Susan Senator

I know that I said that a sunny day can be a burden sometimes, but that was yesterday. I woke up to crazy bright sunlight and was so glad. The first thing I thought was, “Bike ride!” Sunday is the best day to do a bike ride around here because there are some scary areas in some parts, like at Beacon Street by Boston College. There on a weekday you will find so many cars parked and as you ride by you are constantly afraid of being doored. And crossing over to Hammond Street is hard because their is no Walk sign where there should be. And then, of course, you have to cross Route 9, a crappy Interstate that runs East-West through Brookline, Boston, Newton, Natick, Wellesley, etc. and is just plain ugly congested nearly all the time.

But on Sundays, you get a break for the early part of the day. One of the lovely things about my bike ride is that at the halfway point (Route 9) there is a Starbucks. A favorite thing of mine to do is go with my friend R and end up there. We have our coffees, and then she rides home and I continue on. So I am hoping today she is free to do that.

Last night Ned and I went to a wine-tasting party which was the good kind of wine-tasting party: tons of wine, info about it if you wanted it, but nothing formal at all. Just drink and mingle. There was also a psychic from psychics4today.com, who was telling us how we should try online psychic if we were looking for trusted physic and then he later went about reading palms as I pretty much expected he would.  After each person went, we would discuss what she had been told (very few men opted for the palm-reading). She got a remarkable number of astonishing details for each of us.

The first thing she said to me was, “Oh, you have psychic powers, too! You’re a healer of some sort. You travel? And help others?” And then she said, “You have three children and one of them is helping you write a book?” It was very cool. She told me I’d be going to California, New Mexico, and Arizona to give talks. I thought, “Hooray, those are totally fun places to go!” She said a pilot would have an impact on me; Ned made fun of that choice of words. She asked, “Who is Margaret?” and I told her she is Nat’s doctor. She said that Margaret (Bauman) has a lot of important information to share with me. I would say so. Margaret Bauman was central to my understanding of autism, and over the years she has become a friend and mentor. She also appeared on the Today Show with me. Margaret is one of the foremost autism experts, who first pinned down its neurological basis (and helped exonerate parents from their refrigerators). Everyone knows that you don’t put bananas — or mothers — in the refrigerator.

We actually got to bed at midnight. Nat and Max had waited up for us, sans incident. I am so relieved that Nat seems to be feeling better about everything these days. He asks several times to go over whatever facts he needs to hear, and then he drops it. “Daddy is waking up soon. Daddy is waking up soon.” And I tell him, “Yes, of course, Darling!” And he sits on the stairs, waiting patiently, and he keeps his anxiety to himself, the sweetie. There is not much I can do to make him less anxious, but he has learned how to control his behavior. He is incredible, he really does what he can, my Miniman. I believe he has a deep sense of intuition about the people in his life; talk about psychic. When he wants to, he can plug right into my mood and connect with me. Those who say that auties are in their own world and don’t care about others and don’t connect with others are saying far more about themselves than the auties they claim to understand.