Susan Senator

The boyz have been playing Little Big Planet, which is the cutest and most fun PS3 game on earth! The character are sack puppets, kind of like brown hackysacks with arms and legs. They move like stuffed dolls but also are animated like cartoons. Adorable. We all just laugh and laugh as we send our characters on rocket rides, have them dodge waterwheels and flames and spikey bridges. They get whipped around and battered by the winds of fate and yet they hold on somehow with their little fabric hands. Mine kept dying yesterday and eventually I put down the controller before anyone else got hurt… I think Ben was relieved. I was, too. My continued epic fails were starting to give me that feeling I used to get when Laura was beating me at a game. (When that feeling set in, I would eventually just toss the board and say, “I QUIT!” Eventually Dad said I couldn’t do that, but…)

I tried to get Nat to join in the fun, but its appeal eluded him. Yet I was relaxed and okay with that because he was just so full of life yesterday, from the moment he stepped off the van. I just grabbed him and — kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss — my boyz just endure it.

It’s hard to remain sad and doubtful about Nat’s happiness when he comes home and it’s just Joyful House Stompies the whole time. And then when we dropped him off at Social Group (the gang was going up to Kowloon for some Chinese food, which is one of Nat’s favorites — chicken lo mein and tangerine beef ) he burst out of the car and was doing Joyful Parking Lot Stompies, over and over again. One thing that did hurt a little was watching him for a moment, when he slowed down and was just standing alone, apart, while all the others in Social Group hugged each other and chatted. (Does that matter to Nat? He was kind of still and quiet. What could I do? Nothing, nothing, nothing. You can’t hug it away anymore. You can’t talk to him, you’re the Mom. You just have to sit in your car and ache. Okay, at least it didn’t last long. ) Nat just jumps into the van with that grin on his face, and they speed away, a bus full of happy, adorable, eccentric characters, going wherever the Social Group machine takes them. Kind of like their own Little Big Planet.

Take a look at Our Planet:

It is the beginning
of your time
the end of fall
the start of your life
Your adulthood
Your childhood
mass together in the leaf pile on our lawn.
The death of the light
The Dementor weather, clammy and sucking

Are you feeling all of this
Has it sunk in yet that you are there
Not here
Do you understand “forever?”
It’s not forever
But I don’t know if you know
I still don’t know what you know
I only know that I wish
I wish I wish

I have a little boy.
What luck! Such a good idea, to wait 6 years.
I, surrounded by mountainous men.
still get
The slightly chubby hand
Dimples instead of knuckles
Regular use of bandaids
Farty noises
I still can
Make him happy with a surprise cookie
Kiss his head that smells like pencils
Tuck him in
But not in front of anyone
Only when he loses the prickly boy shell
And starts to soften with sleep.
Breath still sweet
Adorable small feet
About to burst into a pubescent terror
Pizza face, girl ambivalence
But until then
He’s just my Ben.

Nat’s birthday is Saturday, November 15. He will be 19. Dig it, 19. Okay, I am not going to get all emo on you right now; I have a head ache, a stomach ache, a hip ache, so I do not feel like talking about heart ache.

I am happy to have finally gotten my act together to formulate a plan for my darling. I have rented this for The Big Day. Nat and his friends love to bounce. So do many of their parents.

Of course the (edible) cake will also be fantastic. Stay tuned…

Family of five, family of five
That’s what gives me all my drive
I hate to cook
Rather write my book
But I’m happy to be alive.

I am in such a good mood. Probably because — well, I don’t want to jinx it so I won’t say it. But things look good.

But also I’m happy because of my family. And mostly because I had a good idea for dinner and everyone ate it! Ah, the power of meat. Max’s girlfriend, who is here pretty regularly, is a vegetarian, so I make her dinner in a separate pan with just the veggies. And I, who am once again on my much beloved-hated Atkins-Fatkins, have to have a separate pot for my low-carb pasta. It is, as my mother would say, a house full of kvetches.

