Extraordinary Picture

There is something unusual about this picture of David, taken this morning. Any guesses?

Battle of the Brothers-in-Law

Yesterday, my grandmother turned 95 years old. I sent her a card, but the big celebration was held over Memorial Day weekend. About 25 relatives gathered at my sister's house for a dinner in her honor.

Michael and I had talked about whether or not we should include David in the celebration, particularly because he has been having an extremely difficult time since the last day of school, which he has been trying, in his own way, to tell us. He did not want to go to speech therapy on the last day of school, did not want to get his haircut the following Saturday, and had no intention of walking into the sanctuary at church on Sunday. On each occasion, he made his own wishes quite clear. We made him go anyway. And while we may have lived to tell the tale (and forced the issue in two of the three incidents, not really wanting to drag a protesting six-year-old into the middle of a church service) I would not say that any of these events was a success. By the end of the first weekend of summer vacation break, Michael and I wanted to curl up in the fetal position until August.

This time, David told us that he wanted to go to " Gramma Roof's burt-day party," however, so we decided we would take him. I went slightly early, so I was able to watch when Michael and the boys arrived. To my surprise, David waltzed into the party like he owned the place. He greeted everyone with his snaggletooth smile, including people he would not ever remember meeting as they were last in town when he was just over a year old.

I was breathing a sigh of relief and wondering why we had been so uptight, when David marched right to my sister's garage door and starting repeatedly opening and closing it, which may sound harmless enough. I wouldn't particularly want my dinner guests to get a peek into my garage, but since my sister must have the cleanest garage west of the Mississippi (and I only qualify my comment because I have not seen many garages east of the Mississippi), I really didn't care…UNTIL the caterers arrived.

Having parked their catering van outside the far garage door, they thought they needed to come through the garage door into the house to unload. I tried ignoring the situation. Maybe they would just think David was an uber-helpful, albeit short in stature, doorman, but then there was the excited hand-flapping and the jig was up.

I explained the situation to one of the caterers, who has a relative with autism. It is always so nice to meet people who "get it." Anyway, they were patient with David as any attempt to have him step away from the door would have simply made matters worse and the trays of shrimp, roasted vegetables and meat for the grill made it into the house without incident. David, however, did not make it until dinner. Having crawled into my sister's car, he turned on the hazard lights—not too subtle, David. My niece graciously offered to take him home so that Michael and I could enjoy the party.

David was all too happy to go home, although not before spying my sister's garden cart in her garage and since her security seems to be more lax than the local SuperTarget, he managed to steal it and she (also graciously—must be a family trait) is not pressing charges. Apparently, David chose to decompress from the party by climbing under the dining room table with the brand new garden cart and his portable DVD player to watch a movie, which is where Michael found him when he arrived home to relieve my niece.

We all react to stress differently and while David was chilling under the dining room table, I was trying to hurry home and managed to drop my keys while "helping" my brother-in-law load some things into to back of my CRV. I turned just in time to watch the keys slide right into the storm sewer. My sister and niece came out of the house with one puny flashlight after another (guess what they are getting for Christmas), finally revealing the keys' location on a ledge about eight feet down.

I really wanted to retrieve those keys, remembering how expensive it was to replace a car remote and key when Andrew chose to tuck them away inside his Noah's ark as a toddler, only to be discovered long after the car had been sold. My brother-in-law, John, who probably would have replaced his own keys in a heartbeat rather than dig around in a sewer (and must love me, by the way), tried various combinations of garden implements and duct tape in an effort to retrieve them. While John was lying prone in the street, I tried to ignore the fact that his shirt, currently with arm sticking into the storm sewer, probably cost twice as much as my keys.

I finally convinced them to drive me home, so I could complain to my husband, whose job it is to retrieve my keys, how it was supposed to rain that night and the keys surely would have washed away by morning. I called my sister back to tell them Michael was on his way over armed with a serious flashlight, a pry bar for the manhole cover and a ten foot extension pole with a heavy duty magnet wired to it.

I am not sure if John (engineering student turned doctor and competitive by nature) had ever stopped his efforts, although I would hope by then that he had changed his shirt, but I would guess the news that Michael (raised on a large farm with "we can figure this out, why call someone else to do something we can do for ourselves" common sense) was on his way, made John redouble his efforts. Within two minutes of Michael leaving our house, the keys had been retrieved and already disinfected by my sister.

Since that night, I have been referring to my reserved brother-in-law as my hero. Just in case you should ever find yourself in this situation, the magic combination was a broom duct taped to a bent pond net with a wire hanger taped to the end. (Although I am sure that your heavy duty magnet idea would have worked too, honey.)

