Jam on Bread

Tomorrow’s Elliot’s first day back to school and I’m both happy to having him going and sad to have not done as well with him (and myself) this summer as I would have liked. Call it mom-guilt I guess.

But I did write something for his new teachers, an intro to Elliot of sorts. Thought I’d post it here as well. Kind of helped me to put Elliot into words:

Welcome to the wonderful world of Elliot Todd Comer, our little ETC!

As you start the year with Elliot, I just wanted to mention a few things about who he is, what he likes (and doesn’t), and what (in our experience) tends to work (and not). Of course, we’re constantly learning with and from him and have any number of blind spots to overcome, so please don’t take this letter as some sort of “do this or else invoke our parental wrath” agenda. We’re every bit as open to listening as to talking and are excited about working alongside you as a team this year.

And now a few words about Elliot.

Whether socially appropriate or not, at the moment Elliot’s passion revolves primarily around princesses and pretty things. He’s prone to role play (”I’m being Cinderella today!”), to sing (sometimes at inappropriate times), to dress up, and to talk about his favorite movies (mostly Disney princesses and musicals like Hello Dolly and Little Shop of Horrors…minus the scary plant parts). As his mother, I delight in his love of musicals but am baffled by the princess fixation. After all, I have never cared for princesses or Barbies or even dressing up and once swore a childhood oath to never wear pink. Nonetheless, Elliot’s interest is unwavering and sometimes debilitating (meltdowns in Meijer when he cannot have a princess Pez dispenser, for example). Nonetheless, this interest can also be a great motivator.

Elliot’s extremely social and affectionate. He believes everybody wants to hear what he has to say and that complete strangers will listen to him (”I had to use the potty,” he told two aging men engaged in their own conversation at the Henry County Fair; “Look! I’ve got Smarties!” he announced to the lemonade vendor). Elliot is also prone to touch those he’s talking to, or at the very least invade their personal space. He means well, but the older he gets the more strange looks people give him. Still, he really wants to be friends with people and can at times be very good at making on-the-spot friends at the playground, though usually with one other child rather than a group. He often prefers adults to other kids and can become possessive, wanting someone’s sole attention (”Go away, Mommy, I’m playing with Treasure,” Elliot says as he pushes me out the door when his favorite babysitter arrives.)

While Elliot can focus and work on specific activities, he’s easily distracted by lots of stimuli and can get either overwhelmed and hyper, or so focused on small details he can’t break free to do what needs to be done. Visits to Holly and the weighted vest helped with this last year.

Elliot WILL correct your language Over the summer he’s become quite the literalist: “They’re NOT shoes, Grandma, they’re slippers.” “The wind is NOT delightful, Daddy, it’s cool!” “She’s NOT ‘Grandma,’ she’s Grandma Katie.” And he will also tell you in no uncertain terms if he likes or doesn’t like something. Redirect, compensate, correct as needed. Elliot can be headstrong, but if given choices and time, he will usually comply or make good choices. We’re not always as patient with him as we could be, but we’re working on it as being impatient and adamant rarely produces good results.

Pottying. Elliot’s made remarkable strides in getting himself to the potty in the past year, but he still has accidents sometimes–not usually full-blown but enough to make his pants wet. I hope this won’t be a significant distraction past the first week or so.

That’s it for now. I tend to write too much (and will likely write something in the Steno daily, perhaps more for my sake than yours–hope that’s ok).

Have a great year with Elliot. He can be such a delight!

Nicholas is visiting from Lansing, and despite their age difference of roughly 3 decades, Elliot adores him. They’ve sung Little Shop of Horrors songs, wrestled, hidden quietly in a tent, and eaten popsicles together. As they settled down on the couch to watch Monsters Inc., I caught this snippet of conversation as Nicholas, arm around Elliot’s shoulder, leaned down meaningfully.

Nicholas: Let me tell you something, you aristocratic little hoo-ha.
Elliot: You are spitting on my head!

***
An added bonus conversation from today

Todd: That wind is delicious today.
Elliot: It’s NOT delicious, it’s cool!

