A Stranger Among Us

We have decided to take advantage of the extremely low mortgage rates and refinance. We had an appointment on Saturday morning with an appraiser to come take photographs and measurements in advance of our closing date. So, first thing Saturday morning, Michael and I spent some time making the house look presentable.

I guess we rarely have people in our house who are not aware of David's diagnosis. Of course, our family and friends understand why we have a mini trampoline in the corner of our family room, or a huge calendar on our front door. No explanation is necessary. I always wonder, though, what someone new coming into our house will think.

We got the house picked up and we waited, and waited, and waited until it became apparent that the appraiser had forgotten our appointment. A call to his cell phone confirmed our suspicions and he told us that he would be over in 45 minutes. Not surprisingly, I was annoyed. With David, there is a pretty narrow window where you can keep the house picked up before he, for example, steals the desk chair from his brother's room, manages to get it down the stairs (it's a pretty heavy chair) and proceeds to give five hand towels collected from every bathroom in our house a ride.

Short of stopping the space time continuum—or rendering David unconscious—there really is no way to prevent this from happening and by the time the appraiser arrived, the towels were neatly arranged, in a perfect row, of course, across the family room carpet. Michael quickly explained that David has autism and our visitor couldn't have been nicer. David said hello to him and offered him one of the hand towels in the manner of a miniature bathroom attendant. It was like we were distributing some sort of strange party favors.

When the tour arrived at our main floor bathroom, Michael must have realized that most people do not have a 9 inch television with built in VCR in the corner of the room—especially a bathroom the size of a postage stamp as ours is. He was quick to comment, "We have a TV in there because sometimes David likes to watch TV while he's…." At that comment, the appraiser smiled, bent down, looked David in the eye and said "That's okay, I like to read in there." With that one comment, that moment of kindness to David, all irritation at his tardiness was forgiven.