We Go With Him

Four Day Weekend (Less One Day)

 

Charlie has a four-day weekend due to Presidents Day on Monday, a bit of a double disruption as it means one school week is cut short at the end and at the start. Jim brought him to me mid-morning Friday in Jersey City and then went to take care of some business; Charlie and I enjoyed a ride through the Meadowlands, New York on one side and Giants stadium on the other, for a favorite burrito. In the afternoon, he had his first-in-while bike ride with no stops to walk.

Around midnight, unable so sleep (he'd dozed in the afternoon), he was undone, as in agitated, from eating some Chinese noodles -- the bulk of beans and rice suits his stomach but not the grease and soy -- and went for the wall, fiercely, then got himself to sit on the blue couch.

You're probably asking yourself, why do they keep getting those noodles if they bother his stomach? I ask myself that, too. There are always probably other factors (like yet another an oncoming storm, the aforementioned long weekend) behind his thymic distress. Charlie is very obsessive and ritualistic about food and it does seem to help to address these by letting him have what's he's asking for, seeking to moderate it and buttressing his GI system with plenty of fluids and other things (apples and fresh fruit seem to help some).

Charlie and Jim are out bike riding again this Saturday morning because that's what we do.

After the Storm and Into the Wind

 

The title has a metaphorical as well as a literal application, Charlie having had an 'attack' with throwing of multiple plastic items, hitting his head and grabbing my arm and containing it to that and then biking 17 miles with occasional coaxings from Jim, into a 5 mph wind.

He had woken calling for a certain Chinese restaurant that is laden with grandparents associations x 4. The food there is better than average but still greasy and, along with emotional matters, it's a bit much for Charlie to stomach (also meant literally and metaphorically).

Jim said Charlie pedaled without stopping in the sunshine and just traces of snow.

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.

Boyo Anxius postscript

Charlie having slept nary a wink Sunday night I was not surprised when the school behaviorist called on Monday afternoon to say he'd had an incident (starting on the track, continuing in the classroom but not escalating). Total no-sleep coupled with grandparents departure anxiety coupled with eating a great deal of paper-wrapped chicken and other things into the wee hours Sunday night -- Charlie seems to eat when he is nervous and also when his stomach is bothering him -- well, you can do the math and see it would add up to at least a bellyache.

Then Charlie not only went somewhat further on his bike on a cold afternoon's ride, And, after we'd done one of those zippity-split-quick walks (i.e., running shoes are a must and it's better not to have eaten dinner before), he kept giving me a look as I was flicking around on my phone to read the Roman historian Livy's Book 2 (I also have the book on an iPad that Charlie has lately appropriated along with his own/other iPad, to hear the Beach Boys that were somehow not on the one but on the other which is newer and has a camera).

I asked if he'd like to sit on the blue couch; he walked a bit of a circle away that came back, pushed away a blanket and tapped the cushion and, without going into too many details, I realized that once again I had been off in gathering what Charlie was communicating in actions, not to mention in need of doing some domestic activity (involving large appliances) (not the refrigerator).

I mean, it was just super clear to me why he'd not gone to lie on the couch on Sunday night as he has been on and off doing on nights when insomnia haunts him, or when he seems to be want to be around Jim and me as we're reading at night.

Charlie is now getting very much needed sleep now with (yes) both iPads beside him.

I've got a great quote from Aristotle's Rhetoric (I think) via Anne Carson to end this but due to the complete lack of organization of all of our books after Bookshelvapocalypse two years ago, it will have to wait.

 

Alleviated

 

Awakened by merry-making just as the new year began on Tuesday, Charlie and I noted each of the first six hours of 2013, 1.35, 2.15, 3.00, 4.30, 5.45, and  6.30 when the stomach trouble (result of the Chinese food he'd eaten --  some of my relatives like to joke that having tea after such 'cuts the grease' but Charlie does not drink anything hot and grease is grease) that I realized had kept him (along with transition-back-to-school anxiety) from sleeping was alleviated.

