We Go With Him

The Dao

I find it increasingly amusing that, while once Charlie so resembled me (black hair, brown hair, facial features) I'd tell people we had a baby who was 'me as a boy,' he now very clearly takes after his dad.

Jim still has an inch or so on Charlie whom we once thought might be over six feet, but maybe not.

We are in a parking lot just over the Bayonne border. Liberty State Park got smashed (/other words that end in '-ashed') in the hurricane so there will be some improvising on Hudson County rides.

Charlie likes to get off to a walking start.

Usually he follow the path but in this instance, he made his own path (leading me to reminisce about what a professor, in a Chinese intellectual history class years ago, said about the Dao, 道, that it is the way, the path, people take cutting a bit though the grass as they are inclined to rather than walking as the concrete indicates).

Charlie's talent is to take the Dao and just stay on it. For truly, he never falls for anyone's trend or fad or style: Madison Avenue has no sway on him, the boy who does not want gifts, who does not ask for any.

Our task it is, to stick with his pace.

Straight From Somewhere in New Jersey

Trooper that he is, Charlie got up to get in the white car on Tuesday and made it through the morning at camp, a rainfall notwithstanding (they still swam). After a here and there drive through New Jersey in pursuit of a shorter, more direct route home -- reminiscent of days gone by when we did lots of here and there drives in New Jersey -- Charlie went straight to bed and slept for 5 or 6 hours. He was very hungry on waking and we went to that faithful standby, the drive-thru line at McDonalds. He cracked a smile around 9.30 pm-ish, watched me cut up a watermelon, and was back asleep by midnight to the sound of ocean waves.

The day did have a feeling reminiscent of our beach house vacations of yore which would have been just around this very time of year.

 

Motherly Love, ca. the 5th century BCE and the 21st century CE

The internet in my hotel room here in Athens suddenly stopped working this evening, right as I was updating my phone and starting to write this. So I had a frozen phone and a non-online computer which is should not be the stuff of crisis, except that, being across the better part of a continent and an ocean from my boy, being connected is a sine qua non.

The man at the front desk was incredibly helpful (and patient) and I was soon back online (took a bit longer to get my phone working again). The little flutter of 'oh no' did remind me that one reason it's been possible for me to go these past three years to Greece is, in a word, technology. 

When I first went in 2009, I used email when there was internet. Not all the hotels we stayed at had this and I'm not one for internet cafés. Plus I prefered to stay in the hotel and keep track of my students. I called Jim, too, though calling isn't that convenient for spur-of-the-moment questions and occasional worries---and these, I realized, were really the reason Jim and I needed to be in touch. 

In 2010, more hotels (but not all) had some sort of internet access. Plus, Jim and I had found texting a most convenient and efficient way to communicate. When Jim asked me how to deal with a moment of Charlie being 'out of sorts' with his stomach and I was able to respond quick as can be while standing amid a display of neolithic artifacts at the archaeological museum of Thessaloniki, I said to myself, texting is the way to go.

This year, text text text; some email, a good dose of Google chat if Jim and I find each other online at the same time. It's been quite effective so I gave myself a bye for worrying when I found myself laptop- and phone-less. Indeed, I reminded myself, I never would even have thought of attempting these trips without my 'devices.'

The stele above in the archaeological museum of Dion (near Mt. Olympus, in the northern part of Greece) depicts a mother holding a little boy. A stele being a stone grave marker, it's likely it was made for the grave of a child who died. I was very struck by the sorrow and tenderness in the mother's figure as she embraced her son. The little boy is shown feeding his pet rooster a bit of food for the last time ever: Between the way the mother is shown to hold him, and the inclusion of the rooster, I got a sense of how much the boy's parents were missing him when they had this stele made, and how much they loved him. Perhaps they had the rooster carved into the stele, so the little boy would have it with him, wherever he might be.

It is something that such feelings are communicated via a carved piece of stone to us today.

Truly, some things never, ever change.

It's been a week so far

It's already been a week since Jim dropped me off at Newark airport---and already today we are in the last days of our trip. We leave Thessaloniki this morning to drive back to Athens.

We've been riding on this bus.

