The Word That Defines Us

She is sitting across from me with smug eyes, telling me that she can no longer watch my son, and I want to punch her because I have known for weeks that our relationship is crumbling.   And even before that, I knew she held herself far above not-yet-divorced, new-in-town, disgraced little me.  Every day when I arrive to pick up my 2-year-old son, Kaden, I can see from her crumpled face that today has not been a good day. “This daycare,” she says, “is for…well, how do I say this politely….more mild-mannered children.  Your son’s personality is just a little too intense, and he doesn’t fit in.  We think he might need something a little more structured.  Maybe a daycare for kids with more special needs.”  She is saying this in a syrupy sweet voice, like she is doing me a favor.  Like she is not ripping my heart out or tearing down the modicum of stability I have managed to build into our unsteady lives. 

Being too tired to argue, I tell her half-heartedly that my mom and sister have volunteered to come visit for the weekend and take Kaden back to Billings with them for the following week.  Seizing her opportunity, she chimes in, again with the syrupy helpful voice, “Well then, let’s just consider this your two-weeks’ notice.  I’m sure you can use this time without him to find a new daycare.”  She says this as she walks to the computer, punches a few keys, and grabs a solitary sheet off the printer and hands it to me.  A bill.  Four hundred fifty dollars for daycare services rendered.  One half of that for two weeks’ notice.

While this conversation is taking place, Kaden is on the floor, lying contently on his stomach with his chubby cheek pressed to the carpet, wheeling a toy truck back and forth, back and forth.  He draws it up in two hands and rolls onto his back.  Examining the truck closely, he methodically spins the wheels, over and over again.  Spinning, spinning, spinning.  This is one of the weird things he does.  One of many things on a long list of weird things, and I don’t know why.  It’s all part of the something that is off about Kaden, but I just can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.

I found the answer, sooner than later.  On one of those lonely nights he was gone with my mother and sister, I found myself thinking about him relentlessly.  I was taking survey of our brief, but eventful life together: his frightening birth in Oklahoma City and our 3,500 mile move to Anacortes, Washington, three weeks later; my severe post-partum depression and recovery; my husband’s Navy deployment to the Philippines while I was with my family in Billings; the twelve hours we spent together after deployment before he announced his engagement to a 19-year-old Filipina woman named Mylene (to whom he is now married, living God-Knows-Where).  Through all this time, it had been me and Kaden.  Just the two of us.  He had always been different, high-strung from birth, and then taking up strange behaviors, like spinning objects compulsively or not calling me “mom,”  from a young age.  I had been a stay-at-home-mom those first few years, but I had tried a short stint at work.  It only lasted a month, because the daycare provider told me, distraught after one of Kaden’s bad days, that she couldn’t do it any longer.  And now, here we were again…x-listed from another daycare.

In the lonely silence of the apartment I had rented when I moved to Ronan, Montana, for no other reason than I had no place else to go, I booted up my computer and sat in front of the blue screen.  One of my colleagues at the high school where I had started teaching had asked me if Kaden was autistic when I joked with her about his zeal for spinning objects.  I queued up Google, typed “symptoms of Autism,” and selected the first link that popped up.

Problems developing social skills.  Well, sort of.  I mean, he talked, but it was mostly stuff he had seen on TV or heard on his music CD’s.

Fails to make eye contact.  Never.

Resists physical affection.  Never.  What was I worried about?

Repetitive language.  Often “echolalia” or repeats previously-heard phrases.  Oh.

Stereotypical behaviors like body rocking or flapping hands.  Shit.

Unusual focus on pieces of toys rather than the item itself.  May spin objects.  Double shit.

I continued down the list, desperately trying to separate “autistic behavior” from “two-year-old behavior.” But by the end of that night, I knew.  Strangely, I wasn’t sad.  I think I may have cried (I don’t remember, because it’s been a long time), but I remember feeling relieved.  Like maybe if I had a name for this strange behavior, I could explain it and prevent people from thinking that my son was simply bad.  “He has autism,” I would explain with a wave of my hand at his glass-shattering shriek in the grocery store.  Suddenly, the word autism was going to rescue me from the fear that I was simply the worst mother who ever lived.

Your kid is....

