We Go With Him

Camp Charlie MMX, Day 1: Making Our Way

Day 1 of Camp Charlie (2010 version) got underway with Charlie in the white car at precisely 8.19am, which is precisely the time that Phil Schaap starts his Birdflight radio show. I set the timer for an hour so Jim and I could get ready ourselves ready and load up the bikes.

We had planned we'd go to Liberty State Park for a morning bike ride and that's exactly where we set off to. Charlie got very excited as we went east on the Interstate and even more so as we approached the curving on-ramp of the Pulaski Skyway: The Skyway affords an absolute fabulous view of the Passaic River and all the industrial-commercial activity connected with Newark Airport and the Port of New York and New Jersey. It's got  two lanes going in each direction with a modest concrete barrier inbetween and curves gradually up and down.Given that the average driving speed is 70 mph, and that there are on and off ramps between the two inclines or (in less elegant language) 'bumps' (as Jim and I refer to them), driving on the Skyway is a little more exciting than on your average highway.

Plus, if one is (as we were Thursday morning) driving east on the Skyway, the view is the Manhattan skyline. Indeed, when going down one off-ramp (the Broadway one), it seems as if one is going to drive straight into the Empire State Building.

Fueled by this rollercoaster-ish-kinda ride, Charlie was ready to get on his bike at the park. He and Jim rode past the huge train shed (which now seems mostly to serve as cover for some ever-taller weeds) and then Ellis Island and Lady Liberty.  And then---as that's not a long sort of ride---he and Jim went out on the city streets.

They ended up biking for about an hour after which we stopped for summer rolls at a Vietnamese place (appetizer) and then McDonald's (main course, right?). Going to the McDonald's resulted in us being on the side of Jersey City where there's a bridge with a drawbridge which goes up when too-tall ships need to pass under. We thought the drawbridge being up was why there was serious gridlock that we got caught right smack in the midst of, only later to discover that the reason was police activity (explaining why we saw all those police cars driving in the opposite direction).

Charlie was completely at ease through all the commotion, including several tanker trucks and semis driving thisclose past us and getting stuck in the middle of the intersection when they attempted to turn. And, too, while Jim and I had a fast little exchange about the latest new Journal of Neuroscience study about how to diagnose autism in infants using MRI brain scans (full text and discussion by Socrates at The New Republic): 'How old,' Jim quipped, 'six months in the womb'?----after which he quickly noted, and I assented, how all the efforts to detect and diagnose autism in younger and younger children come to seem of less and less import to us as Charlie gets older.

Yes, it was important that Charlie was diagnosed just as he was turning two years old, and that he had all kinds of Early Intervention as a result.  But the day seems a long way off when people (not those of you reading here, of course) get it that autism is lifelong. Sometimes I think that, while certainly emotional wrenching, the whole business of diagnosing and detecting autism was the easy part. There was a clear goal about what we were doing (trying to find out why Charlie didn't talk etc.) and clear instructions about what to do (having him evaluated by a bunch of doctors and therapists, getting services started). And Charlie could be swooped up in our arms (yes, in mine too, in those days) and it's nothing surprising when your two-year-old is doing two-year-old sort of things like wailing in public places (even if he did wail somewhat louder and longer). Everything else, especially adolescence and adulthood, has been like a journey on a road that only seems to come into being as we walk on it.

Perhaps a little bit less of a focus on detection and more on the long task of living?

At which moment in our musings, Jim realized that we needed to get into one of the two right lanes to get onto the bridge back over the Passaic River, meaning that we had to make our way into a solid line of cars. (No problem as Jim was driving.) Once home, Charlie listened to some music and then went up to his room and took a 2-hour nap. As he should: As we reminded him, he is on vacation.

Being Charlie, he wanted another bike ride as soon as he awoke. This was followed by a little Mom 'n' Charlie in the car (with Jazz Alternatives on the radio), the eating (devouring) of sushi and watermelon, a little attempt to have Charlie start practicing his handwriting again as he did back in the winter, and an evening walk which started with Jim saying,

'It's not even hot outside!'

Camp Charlie adventures will be ongoing till September 7th, the day after Labor Day here in the US, when Charlie returns to the Big Autism Center. We'll try not to have to make too many last-minute merges to get to where we're going, but sometimes you just have to make your way in, through, and onward.