A few hours of sleep later, Charlie and Jim biked for 13 miles through snow flurries, ably skirting ice and snow on the road (the bike path remains best suited for cross country skiers). He wanted the noodles again and we took care that all the over-the-counter-neurologist-recommended GI remedies were provided, along with a good dosing of apples.

The rest of the day and night proceeded nicely except that I was watched like a hawk every time I (accidentally or intentionally) bent my body in the direction of the kitchen, Charlie wanting to make sure that I did not move the lunchboxes. 

Consequently, they were loaded at the very last minute as the yellow schoolbus pulled up and Jim helped Charlie into his green parka before a very fast skedaddle over the grass.

 

How a Boy of His Own Rituals Managed on a Day of National Ritual

 

Until about 5.30 pm-ish, Charlie handled the holiday and the inevitable disruptions its traditions and rituals impose on his routines and ritualistic nature. He actually smiled in the late morning as we drove up to the burrito place with the 'closed' sign in the window (we proceeded to a nearby McDonald's that was open only to be told we had to wait all of three minutes to get Charlie a hamburger as it wasn't yet 11 am) and was game when we sought out a far less-preferred, non-Jersey City Vietnamese restaurant. He had displayed his anxiety about the day by being in 'hurry up please it's time mode.' waking early and launching immediately into a walk then a bike ride then a bike ride then a walk.

He asked for a third bike ride around 3 pm and waited well with a timer only to say 'no' to the ride and thence followed some hours of mounting uneasiness (connected in part to eating about two dozen pieces of paper-wrapped chicken and about two dozen prawns in the space of an hour -- I did make sure Charlie drank a lot of water amid it all; he has no sense of 'portion control' or 'if I eat all that my stomach will feel bad afterwards'). He sat for perhaps five minutes on the couch and a certain flat affect in his face led Jim and me to take some precautions.

Charlie's mien eased up a bit and, foregoing any of the Thanksgiving meal -- that ritualistic food not being part of his ritualistic-ness-- he spent over an hour upstairs with the shower turned on and the ocean waves playing on his iPad, in a routine he occasionally embarks on when his stomach is not cooperating.

I do think he is setting up some kind of sensory re-memory of being at the ocean with such. If not being in the waves, being in the outdoor shower (that every beach house has) -- Charlie used to love to take endless 'hot showers.'

Afterwards, he went to bed after I had helped him put his room back to rights, just as he likes it: Wednesday might, he had wanted to sleep in the room where my parent usually do. They had switched all their things into Charlie's room as a result and changed the bedding and Charlie was especially insistent that I do 'green pillows' -- put certain green pillowcases back on the pillows on his bed. We couldn't find these initially, only to find them in the closet and then Charlie was relieved.

O! Bessed rage for order, pale Ramon, / The maker's rage to order words of the sea...

 

In Which We Have a Good Time At the Neurologist's and In Traffic

Despite the fact that it was early Tuesday morning with Thanksgiving on the horizon, I taught both my Latin and ancient Greek students a host of pronouns (after getting silence to the question 'what is a pronoun'), translated some of Euclid's theorems with the three students who had come to Greek class and had a senior math major 'translate' them into math language, then went great guns to discuss radical democracy in 5th century Athens in another class so we can dive right into the Peloponnesian War next Tuesday.

Then I drove home; met Jim; we picked up Charlie at the BAC and drove through the town where Jim's parents lived for thirty-plus years and we lived for three years (some very aggravating) and tallied the trees that had been uprooted by the hurricane; proceeded to one of the many extremely congested parts of New Jersey to the new, north Jersey office, of Charlie's based-in-south-Jersey neurologist.