I guess my son's 1st grade class was treated to a puppet show by one of our high school service groups this afternoon.  If something involving anyone outside my son's class is going on, I always hear about it long before I get home, because people constantly feel the need to report on Kaden's behavior.  As 5th period started, one of my seniors walked in and announced, "Your kid is so hyperactive!"

I won't lie...it hit me all wrong.  I had to bite back my ascerbic retort and acknowledge the fact that, as a 17-year-old girl who has yet to become a mother, she would never understand how disheartening it is to hear comments like that about your child.  (This girl is a GREAT kid, and I love here dearly.  I know she didn't have bad intentions.)  Alas, I hear things like this constantly.  I'll be walking through Walmart and some random kid will come up and ask, "Are you Kaden's mom?"  When I respond in the affirmative, he inevitably tell me about how Kaden hit him or cussed in his class or got sent to the hall because he was misbehaving that day.  I've had other parents walk up to me at basketball games to tell me the myriad transgressions they witnessed while volunteering in Kaden's class or picking their kid up early from school.  "Wow," they'll say in their amused tone, laughing because they think since we have kids in the same grade, somehow we're sharing the same experiences.  "He sure has a hard time sitting still and keeping his hands to himself!"

Yeah?  Well your kid is ugly and reads like a robot.

I find myself wondering if other parents are barraged by constant negative feedback about their children.  How big is their stack of e-mails from the school reporting behaviors from sleepiness to spitting to kicking the principal and screaming the f-word in the lunch line.  I wonder how often other parents receive bad behavior reports from kids at their child's school or strangers in the supermarket.  How many times have other parents had to rearrange their day to pick up their misbehaving 1st grader because he's on his "third strike" and is getting sent home from school.  How many other parents wonder if it's possible to get expelled from the first grade?

I wish I could sit here and pretend to be thick-skinned and tell you it doesn't really bother me.  But it does.  Every parent knows how a bad remark about your kid can alter your confidence.  Anyone who knows me will tell you the opinions of others matter WAY too much to me, and being Kaden's mom has been a humbling experience in oh, so many ways. 

Thankfully, in the end, I get to see the Kaden that doesn't usually show up at school.  When there aren't 27 people in a room fidgeting and breathing and talking and moving around and people are asking him to read this and write that and sit still and listen and look here, Kaden is actually a delightful young man.  He is smart, he reads very well, he loves science, and he's as articulate as an English teacher's son should be.  He has manners, and he is very loving.  If no one else in this world understands Kaden, Dan and I do.  My family does.  I suppose in the long run, that's all that really matters and what everyone else thinks is irrelevant.

Oh, toothless one.

The right central incisor that had been dangling precariously from Kaden's gums finally gave way when Dan gave it a yank earlier this evening.  Of course, I missed the blessed event because I was at the school watching our Speech & Drama team's final performances at Family Night.  Tears!  Anyhow, when I got home, Kaden immediately started hollering from his bedroom (where he was supposed to be asleep) that he wanted me to come see his tooth.  Too impatient to wait, he comes bounding out to the kitchen, naked as a jaybird with the most hysterical grin on his face.  I'm not going to lie; my kid's grill is JACKED UP at the moment...  He looks adorably ridiculous.

Ok, is it an Asperger's thing, or is chronic nudity just something that little 6-year-old boys are into?  Kaden LOVES being naked.  I think if he had his choice, he would just go sans apparel every day.  Some kids with Aspergers have sensory issues that make some fabrics almost painful to their skin, but I don't think that's why Kaden likes to be nude.  In fact, his clothes are always on backwards, inside out, twisted around his body, what have you...  Come to think of it, he once spent a whole day at school with the leg hole of his underware welded around his waist and he didn't say a thing.   I don't even think he noticed that his elastic waist band was dangling around his left leg.  It looked miserably uncomfortable to me, but he was completley unphased by it.

Maybe this obsession with nudity all goes back to his infancy when I made him wear cloth diapers.  I read an article that said boys who wear cloth diapers can be at higher risk for testicular cancer since cloth diapers are warmer than disposable.  So in order to protect the environment and my future grandchildren, I gave him "free range baby" time every day. 

Maybe I should just stop wondering about it...

Anyway, Kaden is really excited that he lost his third tooth.  Dan told me that when he pulled the tooth out, Kaden thanked him and gave him a hug because he had been really worried about where he was going to lose it.  He's excited about the prospect of getting some new teeth, and he was even enthusiastic about brushing his teeth, so his new teeth won't fall out. 

