Fresh Start

So, here’s a new one:

Last week, mere hours before we’d planned to leave for Big Family Final Beach Weekend of the Summer, I had a meeting at The Boy’s new school. (I know, what a great way to get psyched for a beach trip. Pass the tanning butter.)

So, I gathered up The Boy’s IEP and behavior plan, the handout they gave me back in June, my list of concerns – oops, I mean, “questions” –  about this program and its appropriateness for him, and marched into that school ready to advocate.

Except…I didn’t really need to.

Somehow, over the summer – maybe thanks to the tireless advocacy of pioneer parents before me, or because school district lawyers successfully managed to explain “least restrictive means” to the administrators, or perhaps a rare alignment between school district politics and my child’s best interests, or maybe just plain dumb luck – the program changed. For the better.

• It is no longer a behavior intervention program.
• Enrollment in the program is now 80% autism/Aspergers students.
• The Boy is in a regular 2nd grade “gifted” classroom with support from an instructional aide  
• The old self-contained classroom is now a "learning center" where special ed students have access to pull-outs for extra support, as needed.

If I could have designed a program for him myself, this is pretty much what I would have done. Well…I’d have the day be a little shorter, the class size a little smaller, include a big block of time for Lego-building in the afternoon, and tell the parents about it in freaking JUNE so they wouldn’t have worried about it all summer long! But otherwise, it’s pretty darn close to ideal.

So, now what? There’s plenty more to worry about, of course. How will the pearl-clutching “not fair to the other kids!” anti-inclusion parents react to his presence? What if the “gifted” curriculum is too hard? What if the other kids exclude, or tease, or bully? What if he lashes out at them? What if this simply…doesn’t work?

But now, with the long-anticipated first day of school finally behind us, there’s a lot to feel optimistic about, too. The Boy was so excited to walk to his new school this morning. He’s so proud to be a second grader. His classroom teacher is a guy who seems to genuinely love teaching and was positively glowing when I picked The Boy up at school today. He’s happy to have The Boy in his class. The special ed teacher actually called me at home to tell me The Boy was having a great first day. (After I recovered from the shock and panic of seeing SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS on my caller ID, I was delighted with the news.) 

I know it could all go terribly wrong tomorrow, or next week, or months from now. All the more reason to savor it today, I suppose. And keep hoping for the best.  

Back to the Prairie

My summer reading list has been a strange combination of Aspergers this, special ed that, and…Little House on the Prairie? Not the books. Not the TV show. Books about the books and the TV show.

The best by far was The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, in which the author and her boyfriend set out on a series of road trips to visit all things Little House. McClure delves into the beloved books of her youth, examining history and nostalgia; the books’ cultural impact and wide variety of fans; which parts were fictionalized; whether the books were mostly written by Laura Ingalls Wilder herself or by her daughter Rose; the books’ occasional cringe-worthy racism and politics; the sweetness and absurdity of Little House tourism; and the author’s own need to connect so deeply with the Little House world again in the first place. Loved it.

The other two books were more beach reads and Hollywoody than I usually prefer. But how could I resist Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on the TV series? Delicious. I wish I’d stopped with that one instead of slogging through Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale, which read like a Twilight book without the vampires. Likeable enough, moderately introspective, but in the end I didn’t much care about all the boyfriends and Lifetime movies that followed her Little House career. Sorry, Half Pint.

Rather than plunge into Melissa Anderson (Mary)’s poorly reviewed The Way I See It, I’m thinking I might go back and read the later books in the Little House series: Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. I read them both during the summer between 5th and 6th grade – an awkward, searching, “crossroads” kind of time in my life for which I’ve recently, inexplicably, become rather nostalgic.

Then, as now, I was an anxious dreamer – yearning for adventures, but ultimately too freaked out by the whole business of dealing-with-other-humans to do much about it. So I wrapped myself in the comforts of bookworm solitude and the notion that things must be so much better on the prairie (or in Narnia, or Marilyn Sachs’ Brooklyn, et cetera).