But who cares? I am so used to it by now, veteran balabusta that I am. I can cook for four, five, and twelve. It’s the clean-up I hate. Anyway, it is a joy having Hannah here, too, not only because of her delightful sprite-like self, but also because she makes five at my table and five is what I am used to: Ned, Sue, Nat, Max, Ben.

Oh. There, my spirit plummets suddenly because I am thinking of Natty. On the phone tonight his voice was tiny. He repeated my questions without answering. Very little content. Finally I just felt that maybe what he needed was just to hang on the phone and listen to me talk. Maybe he just wanted to hear my voice. So, that is easy. I just talked and talked, and told him about all the upcoming Social Group events as well as the food I was going to make him when he was here. “Yes,” he said when I told him about the meat sauce and noodles that await him.

Truthfully the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach — and his arteries.

ABCNews.Com has launched a new website, OnCall+ Autism, full of resources and featuring several people/families’ stories. One such family should be pretty well known to you by now: The Batchelder/Senator family. You can click here and see all the stories. Ours starts out a little melancholy or wistful, which is not how I feel in general, but it is honestly recorded nevertheless. At any rate, the piece picks up and ends on a hopeful note. The reporter, Lara Salahi, was empathic and thorough. She visited us, got to know Nat, saw him at his Special Olympics swim practice, and pretty much wanted to be absolutely certain that she truly understood the spectrum of The Spectrum.

At four in the morning, I woke up thinking about Nat. I had dropped him off yesterday at around 1, and it just did not feel good. Not the House: everything was the same; people happy to see him and he seemed happy enough to be there.

No, still, the problem is me. Well, that’s pretty simplistic and apparently self-hating. And I really do not hate myself; I just expect a lot out of me. I have a standard, written indelibly into my brain that guides me, for better or worse. Or maybe it resides in my heart, because it is kind of rigid and unseeing. I don’t know, I’ll try to figure it out before the end of this post.

I was remembering how it was when my cousin C died, and how her son — to whom I am pretty close — told me that because of the difficult, strained, and painful relationship they had had most of his life, it kind of made her death all the more devastating. I think he meant the unfulfilled potential, the untasted joy. The Could Have.

And then there was the time when Ned, Max, and I were watching baby videos of Benj. Oh my God, Baby Benji was just insanely cute. There was this fat, innocent, bouncing baby, wearing tiny Gap clothes and Ben’s face. You could see Ben in him somehow, but — Jeez I’m getting flooded with Mommy hormones just thinking about it. (Like the other day at the gym, I’m just sitting there, or really standing there, doing the Stairmaster at full blast, barely able to speak, when this young mom walks by with her toddler boy, and he is wearing a bumblebee costume. He had a square-round head tightly fitted into his Bee hood. Big blue eyes, huge unknowing baby smile. The mom scoops him up right in front of me, like a little beach ball, and he — cruel cruel creature — rests his head against her shoulder and looks up coyly. Max. Max, Max, Max Max… I just pushed my legs up and down, my heart bursting, remembering him — and he was even cuter than that baby! I mean breathtakingly, head-turning cute. Yes, you know what I mean. Just like yours. And I filled up with that baby juice, that I thought I had allowed to evaporate with my new mature Working Woman of the World self. But there it was.)

So when Max was watching that Baby Ben video, and he said longingly, “Oh! I should have hugged him more!” I knew exactly how he felt: Should Have.

And I, if I could have it to do all over again with Nat, I just would have enjoyed him more.

I awoke with a cand-over. This is worse than a hangover: it is, of course, a backformation invented this morning to describe a candy hangover (nausea, sore neck, headache, disgust for sugared food). This makes me want to write about Ben, who went out trick-or-treating with a band of ten boys, and a few weakly-costumed moms.

Ben is the most creative person I have ever met. It is typical for us to find piles of paper with creatures drawn on them and elaborately-fonted text explaining all about them. He invents whole cultures, languages, and even planets populated with his people. He makes them into Lego people. He talks about them as if they exist.