After months of having the information at my disposal, I’m finally getting around to ordering some items for Elliot that have been recommended by his OT (occupational therapist) for help with, primarily, self-regulation and proprioceptive input. First, a weighted vest. Second, a set of whistles. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to do this, but I think part of it has to do with a stubborn denial at my core that, despite how many books I’ve read about ASD and how many hours I’ve spent online searching for answers and suggestions, I haven’t really fully integrated this new dimension of our lives into how I truly live. Hell, it took me forever to put together a visual schedule for Elliot, and then I only used it one day. So instead I return to life as usual, forgetting most of the time what I’m dealing with or, rather, stubbornly expecting the rules to change, for Elliot to “listen!,” for direct confrontations to work, for sensory issues to not really exist but instead be sheer stubbornness to things that don’t hurt, of course, like toothbrushes or bathtub water.

But I want Elliot to cope better with life, with those things that make the everyday a challenge. And I want to love him better and stop feeling so distant from him, which I do sometimes, especially those times that he’s screaming for “no reason whatsoever” or repeating the same request twenty times compulsively, stuck in a rut he can’t get out of. Sometimes I think I’ve hardened myself and distanced myself because it’s just easier that way, easier not to love in the way I need to love.

Dunno. But there are things around here that need to change, in my heart as well as in my behavior.

Oh, and one more thing I’m about to do: get an official diagnosis. I need a name for this laundry list of developmental delays I’m working with. I need it so I have a word to tell people who need to know; I need it so Todd has no excuse to say, “stop saying he’s on the autism spectrum–nothing’s been proven yet”; and I need it so that when the time comes that he’s no longer at his current school where I feel pretty good about his team, Elliot will be able to get the services he needs.

I have read many, many books on Autism Spectrum Disorders in the last 8 months, but of them all, Barbara Lasalle’s Finding Ben may be the most personally important for me. At least, at this moment it is. Wow! More later.

Ask him what it sounds like when his Little Mermaid DVD doesn’t play right.

ErerAhhAhErrrAhhERAh

And he can go on and on. Cracks me up every time he does it, and it sounds just like a stuck DVD, all stuttery and slow.

I had a great morning with the kids as I drove them to a nearby town with better playgrounds than ours to meet up with Leslie and her kids at the playground. Elliot gave Bella her birthday gifts (hard to believe they’re both 4 and have been friends nearly 3 years!) and they played really well together today. We bought pizza and subs at Mancino’s and brought it back to the playground for a picnic lunch. Lucy enjoyed the pizza and the teeter-totter most of all.

Elliot’s been watching South Pacific the past couple days and wants to watch “Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair” repeatedly which we’re trying to use to our advantage since sensory issues regarding bathing and toothbrushing have flared up again in the past couple weeks (Steph tells me this type of regression is typical). Then in the car yesterday, after having listened to “Some Enchanted Evening” and hearing “you will meet a stranger across a crowded room,” he asked me, “Who’s a stranger?” So I tried to explain both stranger in the potentially dangerous sense since, Elliot talks to EVERYBODY, and then explained what they meant in the song, how they’re singing about someone you see from a distance that you haven’t met yet but that it’s somebody you know is going to be a friend and somebody you know you’re meant to love. He seemed to understand that, so I asked, “Have you had that happen to you with anybody?” and he said, “With you, Mommy. And Bella. And Madison (a friend from church), and Brooke and Andrea, and Grandma and Grandpa, and Daniel” and he continued on like that for some time

But his absolute best moment in recent days was two mornings ago. He had filled a pink teacup with water and was carrying it on a saucer when he declared, “It’s grand to be an Englishman in 1910″ which I recognized, thinking at first it was from My Fair Lady before recalling the correct scene from Mary Poppins.

So it’s been a good week here. I even got on a bike today for the first time in over 10 years and rode around the neighborhood with Todd and the kids. And this morning, before anybody else was up, I made chai and ate zucchini bread in the newly renovated screened in porch, taking time to read, reflect, and even pray. Maybe that’s why today’s been so good

Oh, and the book I’m currently reading is called “That’s Life With Autism”, a really nice book made up of the voices of many parents (all mothers so far) of kids on the spectrum. Next on my list is “Finding Ben.” Probably about time I write my own book…

Can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve written! Just been caught up in company (Todd’s mom and friends from NC) and my editing job these past few weeks. The glumness and near-hysteria of a month ago has improved and I’m doing better with, well, everything overall, but particularly with Elliot. At any rate, this past week has really been quite good and I’ve genuinely enjoyed my son. Maybe some of that has to do with getting out to do my editing each day, that whole distance thing.