The Little House books exemplified the very “simple country life” dream my family was striving for, with Emmylou Harris on our stereo and a brooder full of chicks in our living room. Reading those books was simultaneously escape and home…or escape to an idealized version of home. We already had the old stone farmhouse, the woods, the fields, the antique rocking chairs. All I had to do was glorify the mundane spaces with Laura’s wide-eyed narration; apply her pure sense of joy and wonder to my ordinary life.

That summer, as middle school drew nearer, I immersed myself even further in the Little House fantasy – imagining my shirts were long dresses, that our station wagon was a horse drawn wagon, describing my surroundings to myself in third person narrative prose. I’d read all the earlier Little House books about Laura’s girlhood. Now it was time to read about Laura as a teenager. It was the safest way to dip my toes in my own impending adolescence, wrapped in layers of braids and calico, buggy rides and sociables.

I remember holding on to the Little House fantasy well into 6th grade, willfully blurring the edges of my reality into a nice, gentle fictionalization. Maybe I was scared or overwhelmed, but I don’t remember feeling that way. I think I just really wanted life to be that joyful, instead of the raw mess of clanging lockers and flailing hormones and insecurities.

Looking at the covers of those later Little House books sends me right back there again, reading in my nightgown, yearning for my almost-teenage life to start but holding dearly to my summer. And – come to think of it – holding dearly to my childhood. Because, really, that was the last true summer of my childhood. The calm before the storm.

It’s nothing I’d ever want to relive. Yet I’m strangely, strongly compelled to revisit it now. Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for a time when I had the ability to escape and imagine. To delve into a jarring situation and soften it with idealizations and hope.

This isn’t the last summer of my children’s childhood. Not even close. But it feels like an end of sorts, at least with The Boy. I’m striving to see him, the real him, not my hopes and disappointments, not my advocacy for him at school, not the politics of Aspergers. Him.

And part of what I’m seeing is that even now, even at age seven, he’s miles beyond my grasp. I can’t impose peace and happiness on him any more than I could impose it on those noisy middle school hallways years ago. He is on his journey, not mine. I’ve always known that. But I’m only just now feeling the sharp truth of it.

Is it any wonder I find myself grasping prairie-ward again, seeking the comforts that got me through the first steps on my own path? Fasten your sunbonnets, pioneers. We’ll get through this one, too.
     

Welcome to the Cracks

Ever sit around just reading your kid’s IEP, trying to imagine how it actually translates to a happier child? And let me be clear…I’m not complaining about The Boy’s IEP. It was written by an excellent special ed teacher who was his biggest advocate and strongest support last year. She herself expressed frustration with the rigid nature of these things.

You can dictate what a child needs and what the school must provide – to a point. They can have X minutes of services here, Y minutes of services there. They can have a teacher with a special ed degree (or, apparently, a Teach for America recruit who’s successfully crammed for a special ed test). They can be in a small classroom with a high ratio of adults to students. They can have access to an aide (just hope you don’t get the bitter, disgruntled type).

It can look good on paper, but so much slips between the cracks. Because you can’t dictate human nature. You can’t dictate empathy, common sense, or even the slightest real understanding and acceptance of Aspergers beyond its stiff, inadequate textbook definitions.

Welcome to the cracks.

It would appear that I have been ever-so-slightly misled. Some of the misleading, I’m afraid, was my own doing. I was desperate to get The Boy out of his old school and into a situation where he’d have more support and understanding. So, I enthusiastically accepted a spot at our neighborhood school where, my contact from the school district acknowledged, it wasn’t exactly an autism-specific program and it wasn’t exactly an inclusion model. But she, the principal, and the special ed teacher offered enough reasons to make me believe it would be a good-enough fit, that they’d be flexible and do their best to meet his individual needs.

And who knows. Maybe it will work. But it’s not what I was expecting. For one thing, autism is a relatively new thing to this classroom. Half of next year’s students will be on the spectrum, but traditionally it hasn’t been that way. Traditionally, it’s been a self-contained classroom for neurotypical kids with behavior problems, and it’s still very much run that way – with the teacher and aides kind of figuring out how all this applies to autistic kids on the fly.