Recently in our home little slips of paper — the post-its I bought for work — have been turning up here and there with tiny creatures drawn on them. Ben’s work, of course. The post-its then appeared on a sheet of paper, stacked up one on top of the other. Ben explained it to me: something that began as an assignment, as part of an intro to economics (yes, in fifth grade!), the kids were to come up with items they would like to sell if they were to own shops. Ben teamed up with M and thus the Uglis were born.

Ben was quite willing to hang out with The Ten. He didn’t even know some of them. He is not really friends with most of them. But most were in his class, and lived around here.

This is not like the Ben of old, my little darling who was shy of large groups his whole life. Last night Ben just donned his “Keton” mask and costume and temporarily dyed blue hair, and became Kafei, and joined up with the ninjas and the grim reapers, collecting tiny candybars and running from house to house. He has become, in fifth grade, a looser, bouncier, happier version of himself, and he seems to be unfolding by the week.

I think one reason is the Uglis, the guys on the little post-its. The Uglis are Pokemon-like beings that Ben and M — and then also Ben’s best friend I — designed for their store. The Uglis “evolve” the way Pokemon do: one starts out kind of innocent, with fairly benign powers, and eventually morphs into its most powerful form. The Pokemon, as many of you know, have clever names. Squirtle, for instance, is a turtle-like Pokemon who evolves into War Tortle. (Squirtle was also the name of Ned’s beloved ’94 Civic, may he rest in peace. Ned actually donated Squirtle to one of our favorite charities, WBUR, which is the Boston branch of NPR, so you could say that Squirtle is not dead at all, but rather, has morphed into a new evolution, perhaps something like “Yertl,” for the famous hubris-filled turtle of Seussian fame.) In Ugli world, there is, for example, “Serafight,” an angel-like being who fights. Serafight evolves into Cheruboom, an angel-like thing with a cannon. And so on.

[break for coffee]

Ahhh, where was I? The Uglis. Well, Ben’s little shop of Uglis became a real-world meme of sorts throughout the fifth grade. Everyone started designing and trading their Uglis, with Ben pretty much in charge. Even girls were making Uglis.

Yesterday in the car Ben said to me, “You know how you get a whole bunch of people to play with you? You start a game where you draw creatures that you have to buy and sell to each other.”

“Oh, like the Uglis?” I asked, astute Mommy that I am.

“Yeah,” he said.

Maybe I should start drawing Uglis. I wonder if you can make them Pretties?

Sorry, sometimes politics must trump all, especially when our kids’ needs are at stake. I don’t usually do this, but it is my blog, after all! I urge you all to vote for Barack Obama for President. If for nothing else, think of what he intends to do for the disabled. This came my way and I was just so excited to see it that I have to post it! All emphasized bits were done by me, including the “yay”s.

As President, Barack will begin by creating a new White House post:
Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. He will press
Congress to pass the CLASS Act and the Community Choice Act to help
Americans with disabilities to choose to live independently in the
community and to help them pay for the direct care workers, assistive
technology and other tools that make independent, community-based living
possible. (YAY!!!!) For our children, Barack will continue his fight for full
funding of IDEA so that students with disabilities are assured of a free
appropriate public education. Barack agrees that funding IDEA at less
than half its authorized level is a disgrace, but he also understands
that merely wringing more money out of Congress is not enough. His
Secretary of Education will fully implement and enforce IDEA. Local
school districts’ foot-dragging and resistance to IDEA, denying teachers
what they need to serve kids with disabilities in the most inclusive
possible setting, will no longer be tolerated. (YAY!!!)