Anyway, this morning Elliot and I went out while Lucy napped at home, and I think we both enjoyed the chance to be out with each other although we didn’t do anything particularly impressive. We went through the ATM for cash. We paid the water bill (Elliot loves this because they have dum dum suckers) and the women all think he’s cute (which he is). We stopped at the Mexican store for tortillas and tasty Mexican candies (sugar-saturated sweet potatoes and coconutty things, neither of which Elliot likes so he got a strawberry nectar drink). We went to the courthouse (”It’s a castle!,” Elliot said reverently) so I could pick up a passport form since my parents actually want to watch BOTH kids overnight in September so I can go with Todd to Stratford, Ontario for the English department’s yearly Shakespeare trip.

The courthouse was a big hit between the woman who gave Elliot cookies from the bag he’d just purchased from the vending machine and the soldier statues outside which Elliot hugged and kissed. When I asked Elliot if he knew what soldiers did, he said, “They break things sometimes”; for a moment I tried explaining soldiers and war but it all sounded absurd so I stopped.

We finished up at the library, and even though his favorite library person Stephanie wasn’t there, his second favorite person (”she’s a candy grandma,” he told me today) was and so he got a piece of candy from her jar. He has this ability to endear himself to certain people which I find fascinating, and this candy librarian is one of them. In recent months she waits until Elliot shows up to fill her jar full, turning to her filing cabinet to pull the surplus candy out to pour in the jar. They talk about the cinnamon candies and how they’re “too hot” and then Elliot chooses another one and sometimes one for her as well. Today, thrilled to be getting Cinderella materials, he rushed in to show her and while she’s not so expressive as Stephanie who lets him sit on her lap, scan books, and play with her sticky tack, this librarian grins and seems pleased at his attentions.

And what’s happening with my youngest these days? She’s walking fairly consistently, though if she needs to get somewhere fast she still drops and crawls.

Lucy loves her brother and follows him everywhere, and he’s (mostly) good with her in return. They’re starting to engage each others’ attention more in play, and that’s fun to see. Lucy can climb any piece of furniture and has taken to clearing the couch before climbing up, flinging toys and laundry (folded and not) behind her before scrabbling up. Her favorite food right now is blueberries and I’m also pleased to report that, unlike her brother, she is a breakfast girl–eggs, sausage, pancakes are all gobbled up happily. She loves her kitty and lays on top of him when she has the chance, though she’s also been known to grab his tail and suck on his ears. And even though we haven’t read to her nearly as much as we did with Elliot at this age, she’s started to figure books out, bringing them to us and climbing on our laps to look at them. She’s an absolute joy.

If I had to define the essential difference between Elliot and Lucy it would be a difference in intensity. Elliot has always been passionate about everything (positively or negatively), fixating on patterns, details, songs, people, and while Lucy is interested and generally engaged, she isn’t consumed in the same way. That passion is what I most love about Elliot, even though it’s also the source of difficulties. By comparison, Lucy’s relaxed and subtle, taking life as it comes.

(Or what I did with my glorious weekend)

SwampFire 2008

In the space between the water and the flame, more lies than just a road, a house, a lawn. Fields of corn. Fields of bean. Somewhere too there exists a burning in the brain. A thirst of the spirit.

Some Thing. Un-nameable. Un-graspable. Taking no form. Using no space. Wasting no time. SwampFire roils under the surface of the swamp, crackles in the wood turning to ash, fights the harness even while it longs to be ridden. Wild berry bush brambles lash us open. Soft green leaves make us itch, blister, even weep. But we can’t always choose what we brush up against. Sometimes we shouldn’t even try.

Not so wild as all that, sometimes it just sits, pretty as a cherry on a low-hanging branch, waiting to be pinched, pulled, popped between parted lips. The tartness still teasing our tongues, we spit the slippery pit.