So…not an ideal fit. Hopefully not a flat-out freaking disaster, but not an ideal fit. I wanted autism inclusion. I was led to believe (and very much wanted to believe) that this program was similar enough, but it isn’t. Meanwhile, the school district wants to phase out autism inclusion programs entirely. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward, but I’m puzzling out the details of Plans A, B, C, and D right now and there are several possible outcomes. Time will tell. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.  

But in the meantime…welcome to the cracks.

We will start second grade at this school, in this program, as planned. The things I liked about it two months ago are still mostly true. And there’s still a chance that it might be a good fit for The Boy. My first action won’t be whisking him out of there. My first action will be trying to see if we can settle into these cracks we’ve slipped between and make it work for the time being. I’ll be navigating the system, but I will have both eyes firmly on the child himself. How will he thrive? What strengths can we build upon and what coping skills can we teach? Where will he find his small comforts and joys to help him through?

We made incredible progress last year. This coming year presents a whole new set of challenges, only some of which I can anticipate. Maybe someday we’ll have a school year where I can just put him on the bus and relax into my own day, but this isn’t going to be it. 

On the plus side, maybe this will be the year I earn my Ms. Special Ed Parenting America crown. Stay tuned…

Me and Disco Stu

“You have to go to the Tin Angel!” everyone insisted when I told them I was moving to Philadelphia. What can I say? I ran with a folksier crowd in those prairie-skirt wearing, WXPN-listening days.

So, after some early weeks feeling under-pierced and just plain lonely in the big city, I set out to find this place. I was such a country mouse in those days, I didn’t even understand about bars being closed on Sundays. Or that it wasn’t just a bar, anyway, it was a venue and I’d most likely have needed a ticket to get in. So, now what?

There was a coffeehouse/deli next door that was open. I decided to just sit with a big juicy mocha, contemplate this latest setback, and head back home in the spirit of “better luck next time.”

The place was nearly empty except for two middle-aged guys. One looked ordinary enough. The other was…well…the second coming of Saturday Night Fever. White suit. Baby blue shirt, half buttoned. Immaculately coiffed John Travolta hair.

His name was Phil. He introduced himself with exaggerated charm and immediately started hitting on me. I immediately started deflecting his advances with my trademark smirk and dumb-guy-repelling big vocabulary.

“Are you an intellectual?” he asked, throwing me for a loop. Raise eyebrow, hope he’ll go away. “Oh, be intellectual! It turns me on!”

I must have looked flustered, because his friend intervened at that point, trying to redirect the guy. Realizing it wasn’t going to happen, Phil turned around and yelled at me “You know what your problem is? You missed the seventies!”

“No, I loved the seventies,” I said. “I mean, I was only eight, but…”

And Phil Seventies went on a rant about how my generation isn’t any fun, with our “safe sex” and “irony” and “grunge” music/fashion. We just didn’t get it. His friend apologized and ushered the guy out the door.

Alone again. I supposed solitude was better than letting Phil Seventies seduce me with his disco-era charm simply because I was the only woman around on a slow night. No regrets letting that particular opportunity slip away.

But I wondered about him. How did he come to be in Philadelphia on a Sunday night trying to get laid in a John Travolta costume in an empty Food Tek, pissed that it’s not the seventies anymore?

Years later, I told the story to Mr. Black, who found it every bit as funny and baffling as I did. Was the guy really that clueless? Had he recently arrived in 1994 in his Delorean time machine? Was he coming from a costume party and just really, really committed to staying in character? My theory was simply that he was recently divorced, hadn’t been single since 1978, and assumed nothing had changed since then. But is that possible?

“It would be like you going to a club dressed as Kurt Cobain and yelling at everyone that they missed the nineties,” I joked.

And then we realized…oh wait. It is possible.