It’s easy for me to say that my friend Barack will do these things, but
this isn’t just friendship talking. I know he will do the right thing,
for two reasons. First, there is his record: As an Illinois state
senator Barack Obama sponsored legislation that created an autism
spectrum diagnosis program, designed to implement evidence-based best
practices. Barack worked with Illinois families to build the Easter
Seals academic programs that prepare students for independent living.
Moreover, Barack helped pass Illinois’ mental health parity law as a
State Senator. Barack understands that we need universal screening,
education and early intervention strategies for all children, but
especially children with disabilities. That’s why he intends to provide
$10 billion per year in funding for developmental programs serving
children between birth and age five. Barack has long supported the
Family and Medical Leave Act; as President, he will expand it and help
the states create paid leave systems to ease the tough choices that are
faced every day by working families providing support to a disabled
member.

That sounds like a good use of tax dollars to me. Where else might the money come from? Oh yeah, I hear Obama will end the war, which apparently costs us billions per month… so maybe we actually would not even need much of a tax increase!

1) Mad Men
2) Fun Size Milky Ways
3) Nourhan Sharif bellydancewear
4) Opi mauve
5) My English class
6) Raqsat Vashti
7) Ned’s Civic Hybrid
8) French onion soup
9) A great eval from my supervisor
10) The I.T. Crowd

Why does all the support slow down and become suck city when a special needs person reaches 22? What’s magical about 22? Why not 32? Why not for as long as he is alive?

Oh, Welfare State, some of you are no doubt thinking. Crazy-liberal-Social Contract-Big Government types! Spend, spend, spend!

Yes, spend. Spend on social programs. Create supports so that people can get the help they need to live decent lives, so that they can fulfill their potential. We can only benefit from such a plan. And you know what else? Our government is big whether you know it or not. It just depends on what you want to be big. You may want a very large military operation. You may want highways maintained with government funds.

You may want every single person in the country to have an education, regardless of ability to pay. You may want to see every single person working, playing, and living as fruitfully and as healthily as they can, above all else.

I want that for Nat. The education that Nat is getting right now should extend into his adult life. I want to see the progress he has made continue. I want Nat to be able to work, because he clearly gets joy from being gainfully employed. I want him to continue to learn how to converse, and how to take care of himself by learning social skills, cooking, cleaning, medical self-care, community safety skills.

I have seen what the years and years of publicly-funded schooling has done for Nat. He has gone from being a child with almost no words, no play skills, no desire to interact with others, no ability to follow directions or to get what he needed, to someone who has all of that, and more. The more he is taught, the more he learns. He will not need to have constant care and attention in an institution, the way people did decades ago. He will not feel the need to explode with frustration because he has been taught how to express himself to others. He will form relationships and contribute to the general happiness around him.

These accomplishments have value, from financial to emotional to social to communal. Yes, it cost a lot to bring Nat to this point. But I think it was worth every cent. He took every bit of energy teachers devoted towards him and he pushed himself to learn, to compensate for his differences. And in turn, he has taught those around him a lot about different perception, about God, empathy, and unconditional love. Nat has returned society’s gifts in equal or better tender.

So, I’m sure, will all of your kids, if given the opportunity.

I want them all to have an IEP for life. I want it for them, and for Nat. I want to see what else Nat can do. I want him to experience the world unfolding, the wonder of understanding, the beauty of other minds, the joy of connecting and achieving. If he has staff around him as an adult the way he does as a teen — people who patiently and gently provide structure, modeling, prompting, praise, and repetition as needed — I can only imagine the strides he could make.

Isn’t that every bit as important as building a better highway system?

Over the weekend we went whole-hog Halloween. We did the house decorations, we carved punkins, Nat and I made fudge, later he went to a Halloween party at the high school, Ben and Ned finished Ben’s costume, and after Nat went back to his House to go to yet another Halloween activity (Halloween Town), we four + Hannah attended Pumpkinfest, the autumn fundraiser at Ben’s school.