In the space between spirits is a fire that goes unspoken. Each to her own. Stories spill out. Sketches on paper become mindscapes. A camera’s lens pulls out a moment in space and time. We never know what we will discover. Two arrowheads on the edge of a field. A heart stone between bean rows. A father’s coffee cup in somebody else’s cupboard. We never know what will discover us. A tall lean ghost—“Did somebody die here?” Chocolate-foil fortunes proclaiming “Dare to love completely,” and “Go against the grain.” We see what we need to in glimpses, glances, eye-corner grazings. When we forget what it is we’re looking for, arrowheads rise up, stones become hearts, mass-printed fortunes become meaningful.

The ghost may always be watching from beside the barn, but when we look a second time, it is always gone. Now begins the imagining.

In this space where we need nothing but open eyes and minds we speak of other spaces, cluttered spaces. Closets crowded with blazers. Hallways stacked with newspapers. Basements cluttered with meat grinders and Crock Pots and crutches and tricycles. And we wonder why it is that we need so much, even while gently understanding that we’re only trying to give ourselves color and comfort and warmth and wisdom. We’re only trying to hold in one place our selves over all of time.

This is no rural reflection about getting back to nature, living off the land, worshipping the idyllic vibe of the countryside. We know that farming is hard work, that living here is different than visiting. Living anywhere is unstable, unpredictable, subject as much to deaths and lost marriages as to births and found friendships. Still, it is nice to watch the red-winged blackbirds linger through the cloudless blue, to let ourselves delight in the amoeba squiggles that cross our vision when we let our eyes drift. Scarred vision. Maybe that’s what these floaters really are. But they’re so languid, so aquatic. Jellyfish waltzing amidst bubbles of light. Learning what to call them, I quickly forget, stick a mental post-it note on my mind’s refrigerator door never to tell the eye doctor. I don’t want them to go away, would miss them in my world.

SwampFire. In the space between the water and the flame rests that which makes it possible for us to live and to return.

What a busy week it’s been! VBS every morning has kept Elliot busy and given Lucy a chance to “play” with other babies/toddlers while I help keep them diapered and entertained (or tried to). The trips to and from VBS have been a challenge as I’ve been taking Elliot’s friend Gabriel (age 5)…but they do not do well in close proximity to each other, i.e., wedged tightly beside each other in the back seat of our Prism. Yesterday I had to stop 7 times in the 10 minute drive for time outs; this morning I only stopped twice, but the first was a doozy as Gabriel cracked a toy over Elliot’s head as hard as he could making Elliot scream and cry in pain. This much I have learned about their relationship: Elliot has a mouth and Gabriel has a short fuse and the fists to follow through. Not a good combination, really. Elliot’s best (most annoying) monologue of the week to Gabriel went something like this: “You’re a poopyhead and you go in the toilet and get poop all over you and water all over you and more poop and then you’re dead, dead, dead.” This made Gabriel cry…and try to strangle Elliot, and I guess I kind of understand why. But in the end, somehow, they go back to being friends.

But the best part of the week was Elliot’s birthday party on Tuesday afternoon. All his friends (and most of mine) were there: Brooke and Andrea; Bella, Michael, and Leslie; Gabriel and Paul (Marie being in the hospital and unable to make it); Thaddeus, Issaac, Carl, and Amy; Abby (the church’s Sunday school director and a long-time favorite of Elliot’s). The kids played at the UAW park, took turns whacking a nearly impenetrable bee pinata (finally the adults took turns beating on it), Elliot opened his gifts (his FAVORITE being the Disney princess umbrella from Bella–she’d insisted that Elliot would want the princess one when her moms suggested cars), and we all ate carrot cake and ice cream. Elliot celebrated his 4th in the company of friends and all was good. The entire day, in fact, was good–no time outs whatsoever.

So thanks for all who sent happy thoughts and prayers our way!!!

I’d love to post pictures but, alas, can’t seem to find the cord that would allow me to download them…

And I’d like to say I’m excited about it, but right now this dread and anxiety sits hard in my gut. It’s not even about Elliot so much as about me. Elliot triggers it, I suppose, but I’m the one that’s out of control right now. God help me hold myself together.