My mom told me she showed Charlie some of the photos here and he said 'Mom HOME' --- indeed, yes. See you soon, lovely boy.

More reasons I'm glad I blog

In case you are wondering why I am posting photos of myself posed in front of the various sites we are visiting---this is Meteora in the photo (above), where monasteries (like the one below) were built in Byzantine times---

 

----the reason for the 'Kristina in the picture photos' is that I've asked Jim and Charlie's teacher to show them to him daily, so he can see where I am. Or, since Charlie does not have world's greatest sense of where any of these places are, much less Greece itself, at least to show him that I am somewhere, albeit in some places unknown to him such as (in the photo below), Vergina:

The tomb of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, is under that grassy mound you see in the photo above, along with the gold armor and silver vessels and gold oak-leaf crowns and bridle bits for his horses and much much more that he was buried with. No photos are allowed in the museum or I would have taken some---it's a very, very spectacular museum.

Then it was on to Thessaloniki which is going right up there in my personal pantheon of favorite cities and places. This is a section of the wall and rampart: 

This wall is up high above the city, which is bordered on its other side by the Gulf of Thessaloniki.

Best of all, I was able, after a whole year, to meet Rozy and her family. I met Rozy, a "commadre" if you will, via this blog and Facebook and have been in touch via email. It was more then wonderful  and just lovely to get to talk to her and her daughter and husband.

Actually there is one more 'best of all' to add: Charlie had a very good day, as if he is not having over-much lag after Sunday's incident. He and Jim had a nice windy bike ride topped off with 'the latest favorite,' vanilla ice cream.

 

A Theater is a Place You Go To Get a Better View

We got an early start--6.30am wake-up call, 7.30am breakfast, and 8.30am on the bus.

I'm not sure if everyone else would agree with me, but I was very pleased with the results of this early start: We were the first to visit the sanctuary of Epidauros and had the site all to ourselves (except for a couple of dogs sunning themselves).

Not sure when this phone booth was last used.

Just us in the theater.

'Theater,' as our guide Emilios said, means 'a place where you get a better view of things'---theomai means 'I see, watch' in ancient Greek---here's the view from the top row of the Epidauros theater.

We then drove a half-hour to Mykines, which is the modern name for the ancient site of Mycenae, once the seat of the kings in the Mycenean Age (ca. 1600-1100 BCE).

This is the famous Lion Gate, with two lions in a sort of triangular formation and an upside-down column between them.

This is the view from atop the citadel.

About a minute's drive away, we saw the 'Tomb of Atreus'---it's a tholos tomb, tholos meaning 'beehive' as that was the shape of the tomb.

The roof is conical, with the point--the 'keystone'--being at the top. The whole roof is made from stones set tightly in together.

After a morning of visiting two archaeological sites, time for lunch, of course.

We've eaten at this restaurant for the three years I have taken students to Greece and I've ordered the same thing for lunch for three years in a row (at the same price):

We drove over the mountains to cross to the western coast of the Pelopponese---there is still snow in the mountains.

In speaking to Emilios, I learned that, last year, he had had another teacher leading a group of students, and that teacher also has an autistic son---and the child came on the trip, bus and all! He was apparently non-verbal and mostly quiet. Emilios had (understandably) confused her and me---I showed him Charlie's photo so he'd know that it was not Charlie who was that trip. There followed a very interesting conversation about disability and Greek society throughout which I said a few 'somedays.'

As in, someday, Jim and Charlie (whose sleeping schedule is very off and who has been insisting that my dad sit in the passenger seat of the white car; fun bike ride in Jersey horse country) will be standing in the theatre of Epidauros and surveying the plains of Argos like the Mycenean kings once did, too.

Another Odyssey Begins

On the seven hour-plus flight from Newark to Frankfurt, I read Paul Offit's Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All and watched The King's Speech: A book about vaccines, a movie about stuttering----am miles away from home and boys but you can see what topics are on my mind.

Here I am waiting at a crowded gate at 7am in Frankfurt.

My nine students and I were met by the tour guide we had on our trip last year, Emilios, at the airport in Athens, around 1pm on Friday. We got right on a hot-pink bus.

