There is a Season

Sometimes when David wants something, he will feed me the line, expecting me to repeat it back to him so that he can more easily make his wants known.

Actually, I have not determined what makes this method easier for David, but it has become a common occurrence in our house.

David, while handing the iPad to me: What do you want to type?
Me: David, what do you want ME to type?
David, with careful attention to his articulation: Lawn sp...sp...sprinklers!

Having been denied his recent request to watch the sprinklers water the front lawn as we are not yet out of freeze warning danger, David decided that he would just watch some sprinkler videos on YouTube.

Sounds fun, doesn't it? Come on over! I'll pop some popcorn.

As the trees begin to reveal the first hint of green, I realize that David has been anticipating longer days, warmer weather, time outside, well—spring—as much as the rest of us.

Earlier, I termed my own anticipation of the changing seasons, Kathy Spring, so for David, who always puts his own spin on things and certainly has his own way of welcoming the new season, I will call it David being David—I mean, David Spring.

For David, the six signs of spring are glaringly different from mine and look something like this.

1. Having watched my seedlings sprout, herbs and vegetables for the garden, and David decides to start a crop of his own.

2. David adopts an all or nothing mentality and insists that whatever garb he has worn TO school, winter coat/stocking cap, will also be worn home FROM school, zipped to the chin, even if the temperature has risen 30 degrees in the intervening hours. Sometimes he even strips off his outerwear on his way into the house from the bus, remarking with exasperation, "I SOOOO hot!" He will be reluctant to give up the winter gear until he never has to wear it again. Period. End of story.

3. Each day after school, he begs big brother Andrew to come outside with him and play basketball, or ride scooters. And Andrew tries not to complain that David rarely plays with him, but he usually expects Andrew to shoot baskets while he blows his gym teacher whistle, or watches the timer count down the minutes and seconds until it is time to come in, or exercises the automatic seat in my car, or even drags the four chairs from front porch onto the driveway and arranges them stadium style like he is waiting for the spectators.

4. Although no amount of advance preparation or noise cancelling ear gear can dull the agitation of the weather warning drill at school (please note that I did not utter the word tornado), David is quick to tell everyone he meets that there has been a drill. He also wants to conduct his own meteorological experiments each night using a tornado tube connecting two-liter bottles, allowing him to whip the entrapped water and glitter into a tornado-like vortex. And, he uses the same iPad script outlined above except when asked what he wants to search for on YouTube, his reply is now "school weather warning drill."

5. For David, there are no rules about what is and is not to be worn seasonally. There is no reason why red should be replaced by pretty pastels on Easter Sunday, as David made clear to us. The shirt, which I had deemed to be perfect as it was a more spring-like red plaid, did not meet David's high standards and garnered three strikes—not red enough, too many buttons (for the usually cotton t-shirt wearing, two button limit boy) and short sleeves (please see above item number 2, because David's rules for outwear also apply to seasonal changes of sleeve and pant length.)

6. David moves his life outdoors. If the weather is nice and David wants to be outside, he goes outside—thank goodness for an alarm system with a chime to indicate that a door has been opened. And, David has no limits about what can go outside with him. If, for instance, his current interest is a 40 X 40 inch tri-pod projection screen (don't even ask), then that screen will move inside and outside with David and be assembled each time he goes in or out.

So, spring has officially sprung and about the time I am finished getting David accustomed to the warm weather, the leaves will begin their descent from the trees, slowly at first, and we will need to reverse the process.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens"*
Ecclesiastes 3:1

*including, of course, fascination with a Da-Lite 40 X 40 inch tripod screen in matte white.

Spring has Sprung

The sun is shining.  The temperature finally hit 60 degrees, if even for an instant.  Easter was Sunday, which, of course marked the unofficial beginning of white shoe season.

Except that I do not like white shoes.  I do not own any white shoes.  I don’t think I have worn white shoes since they were paired with a bonnet and made of patent leather.

No wait.  I never had white patent leather shoes.  I did once long for a pair of white patent leather shoes that had long white ribbons that tied around the ankle, but I was informed by my mother that they were not nearly as practical as the standard black patent leather shoes with the buckle.

So, they stayed propped in the shoe store window.  No wonder I am not a fan.

And, thankfully, it has been years, decades since I wore a bonnet.

(And for those of you who are still wondering what I wear when sporting the white cropped pants, the answer is champagne.  I do own a pair of champagne colored sandals and yes, there is a difference.)

Spring is finally here, spring by my calendar.  I am not talking about meteorological spring, or the vernal equinox.  And my date is thankfully unrelated to prognostications from misguided Pennsylvanian rodents.

It shall heretofore be known as Kathy Spring.