Crossroads
Seem to come and go…
— Allmans

As I write this, I feel vomity guilt rise in my throat, but it is true: I go through my days mostly not thinking about Nat, except stray moments. I walk past his door and notice how he makes his bed now that he’s been living at the House. I see his empty chair at the head of the table, where we put him back when Ben could not stand to face him, so bad was the hate, anger, grief, whatever stew of emotions he felt.

When I suddenly do think of him, my heart lurches. How did I not think of him, that moment before? How can I have dropped the thread?

I always felt bad about the seat-change in our dining room. I know how Ben felt. I don’t know how Nat felt. Did Nat pick up on Ben’s hostility? I think Ben made him skittish, at very least. I never knew what to say to ease the pain between them. I did a terrible job of it. The flood of happiness and little-boy bounce that Ben exhibits is just golden to me, a light laugh, a blessing from God. My own happiness, my freedom. Max’s freedom to just be the crabby grunting teenager, no guilt. It was all born of Nat leaving, which just rips me open, like Prometheus: always healed the next time I’m with Ben, Max, or teaching my class, or changing plans just like that, or letting lights stay on and handbags stay open. I’m always freshly lacerated when I think of why.

I have the pressure of tears behind my eyes and my brow has been furrowed most of the late afternoon, my lowest time. I think that what happened was I went for a run and as I rounded the two-mile point, “Sweet Melissa” came on, which was the first song on my Labor Tape. I know I’ve said this before. That song, that song. It is the song that reminds me of my early labor, the Braxton-Hicks, the warm-up contractions prior to giving birth to Nat. I wondered if I was having a girl, contrary to all signs. I had seen him in a dream — laughing, with bright blond hair, in my sister’s bedroom in my parents’ home in Connecticut — yet I still thought I was having a girl. We never had the later-term ultrasound, I don’t know why. We had so much confidence in my baby’s health, and mine.

So Sweet Melissa, in late October, is my Nat song and my Nat time of year. His birth day was November 15, 1989.

I ran around that bend and I felt my face clench into misery, even with the bright blue sky and the light rhythmic breathing of a perfect run. The tears I cried mixed with my sweat and I kept clearing them away because I didn’t want people to see, and wonder about the idiot who cried while she ran.

Just like maybe some of you wonder about the idiot who just can’t get over that her firstborn moved out. Mawkish, maudlin me. But I don’t care. I still worry. I still hurt. I still think of things he might be thinking. And I don’t know, I don’t know. This isn’t about evidence, reports from the staff, his teachers, my own eyes. This is in my stupid fat unseeing heart. I don’t know if he’s wondering if he’ll ever live fulltime at home, ever again. If he’s wondering why I gave him so little warning about moving out. I was so selfish, thinking only that I wanted to preserve the peace and not get him all anxious and aggressive again. I am so afraid of the return of the aggression. The absence of the aggression means that so many doors are open to him. He can go anywhere, outside, do anything, with others, and it seems to me that he likes that, the way he smiles when I drop him off at Social Group. Those are his dudes, his peeps.

But I don’t want to think about the aggression. I can’t stop thinking about Nat and how it still hurts, the parts I didn’t get right for him. And just missing all the parts, all of him.

Way back, when Nat was a baby, Ned would give him nicknames depending on his current developmental phase. The nicknames would show up whenever we had to type in monikers on whatever computer game we were playing together at the time, or as log-ins. We had Stand-up Natty, because he loved to push up from our laps and stand on his chubby bow-legs. (All the mothers from the older generations were afraid that he did this. They would worry that he would have bow-legs when he grew up! Turns out you can’t predict what you will have to worry about in the future; Nat’s legs are now Platonically straight.) Thus we had Crawling Mister; Walking Mister; and Talking Mister, when he started to babble.

