Up In the Skyway (#183)

Charlie and I spent most of the day at home. A little before 9am an ABA therapist-in-training was at the door; once the other therapist appeared, Charlie giggled away from a tickle and raced up the stairs. Two or three times there was a loud whine and "AW DONE NO" followed by a thoughtful silence, the sound of Charlie shuffling back to his desk, a gentle "hey, smart boy, you matched 'bird'!" and that giggle.

After a surf 'n' turf lunch--"I want burger" then "shwimps"--our other ABA therapist and the therapist-in-training had arrived and it was back to work. Once or twice I heard Charlie singing "May It Be" (from the Lord of the Rings movie) and "You Are Water" in a humming tone that means he's trying to comfort himself. A fast chat with the therapist confirmed that Charlie is getting upset (often because he was not getting the answers right) only for very short periods--nothing like the tirades and bumps of this autumn--and calming down.

I spent the day at my desk (once our kitchen table), listening to upstairs and trying to revise mythepaper on autism and poetry I gave at the Autism and Representation in October. As the college I teach at is, like Charlie's school, on winter break, I am home with him.

Home is not where I usually am on a Tuesday morning, shooting up and over the 3.5 miles of the Pulaski Skyway. The Skyway is a 1930's steel structure that rises 135 feet at its highest point above New Jersey's industrial meadowlands, over the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers. It has no shoulder and cars travel unsparingly fast--as in 70 mph--across the long span from Newark, over Kearny, to Jersey City and onto the Holland Tunnel into lower Manhattan.

When I started my new job in Jersey City this fall, Jim recommended I skip the Skyway and use the Route 1 and 9 truck bridge. "High speed and no shoulder, I'd avoid it," were his words.

But I'm an autism mom whose only thought at 2pm is gotta get home to get Charlie after school. And, if traffic flows, I can be home via the Skyway in 28 minutes.

Autism Mom No-brainer, I'd say. I take the Skyway.

Up in the Skyway, the wind roars even when the car windows are closed and the CD player's volume is up. Up in the Skyway, the Empire State Building is straight ahead, a lonely, exquisite obelisk. When Charlie's in the backseat as we drive across the Skyway, he looks out all attention at the blurred lacework of the girders and the bright lights of Hudson County where Jim's family hails from. Electric light and steel and containers: Charlie takes it all in.

When it rains, the exit ramp to Jersey City floods and the puddle water that splats my car is a mixture of mud and "something else." When the weather is bad, I sometimes take the Route 1 and 9 truck bridge--the one two Jersey City police officers drove off on at 8pm on Christmas Day. It was foggy and the crash gates that prevent vehicles from driving onward when the bridge's span is raised had been damaged by a mail truck on Friday morning. The two cops had driven west over the truck bridge to deliver flares to police in the next town over, Kearny, to help them direct traffic on the bridge. A tugboat needed to pass through and the bridge's steel middle span went up but this information was not communicated to Officers Carson and Nguyen, who drove over the edge, into the Hackensack River.

From our house, my mind kept flying over to the Skyway and the anguish beside it, as Jersey City police searched for their own in the river, so cold in late December.

And I thought about how living in Autismland is like driving on the Skyway.

Things happen so fast I have to step on the gas and keep with the flow, keep up with where I think Charlie is, and be ready to move into the right lane when he slows down. Just beside me is that other bridge, though the route I've chosen has risks, the no-margin-for-error of driving 70 with no shoulder, the challenged urban neighborhoods I pass through to get to my college campus. Up in the Skyway I'm safe from the rivers and can't turn back.

It don't move at all like a subway
It's got bums when it's cold like any other place
It's warm up inside
Sittin' down and waitin' for a ride
Beneath the skyway

sing the Replacements of another type of skyway--the walkways that connect the downtown buildings of Minneapolis and of St. Paul--that I've been thinking of because it's winter and cold and, in this season, my mind always drifts to our first December in Minnesota, with a sick Charlie and an autism diagnosis around the corner. Jim and I found some respite in wandering the heated walkways of the Twin Cities' downtowns, Charlie walking on his unsteady toddling legs or borne in Jim's arms. It seemed poetic justice that second-floor office space should have higher real estate values than that on the street level.

In their song, the Replacements sing about being "up in the skyway," seeing some special "you walkin' down that little one-way" and not being able to do or say one thing from the skyway's enclosed protection. That describes how I have sometimes seen myself vis-à-vis Charlie in a bad moment, sequestered off and banging on the glass to tell him something, and not at all heard. But my taking the Pulaski Skyway has been my choice, rising from my knowing what I need to do for my boy.

We drove through suburban streets to Toys 'R' Us where Charlie instantly went to play with a train set while I found a new Lite Brite (his latest favorite). I had promised him a "clear drink"--a diet Sprite--and we finally detected one at an anonymous pizza parlor whose owner nodded "one dollar" to me. Charlie held the can so tightly, so happily, as I drove home to the tune of Blue Suede Shoes.

I know I've been thinking all day of the clank of the truck bridge's steel panels beneath the black car's tires and of why I chose to take the Skyway because--though I have to move a little too fast and keep an eye in the rear view mirror--it gets me back to Charlie as fast as possible; it takes us back home.

Autism Asperger's Children Science Health

Comments

[Eileen]

I used to drive over the Skyway all the time. It is scary, but the quickest way! I taught in Secaucus for 6 years and Brian was in Jersey City, so we would commute together back down South each day.

This Autism Mom understands wanting to get home as quick as possible. When I was teaching in a highschool close to home and the boys were in day care, I would leave when the bell rang along with all the highschool students. I would dash to my car and zoom out of the parking lot beating most of the students. My priority was getting to Andrew and getting him home for his E.I. therapists.

[MommyGuilt]

First, forgive me for being SO remiss as to not have been here sooner. I thought that I had caught up with everyone, but apparently not.

That need to get home as fast as possible has hit most Autism Moms, I think. I'd have to say that it might even get me on the Chicago Skyway (EEEUUWWWWWW) if I worked/lived in that direction.