We didn't actually see the neurologist as I think he was doing intake with some new, young, patients. Charlie was eager to get out and get a burrito at the place down the state road (we had discovered it thanks to the hurricane) but sat good-naturedly in the waiting room while being stared at by a woman in a sari with a stack of child development books and by the black slip-on shoe-wearing father of a girl who was about 3 or 4, in diapers, drinking from a bottle, not saying any (to us) comprehensible words, climbing all over the furniture and not responding to the two adults' requests.

Charlie also sat and responded in his usual echolalic way (remember, in our household, echolalia is progress) to the nurse practitioner's and the (new) neurologist's questions.

The new regimen of over-the-counter stomach remedies (antiacids, psyllium fiber, probiotics, a few other things and lot of water) appears to be helping Charlie's thymic distress. I will allow that the recent incident of the Swedish fish only confirmed, there is a correlation for our boy between SIBs, biting, grabbing, throwing items, etc. and 'the c word' (echoed a bit in 'stipulation'). I noted that Charlie's diet contains what, when explained, appears to be an abhorrent amount of rice (unless you're Asian) but that:

1) I'm no longer giving him sushi which is made of glutinous rice, which makes it Swedish-fish-like in a sticky sense. I have been thinking, giving Charlie sushi could be compared to giving him gluey hockey pucks.

2) The rice he has been eating a lot of is the sort I was none too happy about in my childhood. It's plain ol' long-grain rice cooked in a lot of water. I've been serving it up with a bit of chicken or fish in Charlie's lunch and I think he may be eating the protein too.

It is true, the results of having Charlie, he of the intensely engrained habits, on the gluten-free casein-free when he was toddler and till he was about 10-ish, have been that he has never eaten a sandwich, he's not used to spreading butter on anything, he eats no candy (a lot of the commerical stuff containing milk product sort of ingredients).

(Mention of this latter Charlie-ness had brought, earlier in the day, more silence from my students. I had set a big bag of all the Halloween candy we had left (a lot, as we got nary a trick or treater) this year on the table at the start of Latin class and most of it was summarily taken.)

These details of Charlie's diet and some others regarding less than fun-to-deal-with-behaviors were all discussed by me, the doctor and the nurse while Jim and Charlie waited (very peacefully) in the white car. Charlie does still have scabs and bumps on his forehead -- some of the bump is permanent, along with the scars over his nose -- from the Sandy/Swedish fish-related incidents. When mention was made in front of him that he still had some 'self-destructive' behaviors, Jim and I were quick to change the subject to topics more 'posautive.' Who wants to hear their difficult stuff talked about in front of them?

Lest the neurology's offices staff seem insensitive, I am going to underscore they were totally in-tune and attentive. Mmost medical personnel, behaviorists and certainly most people we've encountered need cheery reminders about Jim's and my policy of not bringing up the negative (including complaints about NJ's governor, the GOP in general, 'religion,' etc.) in front of our very sensitive, hyper-auditory, boy.

Actually, the neurologist said she likes Mexican food too and certainly Charlie was glad to get his before we had a long-in-traffic (such is the norm when you're on the Garden State Parkway going through Newark and its environs) ride home.  He was peaceable easy feeling on that, too, and through the evening.

And he did keep grinning through what Jim and I later agreed were the understandable stares in the waiting room. We did wonder their thoughts: Worry that the little girl would 'only' be able to talk in Charlie's very limited, repetitive, echoing fashion? Edginess on seeing more of her -- perhaps she was not yet diagnosed? -- in Charlie than they might wish? Puzzlement that we were all cheery, singing and call-and-responding to Charlie's few phrases?

When you've sat in as many doctor's offices' waiting rooms as us 3 (and as many long car rides), you just have to enjoy that you're still together and (a bonus) peaceably. 

Radix Malorum

Radix malorum non cupiditas est (quod ille ignoscens in fabulis Canterburiensibus Chauceronis dicit) sed Pisces Suecici.