 

A Small Communication

The above photo shows Charlie's 'favorite things' as I call them. He refers to this whole set of objects as 'blue beads': Charlie often refers to a collection or a couple of things based on just one item, as if the part referred to the whole. For you literary types out there, this is a rhetorical device known as 'synecdoche,' and one could say that Charlie has a kind of synecdochal way of using language. The expression 'telegraphic' has also been used to describe his speech, which usually only includes the most important words, usually nouns, a few adjectives, and maybe a verb; his speech therapists and we, too, have constantly worked on 'expanding his length of utterance' but Charlie's default mode---after years of much prompting and requests to 'say [x y or z]'---is just to say as much as he needs to.

I mean, Latin, and Mandarin Chinese, don't have words for 'the' and people do (or did, in the case of Latin), just fine expressing themselves without.

For myself, I'm pleased that Charlie took enough interest in those blue worry beads a few weeks ago to start placing them with the other little items. He never does more than pick up the two strands of worry beads (one are of the Evil Eye, the other strand is plastic) but at first he completely ignored them. A student had gotten the Evil Eye beads for Charlie last summer and I picked up the blue ones on the last day I was in Athens earlier this year, but Charlie pretty much left both in random places on the floor until recently. He remains stalwartly faithful to the olive green strand I brought back after last year's Greece trip, twirling and pulling it and rubbing the beads in his long fingers. Happily, even though he takes the beads (and the other items in the photo) into the car, he has been leaving them there in the backseat or I would be, as you may imagine, a bit stressed about losing them.

(Worry beads at the beach: Yes, not a combo I want to be dealing with.)

Usually Charlie places the 'blue beads' (if I may use his term) in a rather unordered mass on the floor by the blue couch. Monday afternoon he set them down with a little more symmetry; I particularly noted his placement of the no-longer-working garage door opener to my in-laws' house with his iPod Touch and of the Mugen pop pop thing (not that he's ever been interested in making it pop) with my keys (yes, those are all my keys---only one for this house, all the rest for work). All those keys are exactly the same size and shape and Charlie has figured out (partially through trial and error, partially from me showing him) which is the key that opens our front door. Once inside the house, he keeps my keys. 

Foolhardy, you think?

Nah, Charlie keeps better track of my keys than I do myself. It's one way (there are a number other) of ways that his obsessive-compulsive tendencies and his (as it were) craving for order and routine come in handy, at least from the perspective of needing to locate the keys quickly. I've thought about taking off the keys for work and keeping them separate, and then realized that it was the sum total of so many keys, and that blue carabiner fastened to them, that had come to mean 'Mom's keys' to Charlie.

(When I went to Greece, I just left the keys with Charlie. Again I knew he would keep good track of them.)

As for why Charlie ordered his items so carefully Monday afternoon, I'm not sure. He had a fair day though he wasn't quite himself, getting upset at school when told he had to wait 20 more minutes for lunch (he'd had plenty for breakfast and a snack) and then asking throughout the day for crackers. Jim and I both suspected more stomach trouble---I guess I've been mentioning this a fair amount, but the combination of the recent ultra-humid weather and the medications Charlie takes, among other things, hasn't been (so to speak) very kind to his insides. 

As I noted, Charlie asking to eat more than usual and then not eating at all (even with some highly preferred foods in plain sight in the fridge) are both pretty clear signs of feeling (maybe) queasy.  After coming home and having his usual after-school snacks, he took a rest in his room (though without a nap), got up for his usual power bike ride with Jim, followed by a brief rest at home and a walk. He was not interested in eating a thing until much much later in the evening, when he must have been feeling much better.

I speculated, maybe Charlie made his arrangement of the 'blue neads' in an attempt to inject a little order to things?

Maybe. Or maybe I am (as I tend to) reading a lot into little things; something one does, when blue beads are what you have to go by.

The Orders of Things

Charlie woke up before 5am on Sunday which was just as well, as one of my aunts was flying in from California on a red-eye. When she called at 7am Charlie was more than ready to hop into the car, so off we went to the sounds of The Clash. 

As almost all of my family lives in California, Charlie hasn't had many opportunities to get to know his great aunt and he was reserved yet attentive during her visit. Sometimes when we have guests and there is more talking than usually with Jim, Charlie and me, Charlie gets agitated by the new, extra voices and sounds. My aunt used to be an elementary school teacher and she speaks in low and easy tones, and all the talking did not seem to bother Charlie, certainly not more than airplanes flying overhead do. He puts his hands over his ears when he hears them, but not so as Jim and my aunt and I chatted. 

