We Go With Him

Party Success!

I'm sure Charlie threw the books on Saturday night in full-out anxiety about his birthday party on Sunday. It was a reminder of why, for some years, we skipped birthday parties for him, period.

We try to keep everything low-pressure for Charlie, in recognition of the fact that just the idea of the party, let alone the realities of guests and a table loaded with food, can weigh on him. We invited a number of our friends, all of whom have been very aware over the years of Charlie's struggles and sensitivities and would understand when we ducked out of a conversation.. Having my parents around was a huge huge help -- they picked up a big order of Chinese noodles and dim sum and, with four adults, someone always had an ear out for Charlie

He wanted a walk on waking, followed by a 12-mile bike ride. Coming home to a pan of shrimp lo mein and a pan of shrimp chow fun was an obvious treat and, while in the past I would have said 'wait for the guests!,' a birthday boy should get to eat his birthday noodles when he's ready (and hungry).

Our good friend Hal endured non-moving NJ Turnpike traffic on a drive up from Philadelphia. Charlie came running down the stairs when he arrived and ran smiling around the house. Hal had to head back home early but did see Charlie off with Jim and a friend, Ed, on bike ride #2.

Our other friends appeared and we had a nice little crowd on our back deck which is generally underused, Charlie having always preferred the front yard. (I'm probably in the back yard the most these days as I routinely cross it a few times to get the bikes from the yellow shed.)

Charlie spent a little time in his room after the second ride but was wary of so many voices at once (especially if you consider that it's rare for anyone but the three of us to be in our house). He and I went on a walk in the early evening during which we ran into our next-door neighbor and I noted that we were taking 'taking a break from our party'; she laughed in understanding. Then I took a smiling Charlie to get a burrito.

I had been sure to place his lunchboxes in the refrigerator so he would know that, party and all, he had school the next day. Charlie picked up his iPad and paced the L of the kitchen, dining room and living room. At first he had on Disney, then the Kinks ('Shangri-La'), then he started walking more briskly and running in spurts and his face started to get more set (i.e., frozen), and then he turned on the Pogues and his running got more intense and I went to find Jim to confer.

Jim stopped in mid-conversation to say he and Charlie would go on a bike ride.

So they did a total of 36 miles on Sunday, biking their good-byes to our guests -- all of whom we are thanking profusely for helping to make Charlie's 15th birthday a memorable, pretty much peaceful-easy feeling, and very good-feelinged, celebration.

And yes, after 36 miles of bike riding and 2 1/2 of walking, Charlie was ready to climb into bed at 10pm, and soon asleep.

 

Just Your Usual Thursday (Bikes, Eats, Walks, Up Real Late)

There a bit more symmetry than might first meet the eye in Charlie's above arrangement.

He had a much better day at school after waking at 5am and having a lot of breakfast -- why, I suspect, Charlie didn't eat much of his snack or lunch (a couple of food items came back in his lunchboxes).

It was breezy, cooler and less humid than on Wednesday. He and Jim rode bikes, we all did some grocery shopping, we enjoyed the crisper air again on two walks. Charlie listened on and off to some of the music from the Charlie Brown shows.

You won't be surprised to hear that he is still up past midnight. I've been trying different things including, for the past two nights, lights out and music off after midnight. Tonight, am trying for a more peaceable less "cop-mom' approach.

I do have a Latin exam on Friday morning but it starts at 9am rather than at 8am (the time when my Latin class started) -- yes, a good thing, that!

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10 minutes after posting this, I heard the Kinks no longer playing and found Charlie sound asleep, iPad under his hand.

 

End of Semester Issues

It being the end of the semester for Jim and me at our respective institutions of higher learning, we seem to have come down with the usual/inevitable 'end of the semester' cold-thing, with scratchy throats, a few bodily aches and pains here and there (well, those could be from other sources such as the daily regimented exercise a-bike and a-foot), rather woozy heads. Charlie has gotten a whiff of the same: The tight team that sticks together, gets sick together.

That said, this is not one of those lie-on-the-couch-moaning-from-sheer-fatigue kind of ailments. If I had to teach a couple of classes in a row tomorrow, I'd be packing some extra fluids (besides my ever-essential 20+ ounce stainless steel commuter coffee tankard) but could certainly teach, having done so with near-laryngitis, raging headaches and other discomforts, not to mention two or fewr hours of sleep after a long Charlie insomnia night (or just a night of deep unhappiness, so to speak). Tomorrow at work is all sitting at my desk while a dozen students appear for make-up quizzes, two students translate a last round of Cicero for a tutorial and one student stops in to review her research (after which, I hie myself to the white car as quickly as possible, to stop at the store prior to getting home to meet the schoolbus).

However Charlie felt on Sunday, he insisted on the usual two bike rides that are his and Jim's weekend standard, 16 miles on the bike path in Jersey horse country and 12 at home, for a grand total of 100 miles for the past week.

