Time Zone Travel (#559)
31 December 2006
"Turnahn musix!" Charlie called as soon as we got into the black car at the Philadelphia Airport. He had been singing a certain lilting fragment... Read more →
December 2006
What Happened to Us in 2006 (#558)
31 December 2006
We spent our last afternoon in California walking down by the bay in Berkeley, where my mother recalled childhood camping trips with her father and... Read more →
People & Heights & Water (#557)
30 December 2006
Those are three of Charlie's favorite things, all provided courtesy of the Golden Gate Bridge. People: On a day of upper 50s temperatures, two days... Read more →
Under the Smile of Kwan Yin (#556)
29 December 2006
Kwan Yin is the Buddhist goddess of love and mercy and---as my father told me so long ago I can't remember when---the favorite goddess of... Read more →
Sentimental Journey (#555)
28 December 2006
We drove down the Nimitz freeway ("now we call it 880," my mom said) under a completely blue sky, thanks to a strong wind. The... Read more →
Holiday Ache (#554)
27 December 2006
Traveling and holidays, new holiday foods and new sights and lots of relatives and jetlag from a three-hour time zone, a couple of weeks of... Read more →
Christmas, California, and Charlie (#553)
26 December 2006
We have never made too much about Santa to Charlie (which, I suppose, means that we do not have to worry about telling him that... Read more →
A Great Gift (#552)
25 December 2006
"Doggy Callie!" Those were Charlie's last words before he fell asleep just around midnight. We always go to my uncle's house up near Sacramento for... Read more →
Christmas present 10,000 feet up (#551)
24 December 2006
We get to the Philadelphia Airport in time to discover that the Economy Parking lot is filled and end up parking closer, for a price.... Read more →
Total Floor Mosaic (#550)
22 December 2006
Charlie went to sleep semi-wrapped in the tablecloth. It was a just-cleaned tablecloth and fresh from the dryer, mind you. I had gone upstairs to... Read more →
Unwrapping (#549)
21 December 2006
We had to teach Charlie to open presents. When he was five, teacher wrapped his favorite toy radio in wrapping paper and had him pull... Read more →
Imitation is the Best Flattery (#548)
20 December 2006
"What's involved with that?" asked Grandma from her usual chair in the living room. "Whah's ihvawed wih da?" said Charlie. Imitated Charlie, as he was... Read more →
Some Boy (#547)
19 December 2006
Write about the unstrangeness of autism and find yourself having a very strange day the next. After Jim put him smiling on the bus, Charlie... Read more →
Unstrangers (#546)
18 December 2006
"We can't have strangers in our house!" I remember saying this to Jim when we first read about starting an intensive in-home ABA home program... Read more →
City Child (#545)
17 December 2006
A young man with Asperger's we recently met noted to us that he likes being in the city---New York City, in particular---because when he is... Read more →
Epic & Lyric (#544)
16 December 2006
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.... Read more →
Neurodiversity Is More Than Skin Deep (#543)
15 December 2006
On the #1 downtown train, the three young women were dressed to attract attention. Two were wearing strips of various colored fabrics and/or scarves tied... Read more →
Charlie's Web (#542)
14 December 2006
As I have written before, Charlie is not a watcher of TV---for the past few months we have been having him simply practice watching the... Read more →
The Need to Know (#541)
13 December 2006
As an autism mother, there are a lot of things I wish to know. And I do not mean answers to the Big Questions, like... Read more →
Autism Anywhere & Everywhere, & in the Mall (#540)
12 December 2006
This upcoming year is the year that Charlie will be bigger than me. I used to fear this and phrases like "what will I do... Read more →