After awhile, Charlie betook himself to his own room and asked to listen to CDs and watch videos on the computer. We all dropped my aunt off at the train station as she'll be spending some days in New York. It was really lovely to get to visit with her some. We have few visitors and these "breaks" in the usual routine of things around here are very welcome, and all the more so because Charlie has a definite need for order. This need is evinced in the little arrangements that he makes around the house, in his setting his shoes and Jim's and my boots up together in alignment with the floorboards. Square and rectangular shapes objects (blue ice packs, a small stack of napkins) seem especially to get the ordering treatment (and go here for another arrangement by Charlie).

Such "lining up" of objects is regularly cited as a "red flag" for autism to parents of young children. When Charlie was first diagnosed we used routinely to undo the blocks and cars and other arrays of objects that he made; we were advised that such arrays were just the sort of "inappropriate" play with toys that needed to not be encouraged. Certainly we did find that Charlie was not happy to be instructed to play with blocks and cars and trains by doing other things than lining them up in groups of three according to color and shape. 

 Charlie did learn to build with the blocks and run the cars on the floor and push them down ramps. But we also learned that Charlie's arrangements need not, ought not, always to be undone by us, as they offer small signs of how he sees the world and seeks to make sense of it.

But Charlie's need for order can turn into a sort of "rage for order," into something like an obsession. 

Not Hearing the Melody for the Notes (#592)

Charlie has now been taking piano lessons for just over six months and his teacher has made some small innovations.

Originally, each of the keys from middle C to an octave above was identified with a velcroed letter, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Three weeks ago, the C on middle C was removed; as of a week ago, the D was. The velcro remains on the keys without the letters; velcro and tiny laminated letters (C-D-E-F-G) are now affixed to the keys an octave below middle C.

The goal is for Charlie ultimately to play without the letters or the velcro: For the first two weeks of no more C, Charlie kept saying "C. C!", then assented to play. Now with the D gone, too, he has not asked: while details mean a lot to him, I think he is getting this business of each key having a distinct letter assigned to it.

The other small innovation in Charlie's piano playing has been in the sheet music. The letter names are still printed under each note and a number (from 1-5) above to tell him which finger to use. But while Charlie's first songs had no more than four large notes printed on a five-line staff, now he is playing some songs from sheets printed with two lines of music, complete with treble clef and time signature; three pages of a song ("Happy Song") are now on one, all of which Charlie played on his own this afternoon. His eyes were set straightahead on the music with an occasional glance down at his fingers and, only as he played measure after measure, did I realize how I had never heard the tune before. So much had we been concentrating on small groups of notes, or on a single note.

I guess that is another way of saying, we had been not seeing the forest for the trees----not hearing the melody for the notes.

Just as, in our day to day life in Autismland, I find myself getting stuck on little things: Whether or not Charlie will learn to sight-read words besides nouns.Whether or not the blanket, having been dragged all over the house and trailing bits of fluff and pine needles and thread, ought to be washed. Where the green squishy ball is (well, maybe that's a bit more than a little thing). Whether or not I've dusted and vacuumed. Whether Charlie will not mind having two apples in his lunch (forgot to get something else for his lunchbox).

I know these will get done: He went through all his words fast and well with his therapist this afternoon; he could care less in what condition that blanket is in; he assented to put the squishy ball in its container before we left to pick up Jim at the train; his lunchbox came home containing only empty containers.

And if I just keep stopping, looking at, and listening to Charlie, it seems answers in an unexpected key emerge.

Epic & Lyric (#544)

When I think of life with Charlie in Autismland, it sometimes seems like an epic, other times on the smaller scale of a lyric poem.

Epics are long poems written on grand subjects---the founding of a nation (Virgil's Aeneid), war (Homer's Iliad), a journey involving adventures (Homer's Odyssey)---and on a grand scale about heroes and bold deeds done and undertaken. Lyric poems are often written in the first-person and can be about a single moment in time, a single thought or idea, a feeling, like any of Sappho's poems (poem 1 a prayer to Aphrodite, goddess of love; poem 31, an expressing of envy and jealousy).