Then came the chaotic years where so much was happening (or not happening) that we turned to other nicknames to express our love: Baby Delight; Sweet Guy; Natty Boy… Most of these have continued on into his near-adulthood; not because he is a baby but because I just do that with my boys. I baby them as much as they allow (none of them allow much but they do allow the nicknames. They understand the kind of Mommy they have {Ned calls me a “Shmommy,” based on a nickname that he gave to baby Benji, during the phase where we were calling him “Shmengy Polka,” and then “Shmeng-a-leng-a-lei,” and then the terrible but hilarious, “Dr. Shmengele.” Being a Shmommy is more special than a Mommy because it means you are Shmengy’s Mommy, very soft and squooshy in personality and all else.}) and so they tolerate this.

Thursday night I spoke to Sarah at Nat’s House for the evening update. The way that works is the House staff calls me first and talks to me about various salient points of Nat’s day, and then they have him call me back for our nightly conversation. Sometimes they put the phone on Speaker and help him answer questions (I have come to realize that I prefer the phone not to be on Speaker because it is harder for me to hear him and I think it makes it extra noisy for him, so he spaces out. I’ll have to tell them to take the phone off Speaker once they know that I’ve picked up. It works better for Nat and me if I can help him answer me.). The best conversations I’ve had with him, however, are off Speaker, just him and me, as I described here.

I had another great talk with Nat, similar to the other night’s, where Nat was focused and very “on.” Then when I spoke to Sarah she told me that Nat and K, another boy at the House, played Connect Four together. Apparently K has a cold and kept spacing out. Sarah told me that Nat noticed this and didn’t seem to know what to do about it. Sarah explained to him, “Nat, you can remind K…”

So Nat tapped K on the leg and said, “Excuse me, K, it’s your turn!” and K snapped out of it and resumed playing.

What I like about the way his staff and teachers do things these days is that they don’t use prompts so much as reminders. They don’t give him words to parrot; they give him cues and reminders as to the social rules, or choices of things he can say or do. His socializing is not robotic and it has moved beyond his scripts, though the scripts helped lay the foundation for the basics of responding in conversations. The generalization from scripted language to independent language really can happen given enough time and consistency. It took years, but I think Nat has grasped the concept, as long as we all help him practice and internalize it.

Now that he has the formula for most conversations, he puts his responses together using his own word choices. For example, just now he came downstairs with just a thin longsleeve T shirt on his thin, long frame and I, swaddled in PJs, cardigan, Ned’s shirt, and an afghan, said, “Nat, if you’re cold you can put on a sweatshirt.”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Nat where’s your sweatshirt?” I persisted, because he had not gotten the sweatshirt.

“You have it at Allerton Shreet.” And he walked away from me. Meaning, yes, the sweatshirt is here, but I don’t need to go put it on, stop bugging me. And actually, this is far more than I get out of Max, who will just shrug and grunt, “It’s fine.”

Halloween is our family’s most important non-Jewish holiday. Oh, well, of course we do enjoy going to Ned’s family in New Hampshire for Christmas dinner, and we love Thanksgiving and our birthdays and Mother’s Day …. Well, anyway, we just love Halloween.

If all goes according to plan, Nat will come home at 3:45, leaving me just enough time before that to go with Max and Ben out to West Roxbury to the iParty store, where you can get all your Halloween needs met. Oy, do I have such Halloween needs! I am the HallowQueen (I must credit the Gay and Lesbian Alliance at Brookline High School for that perfect title!).

I have a whole vision of what we are going to do with our front yard/porch/entry hall. Max and Hannah want to hand out candy this year, which leaves me free to go with Natty and B. I already have those purple light bulbs that give your space an eerie glow. I thought I would by those battery-powered pumpkin head lights to stick into the lawn to guide trick-or-treaters and illuminate our display. Benj wants to take the skull I bought a few weeks ago, and the old plastic bones we have used over the years, and lay out the whole skeleton near the gnarled old apple tree in the front yard.

I am usually in charge of The Spiders. We took one of Ned’s larger juggling balls and dropped it into a white stocking of mine (the kind you wear with garters) and suspended that from the porch so that it looks like a giant egg sac! And then we stuck the little spiderlings all over the thing and then put a huge spider somewhere up at the top to preside over it all.