In other words, the reason (on top of post-hurricane-ness and change of season-ness and anxiety and something of a cold) Charlie ended up with three incident reports in four days (Wednesday, Friday and Tuesday) in which it was noted that he was especially, intensely fierce was (well, for the latter two reports) that, last Thursday morning due to a delayed opening of his school due to the nor'easter's snow and us three going first to Jersey City to retrieve the black car from a snowy parking lot and driving it all the way out to the Jersey 'burbs and Jim and Charlie stopping in a bagel place while I got gas for the white car because it was an even day, Charlie nervously grabbed and ate a pack of Swedish Fish.

I might as well have given him a pack of glue pieces.

He had a period a few years ago -- when we were still watching his gluten and dairy intake (we still watch the latter in particular) and he and I would take the PATH train from Journal Square into Manhattan to meet Jim at his office -- of going for the yellow packs of red gummy candies in the racks at Hudson News, along with a 'green drink' (aka a Sprite). Little did it occur to us that they were probably at least one source of major bellyaching. I suspect Charlie just chewed the fish enough to swallow them and then had colossal stomach pain for days after, with attendant behavioral storming, gummy candies gumming up a system already prone to, ah, doing just that,

Tuesday evening, after a long talk on my way home with his teacher, Charlie's thymic distress was greatly alleviated and such it was that I had to dig out this trusty device bought for me by my dad a few years ago when I found myself using it routinely (you think we would have said, now there's a problem here). The device, and a plunger, was most effective and Charlie slept from about 7 till 10 pm and woke up troubled, with more stomach pain. He worked it through after demanding, more and more intensely, that we take him somewhere for a burrito (as you can guess, telling him 'you already had dinner' and 'it's too late' didn't exactly assuage him). Eventually, as he was getting calmer, I made a pot of rice and Charlie started smiling and ate it and some apples.

Wednesday was a far better day at school, with Charlie being able to work through being upset without extra staff having to be requested when his teacher could see his anxiety escalating. At home, a Dadless afternoon and evening due to Jim teaching late started with me having to use the plunger (but not the other device) again. By 7.30, after a ride to a nearby town that started with Charlie calling for fast food then saying no to it, then saying 'no home' as I drove home, then suddenly saying 'home,' he wanted Jim.

I've been wary of using the timer ever since, some Wednesdays ago, I turned it on and Charlie hit his head on the wainscoting about three minutes afterward. He was ok with it last night and spent the hours walking through the house, watching me make a crumb cake (Charlie has had a past fixation with Saran-wrapped chunks of such found in Jersey stores) from a mix (I have a fixation with 'making it from scratch' but why not a mix with a photo on the box to show Charlie what it would make, and that other things can be made from with that are not red and not brownies) and a bowl of rice, which he eagerly ate after it had cooled. The cake baking made the house smell very good though of course the cake, in its crumminess, would get dropped in the oven (don't ask) and Charlie liked checking in on my activities in a warm and cozy kitchen.

And, what with Jim rushing to the subway and the trains being on a different post-hurricane schedule, he got home early, while the timer still had some 25 minutes to go.

 

Reset Now That It's Been a Week on Regular Time

'Resetting his clock' was how Jim explained us being up last night at 3.30am with Charlie and I'd say that is the best explanation, also for the disquiet Charlie experienced while at school where things proved to be less orderly (the no bus business, for one) than his previous week at home with us.

Charlie would have been on 'reset' all last week anyways as last Sunday was the return to regular time, a phenomenon I usually make a moderately big deal about but, this year, simply noted as yet another disruption in a period of disruptions.

After trying to sleep in his bed on Friday night/Saturday morning, Charlie ended up casting himself into the blue chair, pulling a blanket over himself and conking out till almost 10am.

In keeping with our habit, we went out to Jersey horse country. The general store where Charlie loves to get a piece of carrot cake was open after just getting power back on Friday but there was no cake, just plastic-wrapped brownies and crumb cakes. I got one of each for Charlie and he didn't object to something different and ate them.

He and Jim did 16 speedy smiles on a trail speckled with fallen tree trunks, 'redwood size,' Jim told me.

