{"id":4333,"date":"2016-02-25T15:55:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T20:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=4333"},"modified":"2016-02-25T15:55:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T20:55:44","slug":"autism-adulthood-first-excerpt-chapter-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/autism-adulthood-first-excerpt-chapter-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Autism Adulthood, First Excerpt: Chapter One"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first clear memory I have of actually working on Nat\u2019s adulthood was probably toward the end of 2007, when he was seventeen. I was sitting inside a stream of weak sunlight, in the playroom where I keep all my files. The usual dust powdered the reddish-brown floorboards and the windowsills. Folders were spread out on my lap and on the gold carpet under my folded knees. I was looking through papers\u2014reports and dog-eared, hastily-scribbled notes I\u2019d taken at some seminar or other for parents. Brochures spilled out, unopened, glossy, packed with jargoned paragraphs intended to give me hope. The letters were small and black, and they didn\u2019t really say anything. \u201cWe\u2019re here for you.\u201d Or, \u201cWe\u2019ve provided services for people with intellec\u00adtual disabilities and their families for decades.\u201d Or, \u201cOur adult residences offer professional, loving care for your loved one.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was searching for a list, a phone number. My fingers shuf\u00adfled through the papers like little Flintstone feet, trying to get that big stone car moving. I felt inexplicably tired. That guy . . . that person who\u2019d called me a year or so back, about Nat\u2019s respite funding, from the Department of Mental Retardation, as it was called then. What was his name? David something? I closed the folder and sat back on the rug and sighed.<\/p>\n

Okay, don\u2019t just give up now; you have to do this, I told myself. So where do I begin?<\/p>\n

The school hadn\u2019t told me anything about whom to call, what to see. Okay, I thought. What am I looking for in terms of Nat\u2019s future? It can\u2019t be that complicated, can it? He will need to live somewhere. Who helps with that? How do you get the money for it? Agencies, vendors. Which is which? <\/em>My heart was speeding up again. Deep breath.<\/p>\n

Okay. The phone book. The blue government pages. I hefted the White Pages from its dusty shelf, onto my lap and found the listings, the blue pages. A memory flickered: the government departments were called agencies. <\/em>Our agency was the Department of Developmental Services, DDS, (formerly the Department of Mental Retardation, DMR). The vendors <\/em>were the people who provided the actual services used\u2014such as job coaches, transportation to the workplace from the day program, feeding and toileting assistance. Vendors are mostly private nonprofits that specialized in disability services. I breathed a sigh of relief, having solved one tiny piece of the impossible puzzle ahead of me. I found some phone numbers. I called the DDS and I talked to a woman about what I was looking for: \u201cWell, my son is seventeen, he\u2019s still in school, but I know I\u2019m supposed to start planning for where he\u2019ll live after he is done with school, so I\u2019m calling to find out what I should do next.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a pause. I think the woman actually chuckled. \u201cHe\u2019s only seventeen? Oh, you have time.\u201d I could feel her atten\u00adtion receding from me. Wait! Come back! What should I do? Isn\u2019t there something I\u2019m supposed to do <\/em>now?<\/p>\n

But she was not interested in my son or me. We exchanged one or two more pleasantries and I hung up and put the folders away for the right time. But I knew, in my heavy heart, that she was wrong. The time was now.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2016 by Susan Senator
\nForeword copyright \u00a9 2016 by John Elder Robison
\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.<\/p>\n

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The first clear memory I have of actually working on Nat\u2019s adulthood was probably toward the end of 2007, when he was seventeen. I was sitting inside a stream of weak sunlight, in the playroom where I keep all my files. The usual dust powdered the reddish-brown floorboards and the windowsills. Folders were spread out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-17T","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}