Ned hangs up his father’s bat, which is very life-like (you shouldn’t know from it, as my materal grandmother used to say). He hangs it so that when a kid opens the storm door, it swings down!

Nat, Max, and B do the spider webbing and I usually hang up a fake crow I got while back from Martha Stewart’s catalog, of all things.

Halloween has always been one of the best days of the year. I can still remember each boys’ first Halloween. I just can’t wait, and that’s all I’ve got to say.

Wait ’till they get a load of me [us]…
–The Joker, in Tim Burton’s “Batman”

My long-legged thoroughbred has made my heart sing again! The Director of Residences at Nat’s school has been running with Nat and another kid for weeks now, working them up to three miles. No surprise, right?

Well, today Nat was signed up for a 5K race, on November 22. My Sweet Guy is going to run to raise money for a wonderful cause, Best Buddies. Nat, knock wood, is growing in leaps and bounds, literally and without Early Intervention, way beyond the alleged closing of that tiny, cruel window known as Birth – 3, or the period of The Elasticity of the Brain.

Folks, Atypical Development means just what it says. Any doctor or professional that begins a sentence about any of your children with the words: “He will never…” Tell them to see me. Better yet, I will introduce them to Nat.

To life, to life, l’chaim
It gives us something to think about
Something to drink about
Drink, l’chaim, to life!
–Tevye

The number 18 means “chai” or “life” in Hebrew
–Jewish lore

Two things in one night:

The EKG was, after all, okay. A small scar near her heart, no problem. Knock wood, Thank God.

And this.
Last night the phone rang as it usually does at around 6:30. Here’s what ensued, according to my intuitive memory:
S: “Hello,”
Nat: “Can I speak to Mommy or Daddy.”
S: “Hi Nat! It’s Mommy!”
N: “Hello Mommy. How are you?”
S: “I’m doing great, Natty! How are you?”
N: (pause) “Good. (pause) What did you do today?”
S: I went to the supermarket.
N: Yes.
S: What did you do today?
N: Some programs, treadmill
S: Oh, great! Nat did you go to work today?
N: (pause) “You did some work.”
S: Nat, where did you work? Papa Gino’s or Meals on Wheels?
N: (pause) Papaginos.
S: Did you like it?
N: (pause) Yes.
S: Nat, what did you eat for dinner?
N: Parmes, chicken, stuffing, potatoes.
S: Oh good! Nat, I am making Thai food. But I have to wait because Daddy isn’t home yet.
N: Yes.
S: Nat, are you going to take a shower now?
N: Yes. Bye
S: Nat, are you hanging up now?
N: Yes.
S: Goodbye, Darling. I love you.
N: Goodbye.

18 years is a long time to wait, but I got my reward last night.

Okay, my darlings. I am getting close to the finish line. I just wrote the last sentence in the book! I write out of order; I write what I want to write when I want to write it. I have to have faith that I will get to everything I need to, and so I have.

Now I have to write the chapter on Us and Them. Our experiences with our kids out in the world, and how we handle it. How do we strive for contentment and happiness, given the responses autism gets in the world? Have you had good experiences? Awful ones? I want to hear both kinds, whatever you got. Strategies for handling the nosy clueless wonder in the supermarket. Or the doesn’t-get-it parent. The neighbor who shuns you because maybe autism is contagious. Or the school administrator, or the insensitive (or wonderful) doctor.

Does your spouse/partner help you, back you up?

As always, give me your name, city, state, kid’s Dx and age. I will likely publish what you send me so make sure that is okay with you/those in your life!

Get it all out! It will feel so good!

I’m proud of myself. Today felt like a real fragile day. I have what Linus Van Pelt called, “Post-Birthday Letdown,” because Oct. 18 is always so sugary high, that there is no way Oct. 19 can be good. It is my crash day.