I am not certain what causes the page to flip on the seasonal calendar of my psyche, but I am sure that the complex calculation involves the convergence of at least the following factors.

1. The number of hours of bright sunlight must be inversely proportionate to the percentage of land mass still covered in snow piles, dirty or otherwise, by a ratio of at least 40 to one.

2. The meteorologist must not utter the word “accumulation” any time during the seven day forecast even when preceded by the word “no.”

3. Daffodils and asparagus must be featured as loss leaders in every grocery store ad.

4. The deck furniture begins to call to me for rescue from the cocoon covers and retrieval from the huddle under the deck.

5. I have actually remembered to shave my legs without a somewhat pointed comment from my husband.  Evidently, the number of years of our marriage (almost 16) is inversely proportionate to the number of times I feel it necessary to shave my legs during the winter months.

6. I spend several minutes each morning in my closet, trancelike, frustrated at wardrobe that does not include bright spring outfits appropriate for a day with a wind chill in the teens.

Of course there are a number of other contributing elements including whether or not I have tomato seedlings under the grow lights in the basement, or have simply dreamt about it again until it was too late in the season.

But, to be honest, this year there was an extra catalyst.  Late last week I pulled into the driveway after work.  A neighbor had delivered a stunning Easter lily to the table on my front porch, which made me laugh because she positioned it strategically inside the artificial wreath that somehow did not make it back inside the storage bins with the Christmas lights and other decorations.

Spring is here and Kathy Spring has finally arrived as well.  It is time for walks in the park, pizza made on the grill, and long lingering conversations on the deck, huddled under a blanket against the evening chill.

An Idiom is Born

People with autism often have difficulty with idioms.

 

Although he has come a long way, David's language has not developed to the point where I had even given a thought to David's interpretation of idioms.

 

Until today, when I had a few familiar idioms pop into my mind after I rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw David.

 

Stop and smell the roses.

A watched pot never boils.

 

One of the traits about David that I absolutely love is that he notices things that other people do not.  He truly enjoys what he wants to enjoy, in his own way, and really does not care what anyone else has to say about it.  (Or, that we might be running late for an appointment, but that is another story.)

 

And, something that I may not notice can hold David's attention for what would seem to me to be a mind numbingly long time.

 

Over the course of several days.

 

That could actually stretch into weeks.

 

Ahem.  Anyway, I walked into the kitchen and David had decided to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.  He had pulled over an extremely heavy, Yugoslavian-made kitchen chair (yes, from when there was still a Yugoslavia, which tells you how old it is), then apparently went to the family room to move in an ottoman and grab a blanket, all to cozy up in comfort so that he could watch the coffee perk.

 

Let me repeat it.  He wanted to watch THE COFFEE PERK--the WHOLE pot.

 

And I will never know if he liked seeing the coffee drip, drip, drip, slowly at first, until a pool of fresh coffee started to collect in the pot.  Or, if he was intrigued by the foamy bubbles that gather around the edges of the glass carafe.  Or, if he simply finds it amusing to move as much extra furniture as possible into my kitchen work triangle in order to hear me mutter under my breath as I try to unload the dishwasher and begin breakfast.  I do a great deal of muttering under my breath.

 

If David even understood the two idioms that had immediately popped into my head, he certainly would not have found them appropriate.

 

Because, for David, the more appropriate and newly created idiom would be:

 

Stop, but don't smell the roses because it is infinitely more enjoyable to watch the coffee perk into the pot, but please do not expect it to boil, watched pot or not, because coffee in a coffeemaker never does reach a boiling temperature.

 

Catchy, isn't it?

Sick Day

I heard it for the first time early Saturday morning. David was coughing and not the shallow "let's see if I can get out of going to school today" cough, but a cough with some congestion behind it. Of course, next came the runny nose plus what my husband grossly but accurately terms "snot rockets" and it was official. David was sick.  

This week is Spring Break and David has the whole week off, plus the two bookended weekends, so my first thought was that there would be plenty of time to recuperate.  

And then I smiled, thinking David must have inherited his sense of timing from me. My grandfather used to tease me that I was not smart enough to get sick while school was in session, but always seemed to be ill around major holidays during what was already a break from school. I vividly remember one Christmas--I was about David's age and had a particularly virulent combination of bronchitis and an ear infection. My sister unwrapped presents for me and begged me just to get out of bed long enough to play with my new Walk-to-Me-Wendy doll. (And please don't go googling to see a picture of said doll, because I may have made that name up and it would seem that perhaps "Hobbling Stiff-Legged Holly" would have been a more appropriate moniker.)  

Anyway, David is nowhere near that sick, but still requires some special Mama-lovin' which is good because--quite predictably, when you combine a sick child, a long break from school and shake you get the recipe for Daddy to be away all week on a business trip. Did you see that one coming?  

