Want to know how pathetic I am? I have been enjoying having Nat home sick. He doesn’t have the flu, thank God, but I guess some other much lesser thing that gave him a tiny fever yesterday and a huge cough. The nurse called me, and I got down there as soon as I could (I was downtown, finishing work). I had just emailed the school telling them that I wanted to know the moment he was sick so I could decide what to do. Of course he could have stayed at The House, and in fact he was there when I came in at 11 ish. They do round-the-clock care, and they mean it. A lovely young teacher was staying with him.<\/p>\n
But in comes La Mother who scoops him up and takes him home. I’m just a girl who cain’t let go. First thing I did was feel his face: hot, but not scary hot. I sat him down and I made him hot cocoa, from scratch. I was totally in my element. He slurped it carefully while I made him a bagel, but I noticed he just picked at the bagel. His self talk (formerly known as “silly talk”) was a tiny croak. <\/p>\n
“Nat, you don’t have to eat the bagel,” I said, knowing that he would need to be told that, and would not necessarily stop eating it on his own. (That, right there, is the disability: the apparent passiveness, the lack of self-awareness, despite the name for it: aut-ism, being unto oneself.)<\/p>\n
“You don’t have to eat it, yes.” He said, and then I really knew he was sick. He went upstairs and lay down for a bit. When he came down again I had an idea: make him some tea that my yoga instructor friend brought me. She knows tea, for God’s sake. But Nat has never had tea. So I basically just dunked the chamomile-infused limp thing into the hot cup and then squirted in like three teaspoons of honey. Hot honey tea-like water! He sipped it carefully, self-talking with every gulp. I heard, at the end of one of the whispered self-talk phrases, “…coffee,” and I wanted to laugh. It was so good being able to take care of him, and to have him let me. I felt so close to him, closer than I have in a long time. It seems that my relationship to him is very much based on our physical proximity. I need the feedback to relate to someone; he does not. He’s lucky.<\/p>\n
Anyway, Yay, he likes tea! I will now give him all the tea in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Want to know how pathetic I am? I have been enjoying having Nat home sick. He doesn’t have the flu, thank God, but I guess some other much lesser thing that gave him a tiny fever yesterday and a huge cough. The nurse called me, and I got down there as soon as I could […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","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-1m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","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=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}