He was more somber, and quiet, than usual. The latter I especially noted, but with a pang to think of how far Charlie has come. While his 'length of utterance' is 1 to 5 words, tops, he talks lots, frequently and quite clearly now, in sharp contrast to his earlier years of silence or verbalizations that were not words or, that is, were not distinguishable words. Now it is notable that he doesn't talk because he does so much.

In the evening, Charlie was hungry for a big dinner. Then we three enjoyed a walk in the pleasant evening air. After two requests for me to change the music on his iPad (no more K.D. Lang; I admit she's not a typical teenage boy choice), Charlie said good night. Jim went up to give him a little bedtime shave and a big good night and Charlie was asleep well before 10pm.

Maybe, too, he's finally catching up after so many 3 -5 hour nights of sleep throughout last week.

We don't travel far and rarely out of New Jersey these days, but we do seem to do enough to fill the time and get the 'end of semester' fatigue (Charlie too, though of course he doesn't have semesters).

The next morning, 7.43 am EST. Our serious schoolboy did make it onto the bus after a solid night of sleep. As one of his former teachers did say, he's a lovely boy.

 

Wakefulness and Watchfulness

Thursday morning I was going to write a short post about how well Charlie's and my last long Jim-less, no-bike-ride Wednesday turned out -- after an early dinner and a walk, I made cupcakes with Charlie showing puzzlement not to be making (as we have too often) brownies; his face then brightened when I said I'd set the timer on his iPad and 2 1/3 hours passed pleasantly with him running around and listening to music till Jim came home and Charlie, as ever, demanded he take off his shoes post-haste -- but after dropping Jim off at the train station and stopping at the grocery store, I made another batch of cupcakes because I wanted to give them time to cool off so I could frost them before Charlie came home from school.

Because, a few years ago, he had a brief obsession with eating pre-made vanilla frosting (resulting in, I'm quite sure, bad stomach distress).

Because, while I don't think every one of my students will want a cupcake, I like having enough plus extras (a Chinese thing) and, well, Jim (and maybe even, but probably not, Charlie) would want some too.

Charlie did sample an unfrosted yellow cake one Thursday morning. He'd gone to bed past 2.30 am on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and was asleep by 11.30 Wednesday night, only to wake at 4am, maybe from the sound of buckets of rain on the roof. It was very loud and maybe why I dreamed I was teaching people to recite Homeric hexameters, only to wake and find Charlie staring over me.

Thursday Charlie was, of course, glad for a bike ride. As it is early May, he is aware of his impending birthday and, accordingly, of my parents' visiting soon to celebrate;.I drew up a calendar to show Charlie when they are coming and he looked at it and initially took it to his room, then wanted me to take it out. We're now busily anticipating his anticipation, complete -- replete? -- with worry-in-the-gut.

Maybe all those thoughts of what's ahead are also keeping him from sleeping all this past week and not so much for the past couple of weeks: Yes, Charlie is having yet another post-midnight sleep-time tonight. 

(Certainly it is good that Friday is my last day of classes for this spring semester.)

 

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.

 

Midterm Images

 

Monday night I wrote an archaeology midterm and selected 6 images of ancient architecture and pottery for students to identify, and, as Charlie had done a few hours earlier, simply conked out. We are all indubitably better, at last coughing less (it was a over a week of coughs) though not quite out of the woods (cold) yet.

As Jim told me (I was already headed to work), Charlie said an unceremonious good-bye to my parents Tuesday morning before boarding the bus. It was a very good visit. With everything going on, my parents were in good spirits and Charlie spent his share of time just hanging around the house, watching my mom cook, listening to the different sounds with more people in the house (he likes to imitate my dad's coughs and throat-clearing but that just came naturally this visit, you could say). We'll see my parents again in May for Charlie's birthday (he will be 15) (!!).

Charlie was quiet getting off the bus and, after checking around the house to make sure things were where they should be (he has lately developed a fixation on making sure he knows where all of the black plastic spoons and white plastic forks are), wanted a bike ride. We made a trip to get some groceries afterwards during which Charlie spied a box of crackers we hadn't bought in a while. He opened it in the car and started munching away and Jim and I appreciated a few ourselves.

As for the archaeology midterm: The best part turned out to be the images as I felt that teaching students to look with care at a piece of ancient pottery to determine whether it was Minoan, Mycenean, Protogeometric or Geometric was all about them learning to look at things differently and use different senses and skills than they are routinely asked to in this digital day and age.

(It's something that more than a few of us have indeed sought to devote ourselves to do these past several years.)

Summoning Energies

 

I'm extra-glad I took Charlie to the doctor on Thursday because Jim and I had relapse of the same cold and good to know it is 'just' a cold. It's likely that teaching three classes in a row on Friday morning had something to do with it -- when I'm sick, I can still always teach and even don't notice I am sick while exerting myself.