Most of the students promptly fell asleep on the bus and woke up in Corinth.

We made a stop at the Corinthian canal, which had to vie with some friendly dogs for the students' attention.

Autism Mom, 9 College Students, Going to Greece

For the third night in a row, Charlie struggled to go to sleep. Or rather, he just seemed to have no inclination to sleep at all. He was cheerful, watched Gong Gong and Po Po make pans of paper-wrapped chicken, paced the floor where he had set his iPad down, smiled and sometimes just stood and listened.

Tuesday he really did not fall asleep till almost 3am; nonetheless, he woke grinning (albeit a bit late) and had a great day at school, his teacher wrote.

It quite goes without saying that Charlie is experiencing, or acting on, whatever he's feeling about me going for the third year in a row to Greece for over a week. The big difference from last year is that he is so very peaceful easy-feeling and, for the most part, able to work himself through and out of bouts of anxiety. Having managed all right in my absence for the past two years, he must know that he can 'survive the 'Mom in Greece' experience.'

I spent a bit of time yesterday making a social story about 'Mom in Greece 2011' on Charlie's iPad and a similar story (using PowerPoint---it's very heavy on photos with minimal text) that I emailed to Charlie's teacher. Last year, I took photos of myself at each place we visited and I've used those in both stories. I'm also planning, as I have for the past two years, to post photos and updates on this blog and Charlie's teacher and Jim and my parents will be showing those to him---so far, Charlie seems to prefer the static medium of photos rather than something like Skype with a videocam. He is never one to talk on the phone, keeping exchanges to 'hi mom bye mom.'

Going on this trip has become a testament to how tight a team o' three Jim, Charlie, and I are. I'm so very proud that they, along with my parents, have been quite fine (ok, with the occasional 'excitement' as that detailed in an email Jim sent me after I was away one day last year that opened with words to the effect of 'well, we're all doing great now and how are you? yes your mom is cooking dinner and Charlie is watching. we all went with Charlie on a walk after school and on it......'). It is not easy to relinquish the role of ever-present mother/Chief Botherer and sure, as they say, 'I need a break' being Charlie's primary caregiver and all but still: Once a mother always a mother?

I'm excited and sad as this trip begins. A faculty colleague from my college (she went last year, too) was to go but she has a family emergency so it will be my students and me on this trip. I just hope things are all right for her. I'm anticipating some adventures thogh, having been so long a member of the tight team o' three, I have gotten used to adventure happening soon as you step foot out the door; soon as you wake up to another day in autismland.

And adventuring-in-autism-or-disability-land training is really life training, is it not? 

Certainly it is training enough for traveling through Greece with nine students.

Travel Preparations

Am packing, yes, as the students, one colleague, and I leave for Greece on Thursday---and am simultaneously planning out how to make a picture schedule for Charlie of where I'll be and some directions ('operating instructions') for Jim and my parents. While Charlie is very independent with his iPad, he needs help when the Internet connection falters and he gets 'no cellular data' messages on the screen.

If I bring one too few or too many pairs of pants, no big deal. I like to travel light with a backpack, with just a bit of space for unexpected souvenirs. 

It's a bit harder for Charlie to adjust and acommodate. He is having yet another can't-go-to-sleep night. It's 1am and he's wide awake, even after a 9 mile bike ride in the cold with Jim and a long (of the 5+ mile sort) walk with me in the evening. I think (think) he is working through the recent arrival of my parents and anticipating me leaving. He's been saying the names of the teacher he had 6 or 7 years ago, as well as those of some of the students, aides and a speech therapist; he has not mentioned them in a long time.

I'm happy to stay up with Charlie as I'll be traveling soon. And, I'm hoping that his sleep schedule might be a bit more 'regular' once I'm gone and he knows he's past having to prepare for all the emotional messiness of travel, of departures and good bye's and see you soon's.

Ready to ride (the rails) again?

Charlie really wanted to go meet Jim at the train last night.

Then he insisted on standing on the platform for the New York-bound train, just like we used to do.

It's been almost two years since we rode the rails with Charlie. The many noises, the stress of making connections, became too much.

Maybe we will be taking trains again once more.