Well, not the going-to-a-club and yelling-at-people part. But in our own small way, we are now every bit as antiquated as Phil Seventies was back in 1994. We still dress in irony-T’s and flannel. I haven’t bought a new album since Sleater-Kinney’s last one. Today’s youth culture makes us cranky. We were watching the Homerpalooza episode of the Simpsons the other day and realized that we are Homer in that.

Bart: Dad, please. You're embarrassing us.

Homer: No I'm not. I'm teaching you about rock music. Now Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan Parsons Project…

Replace those bands with Screaming Trees and The Cranberries, and here we are. We don’t even watch the Simpsons-of-today anymore; we just watch our old favorites from the early seasons on DVD. Hand me the Geritol.

I guess I can see why Phil Seventies was bitter. Aging really sneaks up on you. I feel every bit the same “me” that I was in my cute, smirky youth. But now I’m walking around in this fortysomething body with all these weird aches and pains in the morning. My spirit hasn’t changed, but everything else is changing all around me, constantly. And time seems to move so much faster.

I’m sure Phil felt like the same “Phil,” too. He used to feel at one with his time and place, and now it had just slipped away, replaced by a lonely weekend and some smart aleck hippie wannabe loner who wouldn’t give him the time of day. No more discos, no more Farrah hair, no more wild unbridled seventies-style fun. No more youth.

I get it, Phil. I still don’t want to sleep with you, but I get it.

Not Done Yet

“Are you done?” a friend recently asked me.

It took me a little longer than it should have to realize she meant “Done having babies.” To which the answer is simply “yes.” The good folks at Paragard are helping me see to that.

But when she first asked the question, before I knew what she meant, my first thought was “No. Not even close.”



School ended on Tuesday. By Thursday, I found myself luxuriating on our crummy old beach blanket with a fresh pedicure, watching The Boy and Mr. Black build a sandcastle while Little Girl made up a story with a pair of plastic shovels. It was a rare peaceful moment, complete with the sparkling, crashing waves of the Oregon Coast Pacific in the background.

Nine months ago we were right here on this very beach, enjoying one last adventure before the start of school. I can’t help but sit back and marvel at all that’s transpired between then and now.

First freaking grade. Who would have thought? I guess on some level, I’d known we were in for a wild ride of a school year. I’d already scaled back my volunteer duties at Little Girl’s preschool in preparation. I’d been warned by The Boy’s awesome kindergarten teacher that first grade is a whole different ballgame. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I had a vague, foreboding sense that a huge pain in the ass was in store.

The last time we sat on this beach, I had no idea The Boy had Aspergers. But I knew something was up with him, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to fix it before school started. At that point, I was still kind of hoping it would somehow fix itself. Well…it didn’t.

The amazing thing is how incredibly positive I’ve been feeling about this crazy year. And not just because we’re sitting on a beach. Even before we left I was elated, on the phone with my mother trying to explain that no, really, it was a good year! A growing year! Look at how far we’ve come:

We have a diagnosis. We have an IEP. We won over his classroom teacher – who started out the year disgruntled and overwhelmed – and watched her really learn and start to get him as the year went on, patching things together with common sense and empathy even before there was an IEP in place. We stood up to kids who picked on him and parents who didn’t want their kids to associate with him. We got him out of a disastrous reading group and watched his behavior improve dramatically as a result. We got him reassigned to a school that routinely serves students on the autism spectrum, where he’ll have the professional attention and understanding he’s needed all along. Let’s face it, people: We kicked ass!

And no…we’re not done. But it’s awfully nice, after all that, to just sit by the ocean again.



Watching my happy little nuclear family on the beach reminds me of another Oregon Coast trip a few years back. The Boy was two, and I was pregnant with Little Girl. So pregnant, in fact, that I wore one of those dreadful maternity belts under my tank top so that I could walk on the beach without being sabotaged by preggo-related sciatica.

But I was so joyful the whole time. The baby-to-be kicked merrily when her brother-to-be ran around the hotel room, as if she couldn’t wait to get out and join the party. I watched other families with multiple school-aged children, imagining ourselves in that place in a few years. There was this blissful sense of “Soon Our Family Will Be Complete.” Or something less cheesy than that. I don’t know.