Next time, perhaps David and I should both stay home and watch a movie, although hopefully not under the dining room table.

Full Disclosure

Sometimes I struggle with how much to tell people about David. On some occasions, telling people that David has autism is like saying that he has big, beautiful, blue eyes. It is just a part of who he is and it slides off my tongue easily.

Other times, it seems to take too much energy. Should I let the checker at Famous Footwear think he is misbehaving or explain that he is just having flashbacks from the Croc buying skirmish of the summer of 2010? Honestly I am still having flashbacks from that episode, as well.

Should everyone at church be informed of the trauma that David suffered on Ash Wednesday during the imposition of ashes? Afterall, the phrase "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return" is a somewhat scary proposition and David spent the remainder of the service wiping ashes off of everyone's foreheads lest we return to dust right then and there. He still cannot bring himself to walk all the way to the front of the church to receive a blessing, but rather makes his escape with a quick U-turn at the last minute like a "chicken" exit at an amusement park ride.

I have mentioned that our deck was replaced last week. This time, I did not hesitate to make a full disclosure. If he had not already noticed the emergency responder autism alert decal by the front door, Mike, the owner of the deck company, needed to know about David. I wanted him to understand why I was so insistent that the kitchen door out to the deck be secure while they were working.

Last Tuesday, Mike left a message on our answering machine. For whatever reason as is so often the case, David took a fancy to the message and played it literally hundreds of times. Sounds harmless, right? Well, it occurred to me as David was playing the message for the 52^nd time of the morning that it has been cool and our windows were open. Mike and Matt were working right outside of the open windows and must have heard the message. They must have thought I was a psychopath.

So, after David left for school I had to explain to Mike why he might be hearing his message over and over and over and over again. I neglected to tell him that David also is repeating bits of the message in the car as we drive around town. That might be too creepy. Or the fact that I will probably never be able to forget his cell phone number for as long as I live.

Mike did not admit if he has heard his message repeating in our house, but I do believe I detected a sigh of relief after I made my disclosure.

A Sense of Security

I found myself lurking around the windows. Is it really lurking, though, if you are on the inside, looking out? Of your own house? I was waiting for the UPS truck. It was late in the afternoon and we had not yet received our delivery. The UPS man usually arrives to our house around five o'clock and I was growing impatient. After all, I had paid for expedited shipping, a rarity.

What could be so highly anticipated, you ask? A new Coach bag? Some stilettos? Does the fact that I had to look up how to spell stilettos answer that question? The item in question was a spring loaded patio door lock. Woohoo!

Since David was diagnosed, I have had a pretty steep learning curve. I have become quite familiar with different therapies and interventions, advocacy organizations, educational processes, sensory issues and the list could go on and on. I did not, however, expect to become a security expert and when I say security I do not mean keeping other people out, but keeping David in the house--or alternatively keeping David out of specific areas of the house as the need arises. At various times in David's childhood, we have found it necessary to try to secure the refrigerator, cabinets, pantry, laundry room, bathrooms, basement and Andrew's Xbox, to name just a few.

Our security battle is not unique. In fact, the last time I mentioned it in a post, one Mom even remarked that she had found success with cabinet and refrigerator latches at a marine store—great idea. (We are a resourceful bunch, aren't we?) Surely something that protects against the wrath of Mother Nature can work for our kids, right?

We had already been discussing the need to keep David from opening the sliding glass door in the basement in anticipation of the replacement of our deck. Aside from the usual risk of elopement (aka running away, because in the world of autism, why call it "running away" when you can call it "elopement" much like "repeating" must be a far inferior term to "echolalia") there would be the added risk of power tools, cedar planks and wet cement. Need I say more?

The specific event that actually precipitated the ordering process and expedited shipping, however, was an evening last week when we were getting the boys ready for bed. Bath time is usually David's favorite time of day, but on this particular day, he was not in the mood. He eloped naked (I know, in a different context that phrase means something different entirely) out of the sliding door in the basement. Andrew, having already removed his shirt in preparation for his shower, was in hot pursuit making it an exquisitely fun game in David's mind. I was not far behind, shoeless. In short, we must have looked like the white trash triplets.

Where was Michael during this family footrace, you might ask? I am honestly not sure, but I would suspect he was peering out the window praying that the neighbors weren't watching.

The package did arrive on time and the lock has been installed. The beauty of this particular lock is that it does not function by trying to outsmart our extraordinarily smart and resourceful boy, rather you must have long enough arms to simultaneously pull the latch and open the door—a feat which David cannot accomplish. Not yet.

So for this brief moment I am feeling a sense of security.