Susan Senator

You can really drive yourself crazy wondering what’s what in people. Nat has been exhibiting fewer signs of anxiety overall in the past two weeks (he did fine when I was away in South Dakota last week). But Ned has noticed that the outbursts (growly howling and shouting and arm biting and obsessive questions) happen around dinner time. I don’t think it is that he is hungry; I think it is that dinner is too often chaotic in our house. Since getting his new job, (actually it was that they were acquired by Hewlett-Packard and then moved out of Cambridge, to the distant suburban Route 128 loop) Ned can never be home at a predictable time. He has to fight the Mass Pike, 128, and Route 9 traffic. His commute is easily 45 minutes. (My poor city boy. Ned, who grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, didn’t even learn to drive until he was married to me, on a car that my dad thought of as his “dream car” when he first bought it, and then eventually sold to us for $1, a blue Honda Accord hatchback, which we called “The Kid” because of its license plate letters. Remember those wonderful Accord hatchbacks?)

So at around 5:30 Nat starts doing a loop from the living room into the kitchen, talking very fast with a little bit of kvetch in his voice. It does no good for me to ask him what’s wrong or to talk to him or offer a snack. He wants what he wants, but I am still not sure what it is, because even once Ned is home and we start eating, he is still not happy. Sometimes he works himself up into a crescendo of moaning and barking (and I do not say that pejoratively, it is simply the most apt description).

I feel bad that dinner is so unpleasant. I don’t know how to make it better, other than buying happy and fun desserts. What happens is that Ben gets quiet and finishes really quickly and runs away somewhere. Max waits to talk until our attention can come back to him, because we are so worried about Nat, so conversations are long and drawn out and difficult to maintain. And Ned and I cannot talk about anything other than things to try to get Nat to stop. Lately we try ignoring the shouts because sometimes that does make him stop, but it seems cruel because he seems miserable. I know, you have to be cruel to be kind, but I F***ing hate that concept. Anyway, I wish I knew who was more miserable, whose misery was more important to attend to of my three children, but I cannot see into their heads.

So Ned came home with his head hurting the other day, and he mentioned it as he was getting ready to sit down to dinner. I heard him say it but it didn’t even register, I was so preoccupied with Nat’s noise. At the moment Nat was perseverating on the salt and pepper, which was already out in front of him where he likes it, but somehow he needed to keep talking about it.

Suddenly Nat said, “Daddy will take Tylenol.”

We looked at him, and couldn’t help smiling and all the heaviness lifted off our faces like a good burst of Botox. Ned said, “Nat, that is a really good idea. I will take some Tylenol.”

“Daddy will take Tylenol.” This became the new autisto-mantra for the next few minutes.

I found myself thinking, I wonder if he says that because he really cares or is it because he simply knows that you take Tylenol when you have a headache, in a simple cause-and-effect way.

And then I thought, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” and laughing to myself, I began shoveling out the meatsauce (next to the pasta, because Max and Ben, allegedly NT, can’t stand to have it touching. Nat eats it normally, like us).