I have compared life in Autismland to an epic poem before, and compared my efforts to "translate" the fragment syllables of Charlie's speech to how one deciphers a fragmented text of Sappho's poetry. Because raising Charlie seems to pull the Big Questions out on a daily basis: What will happen to him when Jim and are gone? Will he be able to take care of himself---to remember to brush his teeth or wash his clothes? Will he find a job? Will he learn how to read beyond a list of sight words taught singly and reviewed over, over, and over?

These questions can be critiqued as my mind racing ahead to a future I am overly worrying about; as me engaging in some rather catastrophic thinking of my own. So many every day activities---going shopping, or learning to write the letters of the alphabet---can seem to take on epic proportions in Autismland. And when I find my mind racing to think of those Big Questions and pondering a future no one can predict, I tend to step back and focus on the here-and-now, on the simple and concrete right in front of me, on the single moments such as are conveyed in a lyric poem.

It became apparent this week that Charlie has been associating, or rather equating, going to the grocery store with getting sushi. After Tuesday's mall "adventure," I thought it would be good to practice going to the store and not getting sushi. The three of us went after emphasizing what we were going to get ("oranges! chocolate!") rather than focusing on what we were not going to (as in "not getting sushi"). We walked around the different parts of the store; Charlie spooned several chunks of watermelon into a plastic container, chose a pack of chocolate soy pudding, and was quietly walked by the sushi counter with eyes big.

Just as Jim and I were exchanging looks of "that went well" in the check-out line, two women started to unload their cart, the first item being.......a huge party-pack of sushi ("epic" size, if you will). Charlie pushed his way over to stare at it and Jim and I quickly said, "It's someone else's!" He moved slowly away after awhile and was soon eating the watermelon while standing atop the heater vent in our house (for a combined sensory experience: cold melon, warm air).

Seeing Charlie peaceful and easy after making it through the grocery store without getting sushi was a sweet moment of delight in and of itself, just as much as later it was to behold Charlie swimming at the YMCA pool, like poetry in water as his shoulders hump and hunch and droplets shimmer on his upturned face as he backfloats. Arms above his head, Charlie held his body in the long line of a column----the real boy form of those karyatids---those maiden-shaped columns---on the Erechtheion in Athens---and sank slowly to the bottom of the pool.

Joy and delight and sparkling loveliness.

A Sappho poem almost has the same beauty as Charlie (the hero of this Autismland epic) swimming in the pool.

He seems to me equal to the gods that man.........

Giant in the Sky (#481)

Ant Hockey at 10.30am (Charlie held his stick in one hand, did his best to follow a red ball in a jumble of feet and kids); a hilly bike ride on which he first wanted pushes from Jim before self-motoring; making the 3pm showing of Open Season with our friend and three of her five daughters---Charlie sat, requested a soda which he pitched into the (empty) row behind us then sat and watched the entire movie; kicking a purple soccer ball back and forth for two rounds with the eldest girl (who has one strong kick).

Charlie seemed quite pleased to have the three girls running and kicking and hurrying around his back yard while he munched on a bag of frozen peas and carrots. He took an especial interest in the youngest girl and held her firmly by the shoulders (she did not seem to mind, considering that Charlie is about a foot and a half taller than her). Charlie looked about ready to hop into their minivan with the four of them when they headed home.

The part of Open Season that Charlie watched especially entranced was a madcap tour-de-force: Boog the bear accidentally causes the beavers' dam to burst, with the result that animals, a truck, logs, a crazed hunter, are all swept up in torrents of water and hurled downstream, one after another. Charlie, I sense, likes to be caught up in a similar swirl of action (though not quite that wild).

Indeed: We got Mexican take-out and ate in the black car on the way across the Pulaski Skyway to Jersey City. Some of my students were singing and doing improv skits for a "fall fest" performance. The skits---heavy on the humor, the talk, and the shouting----made Charlie nervous. But the singing----we caught the last few bars of Giants in the Sky sung by one of my students and all of "On the Steps of the Palace" from Into the Woods---made Charlie beam and smile so his cheeks were round. He stood up in the aisle, very still, very rapt, and Jim and I nodded to each other: It's the music that speaks to him best.

Our friend noted that her second-youngest daughter had said "Charlie is talking more and he is doing better"; the youngest daughter said that "he cries more than other kids." I am grateful for both observations, both very true, and (to me) more than characteristic of days in Autismland, of days when both awesome talking from a child of few words and some awfully loud screaming are often combined.