Now, normally David likes to be tucked in on the sofa with his assortment of favorite pillows, blankets, stuffed animals and, of course, the requisite surge protector powering all of his assorted and numerous electronic devices.    

But not this time. When I went to tuck David in, I found him curled up in a different spot.  
 

 
Yes, he had crawled with a pillow on top of the washing machine, ready to watch the entire 45 minute regular cycle.   That is a new one. So what did I do? Why, I covered him with a blanket, of course.

Savoring the (not quite) Silence

Ideally, I would have stretched and been slow to open my eyes, savoring that last delicious moment, the one just between sleeping and waking, aware of having had a long, luxurious, late Sunday afternoon nap.

Instead, my eyes popped open the moment my consciousness registered the muffled phrase that I heard David calling,

Wait…Wait…Don’t Go!

That utterance woke me, combined with the vague realization that David had just flipped the deadbolt on the front door and was about to fling it wide open in hopes of having a chat with the city council candidate who was walking back toward the sidewalk, campaigning for the upcoming primary election.

I wonder what she might have said if I had not been successful in shooing David from the door and keeping clear of all front facing windows—a move taught to me at a young age by my mother, wanting the avoid the Jehovah’s Witnesses who frequently used to proselytize in our neighborhood, distributing copies of The Watchtower door-to-door.

I wonder if that candidate could have kept her train of thought when she caught sight of me, groggily heading towards the door, one hand trying to massage the kink in my neck which was stiff from having slept sitting up in a chair, while at the same time trying to decide whether to use the other hand to shake hers, which she had extended, or to remove the Peltor Noise Reduction Junior Earmuffs that I had borrowed from David.

Would she have stayed to deliver her campaign spiel?  Or backed slowly away from the door, having received David’s new standard salutation, a heartfelt “AHOY,” all the while wondering if I had donned the noise reducing gear because I had hastily returned from the shooting range, or was, in fact, having target practice in my backyard—a clear violation of city ordinances.

Whatever the scenario she might have imagined, I am sure that she could not have guessed that I was desperate to rest for a moment.

Yes, I wanted to sleep, but more importantly I needed a break from the noise of my sensory-seeking boy, who was playing some classical music on a continuous loop on his CD player, Brahms’ Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano in E minor—enjoyable enough, but when combined with the omnipresent episode of SpongeBob Squarepants on the portable DVD player, a YouTube video of an agitating washing machine on the iPad and David catching air on the trampoline, whipped into a hand flapping frenzy, the washing machine was not the only thing becoming agitated.

In Praise of Pepperoni

I was late for work this morning.

I was late for work this morning, because I was digging in the 18 gallon blue Rubbermaid bin marked "garage sale."

I was digging in the garage sale bin looking for the Pizza Pile-Up game because recently David asked for it, scaled the shelves in the basement looking for it, and then he cried about it last night when he realized it was missing.

The Pizza Pile-Up game was in the garage sale bin because David had not played with it for months, if he ever really did "play" with it and not just carry around the red (favorite color) circle (favorite shape) slices of plastic tomato.

David has a new found fascination with pepperoni, having recently decided that he likes pepperoni pizza—or, to be precise, Godfather's original crust pepperoni pizza.

The allure of the pepperoni was reinforced by the mention of pepperoni pizza on whatever episode of SpongeBob David had in his DVD player last night.

SpongeBob's reference to pepperoni pizza apparently made David long for the plastic pepperonis (or is it pepperonii) from the Pizza Pile-Up game, which was granted an early morning pardon from the garage sale bin and David and the Pizza Pile-Up game have been reunited.

So, what is the moral of the story?

Sometimes, Mom grasps ahold of a milestone too quickly. It became clear last night.

The picky boy's penchant for pepperoni pizza positively does not pertain to Pizza Hut personal pan pepperoni.

On school conferences and sunsets

Unable to concentrate on my book, I sat in the parking lot and watched as the sun dipped below the horizon with the utmost economy, saving its brilliant splendor for another day and a more mindful audience, leaving behind only a few faint streaks of orange in the haze.
 
My mind found comfort in the rhythm that came from the tires of passing cars crossing the seams in the street—thunkthunk, thunkthunk, thunkthunk—providing monotonous relief.

 

And I was vaguely aware of questioning which direction the late winter wind was blowing, which carried with it the faint sound of the church bells announcing the hour, 6:00 p.m.

 

The conference at school had gone well.

 

So I could not help but wonder what had caused the imperceptible shift of temperament, like the transition that I had just observed from day to night.

 

I had slipped.  The melancholy returned, if only for a moment.

 

But today is another day and the sun hangs high in the sky, dazzling and bright.