over 2 weeks of me not seeing many of my students when we have Latin, Greek and Greek history class come this Friday. My school isn't open till Tuesday, Wednesday is to be the first day of class, and my classes meet on Tuesdays and Fridays. And, I ended up having to take a day away from teaching after midterms for a bit of an emergency consultation with Charlie's neurologist about his chronic insomnia, chronia constipation and other matters of a GI sort. I learned a lot, I made a run on the pharmacy and the health foods store for supplements and over-the-counter stomach-trouble solutions afterwards and, so far, Charlie seems to be sleeping on more of a routine and most nights, and he's been happier about the state of his stomach.

I really do think the past post-Sandy, schoolless week would not have been so peaceful without that consultation.

The test will be Monday (today), as Charlie and I will be dropping Jim off for an early train ride (not from our town's train station as that line is not yet up and running) and he won't be back from teaching till the afternoon. And Charlie's anxiety on Dadless days is well-documented.

After this past superstorm, and Charlie's own storminess, I'm feeling very halcyon about it all.