"There are big tall terrible, awesome, scary, wonderful giants in the sky" was what my student was singing as we came into the theater; it is the last line of Giants in the Sky. And the big tall terrible, the awesome, the scary, the wonderful more than describe our days (like today, which was nicely lacking in the "terrible" category) in Autismland with Charlie. Just as we do not know what those giants in the sky are like until we climb the beanpole to find out, so we can never know what Charlie might like and might be able to do, if we do not keep on climbing up after him, our giant who leads us onward and upward into the sky.

You Coming? Or Am I Going? (#300)

After Friday's stomach flu leading to an unexpectedly quiet Saturday, Charlie woke up at his usual time on Sunday and seemed extra-alert as he looked out of the windows of our house and, later, of the black car as we drove to "Tar-gett." He was not interested in eating and moved more slowly than usual around the house; Jim went to his office to write with the promise of "I'll come home for a bike ride, pal."

Charlie wanted "wemonade" but, since Target did not have any, we stopped at Krauszer's and he walked into our house smiling, drink in his hand, and settled himself by the front window. I was in the kitchen when a rubber ball was pitched from the couch into the dining room. I then heard four soft knocks and saw the lemonade flying. Charlie had snapped and I ran to put a pillow under his head, he yelped and cried and I did my best to say little and soon he was mopping up the floor with paper towels.

"Daddy coming home," half-moaned Charlie, resettling himself in his lookout position on the couch.

"Yes, he's coming home soon for a bike ride!" I said.

"Bike ride!" said Charlie, his voice stronger.

"Yeah, and everything'll be fine," I said, as softly as I could. "You've got a lot to handle, Gong Gong and Po Po went back to California on the airplane yesterday. And Spring Break is almost over and you get to take the red schoolbus to school tomorrow."

"School-buss," said Charlie smoothly. "Go school."

Charlie also talks about "go home" when he is away from home (in the car, for instance), just as he talks about "go school" when he is at home. And certainly "school" and "home" are two major poles of his existence, as exemplified in the calendar of "yalllow house" 's that Charlie has been crossing off on the April 2006 calendar our Lovaas consultant made to help him count off the days of his two-week-long Spring Break. His actual school is in a large white building, but the red schoolbus/minivan is what stands out in Charlie's lexicon.

Because, perhaps, the red schoolbus--like our black car--is the vehicle transporting Charlie in one direction or another. And while it is very clear in his speech (and perhaps his mind) that he is going to school or coming home, the rest of us use those words indiscriminately: "Time to go home! Let's go to school. Are you coming to school tomorrow? Come on, let's go!"

Whether you're coming or going depends on the position of the speaker; indeed, the Mandarin lai and the ancient Greek erchomai mean both "come" and "go."

It's a matter of perspective.

Happily Ever After (#296)

Once I got into work today---late because I stayed at home while Charlie had an early ABA session, to check in with the therapist--one theme dominated, as I realized during Latin class. We were translating Catullus' poem 72 and I was explaining the meaning of quondam: "It's 'once upon a time'--no, that's olim, quondam is at some time, once. Olim is like at the beginning of a fairy tale."

"Fairy tales! You're thinking of Into the Woods!" said a student. (And I will announce that Into the Woods will be performed by Argus Eyes of Saint Peter's College starting tomorrow, and that my student is the evil stepsister.)

I realized I had certainly had fairy tales on my mind, not willingly. Late last night I got my first look at the National Autism Association's Escape the Hopelessness campaign with the butterfly movie. The short movie begins with a child's voice saying "Once upon a time / I opened a door of darkness" and then depicts a metmorphosis, from child-like-a-caterpillar-caught-in-(autistic)-darkness-in-a-cocoon to (recovered) child-breaking-free-and-flying-away-on-butterly-wings while saying "I thought I'd never escape."

The NAA movie (the "mutant-insect ad campaign") relies on an "ugly duckling" story, in which an ugly creature is transformed into a beautiful creature--a swan--admired by all; on a narrative familiar to us through fairy tales of monstrous Beasts transformed back into their true (human, handsome) selves thanks to the love of some Beauty. The NAA movie also uses outdated autism stereotypes, such as the notion that an autistic child is like a changeling left in the cradles by trolls, who have stolen the real child.