At home, Charlie napped from 3.30 till 5.30pm. He was unsettled on waking, his stomach distended, and he wanted a burrito though he'd just had one for lunch. After a tense half-hour, he was able to ease up and Jim took him for a black car ride that first involved a stop at a more local Mexican fast food place that we had last visited years ago, making a harried exit with Jim hanging onto to a storming Charlie who, once outside, would have smashed his head into a storefront's windows if he didn't have his dad using his last strength to stop him.

This Saturday, they were into the Mexican place and out with a 'to go' order in very uneventful fashion. Then they went to a basketball court where Charlie gamefully threw the ball, if not in the basket's direction.

At home, Charlie ate some more (including some plain white rice -- square one  Asian comfort food) and went to his room and wanted a walk and we walked. Then he went to his room and wanted a walk and his eyes lit up when we said 'sure' and we walked, on a street that seemed very bright and quiet because everyone had their power restored and there were no more generators thrumming and the smell of gasoline.

Ocean waves on, nap despite, Charlie was asleep before 11pm.

Lag and How Charlie Sought to Work It Through

 

I taught my classes, with a good majority of students in attendance, for the first time in around two weeks on Friday. Everyone had a story about the storm or rather its aftermath and none of it was of the cozy, hot chocolate over flashlights sort. 'Flooding,' 'pumping,' 'no power,' 'no food,' 'ruined,' 'lines' and 'war zone' were frequent expressions. The storm's aftermath is ongoing and (after a nor'easter's snow and cold too) everyone was weary, with a vague unease that discomfort and outages were not at all over.

Though Charlie was back to school this week, things were far more disrupted than the previous one when the three of us had worked through long days at home together. There were four days of school, there was no bus till Friday, and Charlie's teacher was not there on Friday (he's getting married!). There was the snow on Wednesday. There was a very odd early morning ride to Jersey City on Thursday morning to retrieve the black car which Jim, contending with the current lack of public transit into New York, had left overnight in the armory parking lot near my school. There is the fact that the black car had been missing from its characteristic spot in front of the house as Jim has been taking it to a different train station than our town's in the interest of getting on a train. There is the bucking of the black car, a portent of something internal being out of whack.

There was a little signal Charlie was feeling 'otherly' about things when, Thursday night after he'd been hanging around in the kitchen, I found the tarnished pot (that I've long used to cook rice, vegetables and such, and that Charlie used to hurl across the kitchen when he was hurling around most of the contents of the cabinets and breaking a few coffee makers) in the garbage. 'The pot's in the garbage,' I said and Charlie who grinned and then was grim.

Around 1pm at school on Friday Charlie was in crisis, much more intensely than he has been all school year so far. The principal called me as a student and I were going over Greek -μι verbs. It sounded like Charlie says not in a state to get on the school bus home but the principal and I wondered if, giving him some time, he might work it through. We finished class hastily, I called Jim in his office, and the principal called me just as I was getting in my car to say Charlie was back to sitting at his desk with an aide he's very familiar with and singing Beatles songs, and they thought it would be better if he could take the bus as me picking him up would just be more of the disruptions, the not-normal, of earlier this week and all last week.

Charlie made it home on the bus. The school is really keeping the faith in him.

Jim was soon home, there was a bike ride and the rest of the day unrolled in the usual way, with a fine evening walk, and Charlie went to sleep around 9pm only to wake four hours later. Stomach, possibly, from seeing it distended and from assessing there's about ten days till my parents arrive and there are more disruptions, not to mention the upcoming holidays (Thanksgiving very soon) and breaks from school. I got him to drink some water and some other things to soothe his stomach (especially after a stint of manic, pounding running) and Charlie listened to music for a while before turning on the ocean waves. He's still walking back and forth through the house but looks a little more at ease and I'm back to working my way through a paragraph of Thucydides' prose.

The pot, by the way, went out with the trash this afternoon.