Now, if only I could get him to be equally enthusiastic about wearing pajamas....  Here's hoping the Tooth Fairy isn't offended by naked sleeping boys!

The Door Bathrooms

I've been working on writing the Great Montana Novel for a few years now.  Only problem is, I haven't actually written anything.  When I say anything, I mean nothing that could pass as an actual manuscript.  I have plot lines, character studies, dialogue samples, etc., but no story.  I've been beating my head over it for a while, to be perfectly honest.  I have an insatiable desire to be a published author.

Recently, my sister recommended that I translate all my "Kaden stories" into a humorous memoir about raising a child with Asperger's.  So, given that I'm not exactly knocking out the novel that's going to put me on the map, I decided to write about Kaden.  It turns out I actually have something to say...  I wrote the following the other day to fulfill an assignment for the creative writing class I'm taking through UCLA.

The Door Bathrooms

I am driving…no, racing.  Pounding the gas pedal of my Honda Pilot and throttling forward as fast as this rubber and steel will carry me, because I have an emergency on my hands.  Kaden has seen the tell-tale signs.  He recognizes the bend in the road, and he knows that just around the slight curve in I-90 are the door bathrooms.  That’s right.  The door bathrooms.   I think maybe if I drive fast enough and create a big enough diversion, we might sneak by, but I am wrong.

For the sake of illumination, the Door Bathrooms (let’s treat them like the proper noun they are) are what most normal people refer to as the Bear Creek Rest Area about 35 miles east of Missoula, Montana.  But to my 6-year-old son with Asperger’s Syndrome, the Door Bathrooms are sheer magic.  This otherwise unassuming rest area boasts stainless steel toilets that have a black metal flap that opens into the trap when the toilet is flushed.  This fascinates Kaden endlessly, as do windmills, whirlpools, vortexes, and Saturn.

We are fortunate enough to pass the Door Bathrooms twice on a trip to visit Grandma in Billings.  On each trip, just as soon as I know we’re nearing the rest area, I start finding distractions. 

“Kaden, look at the pretty river.  Look at the trees.  Look at the train.  Look at the big semi truck! Look at the mountains!” I exclaim, pointing fervently in all directions.  My actions are futile, because he knows.  He knows!  It’s as though he has GPS built into his brain, and within two miles of the exit, he starts craning his neck to look for the exit sign.

“Mom, we have to stop at the door bathrooms!  Can we stop at the door bathrooms?  Please mom, can we stop at the door bathrooms?  The door bathrooms have a door in the toilet, don’t they, Mom?  Mom, have you seen the door in the toilet in the door bathrooms?”

These questions are punctuated with my half-hearted replies as I deliberate whether a stop at the Door Bathrooms is really necessary, especially since we stopped at the truck stop we passed half an hour ago.   But I know the drill.  If I say no, I will spend the next several hours explaining why we couldn’t stop at the door bathrooms.   I will be forced to decide between pleading with an irrational 6-year-old or silently enduring his incessant threats to run away, or break all his toys, or put his bike in the microwave.  (He has really threatened to do this.  And I almost let him try it.)

I suppose if I was a different mother listening to this story, I would label the child spoiled and the mom permissive.  But this is Asperger’s we’re talking about.  Kaden needs to see those bathrooms like plants need water.  For some strange reason, Kaden is hard wired to be fascinated by plumbing. So as soon as he knows we are going to Grandma’s, he starts anticipating this part of the trip.  We always stop at the Door Bathrooms.  It’s part of the plan.  And that is how we get through the day.

So I decide to stop.  As we pull up to the building that houses the facilities, Kaden’s face is awash with joy.  I hold his hand as we walk in, and I lead him into a stall where he immediately flushes.  Then he flushes again, and again.  We’re wasting water, I know.  We’re in a disgusting public rest stop on a major Interstate where I’m sure all sorts of unsavory activities have taken place.  But Kaden is happy.  While he flushes, he explains to me how the toilet works, and I listen intently.  I let him flush a few more times, then we wash our hands vigorously while a woman and her daughter stare quizzically at us.  I would try to explain, but I’m not sure where to start, and I don’t think she would understand.  Then I decide that it’s not even worth it to try, because this is my kid, and just like hers, he’s perfect.