So, in anticipation of that, I worked out for 45 minutes, came home, gave boys lunches, and then napped. I was face down in Fat City. I woke up not wanting to face life. Or my face, which was pressed with a with a big pillow crease, diagonal line from lower lid to ear.

I told Ned I wasn’t doing anything. He was concerned. I had been planning to go to Najmat’s (and yes, that is her real hair; no hair extensions for my friend Naj) second session of bellydance classes in Cambridge, but I just felt total inertia. I also was supposed to go to an art studio opening of “Inspiring Women of Brookline” scroll down for a familiar face) in which my portrait was one of the featured bunch of ladies. Champagne, etc. But I just thought, “Blah.” I don’t know why; it just happens to me, something to do with the outer structure of my nerve cells and how quickly they spin. Seriously.

Ned said, “But Sue, everytime you go to Naj’s class you come home so psyched. You say, ‘Ooh, Neddy, looked what I learned!’ and then you do this…” And then he proceeded to bellydance. My Ned! Doing a side hip eight! With arms a la John Travolta in Staying Alive. Well, that just beat all. I had to go after that.

So of course the moment I set foot in Green Street Studios, a true down-and-dirty sincere and extremely cool dance studio, with huge wall-to-wall mirrors (bless its funky heart) and perfect squooshy floors.

Naj started in with snake arms, really breaking them down. If you think snake arms is easy (are easy?) you should try it with Najmat the slavedriver. You go as follows: arms out, elbows slightly bent, lower belly tucked, upper belly pulled straight up (as Najmat says, “the Girls must be happy; lifted way up”) butt tucked, legs together, always together: bellydancers never spread their legs, no matter what James Bond movies show you. My teacher says: “Your thighs must love each other.” Right Arm goes shoulder up, then elbow, then wrist floats up; then wrist caves but fingers go up as the arm drops, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand as if your hand is painting the wall. All with the posture unchanging. As that arm gets to your hip, the left begins its slow ascension. Voila, un serpent est ne.

Then, after our arms were burning like an MF, we switched to hip circles: tiny interior; medium, and large. I learned how to do the big hip-circle-with-hair-flip! We took our hair out of our barrettes and we all flipped our heads down to the floor as our torsos circled to the front, flat back, and down when the head, hair sweeps floor, and then flip! up you go with everything tucked and up, and the hair shakes back from your eyes. It is magical and playful.

I felt so good after that that I did go the Inspiring Women show, and saw lots of gal-pals there, had some sparkling wine and candy corn, and headed home to an empty house. The boys are at the new Apple Store downtown. Enjoy yourselves, my darlings, because I’m going to soak in a lavender water tub! When Ned comes home I’m going to say, “Hey! Looked what I learned in class!”

And show him how it’s really done.

My birthday was great, start to finish. All my boys were home. We opened presents when I first got up. Nat did the unwrapping. Ben sent me on a treasure hunt with clues, that ended up with a picture he had drawn for me, wrapped up in red ribbon!

And Max bought me a hot pink foam Apple carrying case for Twilight Princess, so that Her Highness is protected from when she gets carried from place to place (she’s really only a laptop but don’t tell her!).

Shared a raisin bagel with Nat for breakfast. I ask you: what could be better to a Nat- and – carb – deprived Mommy?

Ned and I went to see Rachel Getting Married, a very intense movie about family relationships seen in the context of an upcoming wedding. Incredibly well done, especially the acting and the character development. Beautiful, if a bit too long in parts. I have not enjoyed a movie in the theater in this way for years. We went in the afternoon, even though the weather was glorious, to make it an even more decadent event.

The dinner out was also a dream: we went to The Hungry i, an old romantic quirky place in Beacon Hill. Feta and fig salad, French onion soup with Roquefort dumplings, moist and dense bread with soft butter, and I had ratatouille with polenta and ricotta. Ned had rabbit pie! We shared a piece of sweet walnut pie and a bottle of dry Riesling. Then, the piece de resistance: a pounder bag of M & M’s from CVS as we rode home on the T.