My feeling is that Charlie is, was, and always has already been the butterfly at the end of NAA movie. That "once upon a time, there was a lovely boy named Charlie and he had autism.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Charlie Got Rice: Let Proust Eat His Madeleine (#291)

First, a fib for Charlie:

Got
rice
noodles?
Want spring-rolls.
Bike ride, helmet on!
I count out Charlie's syllables.

[For more "fibs"--Fibonacci-based poetry (six line, 20 syllable long poems with the syllable pattern 1/1/2/3/5/8)--visit Gotta Book.]

The French novelist Marcel Proust in his novel Remembrance of Things Past famously wrote how the taste of a madeleine--a scallop-shaped spongelike cookie--on a winter day set off a stream of childhood memories of Sunday mornings at Combray with his aunt:

No sooner had the warm liquid [tea] mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, ......... -this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me.

That "extraordinary," "exquisite pleasure [that invades] the senses" is what I suspect Charlie feels steeped in when tasting the sweet-sour-stickiness of a piece of sushi or the easy blandness of white rice (his breakfast today); or (as he did tonight, with a rapturous smile), the soft-salty-spiciness of "brown noodles"---rice noodles with peanut sauce. Eating--as we all know--provides immediate, if fleeting, positive reinforcement.

But I wonder if the taste of sushi, brown noodles, soft white rice, and green apples does not say something more to Charlie. The taste of these foods and, by association (by metonymy), the very words--"soo-shee," "bwown noodohs," "g'een appo"--are strongly and simply connected to certain experiences, to (as Proust wrote) an essence that "was not in me it was me." Indeed, Charlie often says a favorite food--"sushi," "spring rolls"--when he is so visibily agitated enough that I run to get a pillow, just in case--as if to comfort himself at a time of stress, by talking about something evoking a more pleasant sensation.

Squirrels and Dogs and Horses, Oh My! (#279)

Over the past week, it has become apparent: Charlie is once again afraid of dogs. On a walk last Friday we ran into his afterschool babysitter, who was walking her dog Angel before taking her to the vet. Charlie froze ten feet away and edgily neared me (because I was standing close to the dog) and demanded "Up, Mommy!" Today we took the train to Hoboken and the same freezing-grabbing-mom-or-dad and requesting "Up!" desperately occurred when we walked out of a restaurant and caught sight of a young couple eating outside, pink-leashed dog under the table.

When he was 2 1/2, Charlie was terrified of squirrels. We were living in St. Paul a few blocks from a college and often took a walk on the campus grounds. At the site of a squirrel scurrying across the grass or skittering up a tree, Charlie (not yet talking) cried out and clung to our legs, eyes wide open like a character in a Manga comic book. Jim and I hypothesized that it was the squirrel's sudden, darting, unpredictable movements that terrified Charlie, and I think this is one reason for Charlie's new dog-fear which is amplified by the larger size of even the smallest dogs (well, maybe not the chihuahuas in the park today) and their tendency to approach us rather than, like the squirrels, to flit away.

Charlie eventually got over his fear of squirrels and, at the age of four, became highly interested in chasing them and staring up the trunk of a tree the squirrel had just ascended. Indeed, he was so fascinated with squirrels for a while that we searched high and low for a squirrel stuffed animal (we had to settle for a puppet). But something about squirrel stayed in Charlie's mind and indeed gave me two important clues for his understanding of the world.

First was a clue about Charlie's selective viewing of the visual world. We had a set of modeling clay tools that included a stencil with a sideways S-shaped squiggle. The first time I took this out Charlie's eyes opened huge and he ran squealing away.

Over an S?

I looked carefully at the stencil and saw what Charlie must be seeing: The sideways S resembled nothing so much as a squirrel with its long tail. Charlie was nonetheless fascinated by the squirrel-stencil and would press it into some Model Magic and then run away, howling. When his squirrel-fear subsided, he made several "squirrels," labeled them, and smooshed them out before moving onto his favorite horse and car molds.

I started to realize then how selective--how streamlined--might be Charlie's visual perception of the world, such that squirrels themselves looked like sideways S's to him. That was why, when he was not yet two years old, Charlie only chose red socks to wear and could always find our green car in the huge parking lot at Cub Foods: The red socks, the green stationwagon, were all he was looking to see in the landscape.

The second squirrel-clue was about how Charlie hears language and other sounds.