I suspect Charlie does something of the same when he's bike riding!

 

Cornel West and the Greeks and Catastrophe

We put Charlie on the bus then it was into the white car and Jim drove me down to Philadelphia where I spent the day in the Marriott Hotel at the Annual Meeting of the American Philological Association. This meant that I spent the day listening to academics talking about 19th-century African-Americans who had been educated in Classics and were  (like Cicero) powerful wielders of rhetoric; about the tensions and ambivalences amongst those of us who are Classicists but from different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, perspectives; about the use of Sophocles' Antigone in a play about the murdered women in Ciudad Juárez; about teaching pedagogy to Classics graduate students, a topic that led me (how could I not) to ask about what is done to prepare students to teach undergraduates with learning disabilities, ADHD, Asperger's; about ancient mosaics and vase paintings of Dionysius (to consider the question, does the wine god ever actually drink wine and get drunk in ancient depictions of him), a particularly splendid mosaic depicting the end of the 12th book of the Aeneid showing Turnus dropping his weapons before Aeneas, and a consideration of domed ceilings in ancient architecture vs. being under the sky outside.

Along the way, one panelist said words to the effect that there is something about Classicists and -- having (she didn't say that, I suspicioned it) -- Asperger's. 

In the morning, Dr. Cornel West was on a six-person panel about two books, one on classical themes in African American literature and one on Afro-Greeks, on classical influences and education on Caribbean writers. Dr. West is (among much else) a philosopher, but not a classicist (he did rock a little in his seat, and another presenter who writes about the classical tradition kept swaying and stepping about at the lectern just like someone else I know who can't speak while standing still). And then Dr. West said that he goes back to the Greeks because they understand catastrophe.

What is Greek tragedy but, to quote the title of a book I read in my undergraduate days, catastrophe averted? And there is plenty of it in Greek comedy, lyric poetry about love, Greek history (the plague, the defeats, the Greeks taken prisoner after the disastrous Sicilian expedition in Thucydides' account of the Peloponessian War).

Dr. West was talking about the ugly legacies of colonialism.

I had my phone in my right hand and I looked at it and saw the number for Charlie's school. 

The ringer was off and I stepped out of the hotel ballroom and heard the voicemail: Our smiling, waving from the bus window boy had had two very difficult moments, one in the morning and one at lunch, but was ok, said the reassuring voice of Charlie's teacher. I texted Jim to call Charlie's school to talk to his teacher and Jim did so right away and I went back to my seat in the second row and heard the tail end of Dr. West's words.

Later on, I found what I think will be the textbook for next fall's ancient Greek class. It is nothing splashy: A facsimile of the turn of the century schoolboy text I learnt Greek from in a smudged xerox copy.  It has just the basics. I also found a reader too with sentences on sentences, and some laminated cards that have all (well, all the basics) of ancient Greek grammar on them. So you can carry it with you everywhere!

If you're not already carrying it with you always in your head after studying it for 30 years.

Progress Happens When You're Not Looking

 

Friday was my last day of teaching;no chalkboards for a while after this. Charlie was much cheerier Thursday and Friday, in contrast to the start of the week. And, I had a wonderful parent-teacher conference Thursday: Charlie's progress learning is quite gradual, but he does make gains and, in speaking to the speech therapist and teachers I realized how much. Last year he was having a lot of confusion about using 'yes' and 'no'; the speech therapist noted that was no issue for him and, as she did, it occurred to me that Charlie has been having much less trouble with those words to the extent that I had forgotten he was.

 

A Lesson From Life With Charlie

 

It's the last week of classes for the fall semester at my college and, to help students review the past few months' lessons of Latin and ancient Greek grammar, I had them give brief presentations. Many students not being fond of speaking in front of the class, and certainly not about a dead foreign language's grammatical structures, I told them all they had to do was to write whatever they were assigned on the chalkboard or, if they'd rather, they could make a handout and pass it out to the whole class.

The review in both Latin and ancient Greek classes went far better than I had thought. Students wrote on the board and then sat down or passed out some thoughtfully prepared handouts, and so the review happened without me writing everything on the board and talk, talk, talking.

For the students, the review was something of a non-verbal exercise, an intentional aspect on my part and one learnt from all of our time with Charlie and reinforced as he and I went on an evening walk in the misty rain, neither saying one word as we moved over puddles and mud and wet leaves after not a bad day, but an uneasy one: 60s degrees Fahrenheit in December is a bit odd here; Charlie's teacher told me that 5 out of his 9 students have sniffles and/or colds (Charlie has the former) and, until Tuesday evening, Charlie was also troubled by his stomach as well as still processing a very good and very full weekend so a lot of quiet wasn't a solution, but it helped -- and so can visual displays (paradigms of declensions and conjugations) in colored chalk or typed up on a sheet of paper be (at times) far more effective than a teacher (and a mother) talking, explaining, and talking too much again.