And now, here we are. Brother and sister, Aspergian and neurotypical, Legos and stuffed animals. Complete.

But not done.

Spark

Shuffling into a crowded Barnes & Noble today with Little Girl, I caught sight of two bookish, endearingly young guys standing by the door. They were about to part ways, feet pointing in different directions, but their eyes were absolutely locked in the sweetest twitterpated gaze. Earnest smiles, avid nodding. One described his job and co-workers to the other, both of them speaking and listening with far more fascination than the subject matter warranted.

They don’t know it yet, I thought, smiling as my girl tugged me into the store. But they’re just on the cusp of realizing. Maybe they’re realizing it at this very moment. Or maybe they’ll both lie awake tonight mystified and intrigued, wondering if they imagined that flicker in the other’s eyes. So obvious to the passer-by, but it eludes them because the very notion seems to defy the law of gravity: Mutual! The guy you adore adores you, too. Impossible.

I miss that. It’s one of the few things I truly don’t have anymore, that I probably will never experience again. That innocent moment when a gaze lasts just a little longer, when you can’t quite break eye contact; when the corners of your mouths creep up inanely while you talk about bus schedules or whatever mundane topic you’d been discussing.

I’m not talking about flirtation. Flirtation is contrived, often insincere, and kind of annoying, frankly. I’m talking about spark – a connection that happens in spite of your best manners or even your best interests. Like the old cupid’s arrow thing in cartoons, eyeballs turning into hearts and so forth.



I know, I know. Thanks to reality dating shows, the word “connection” has been rendered even more meaningless and silly than the eyeball/heart thing. But seeing those innocently enamored guys today makes me remember that it’s real. It just doesn’t happen as often as pop culture wants us to believe.

Spark was always my favorite, even in the single days. Especially in the single days, when more often than not, spark was as good as it got. It was that one simple, perfect moment before you learn that the guy’s allergic to telephones. Or mean to his ex-girlfriends. Or kisses entirely with his tongue, no lips at all. It’s that one lovely impression of bliss before the awkward mechanics of actually disrobing and attempting orgasm with another sweaty human being. Or, Zod help you, attempting a relationship with someone whose compatibility falls far short of spark’s initial promise.

Come to think of it, spark is a pretty lousy predictor. It’s mostly just projection, really. You think you’re seeing this incredible connection, but really you’re just seeing mutual physical attraction and wild, careless hope. Even under the best of circumstances, there’s nowhere to go but down. It’s either a failed relationship or the arduous, pioneering work of a successful one.

But spark for spark’s sake? Is that even possible? Can you have a mutually recognized attraction that goes unfulfilled? Or does that only exist in fairy tales like Lost in Translation?



Gaah…love that movie. Love. It.

Anyway. I wish those guys from Barnes & Noble the best. I kind of hope they didn’t realize the mutual attraction today. I hope they get at least a week or two to savor the anticipation, search for clues in conversations and glances, blissfully agonize about it over drinks with friends, feel just on the verge of that spark, but not quite there just yet. It’s the best part, guys. Enjoy it.

Lost and Found

I met my parents at the King of Prussia mall and borrowed my old car back from them, carless as I was in those days. It was dark by the time I hit the road. I had no plans. Not one. I just started driving north, because north.

I made it as far as New Paltz that night. The next day I decided to spend the rest of my vacation in the Adirondacks. Drive a little, hike. Drive a little, swim in a lake. Drive a little, find a motel for the night. Wake up, put on a sports bra, and go for a real hike.



This woman on the trail reminded me of Ingrid. Even her voice had that same lilt to it, and that joyful enthusiasm. Insistent. The trail was flooded, but she knew another way. Come on! Funny how you can fall into your old role with a completely new person, just like that. I followed her. She had a compass and a trail map. She seemed so sure of the way.

The real Ingrid was gone, of course. Never came back to work from her vacation, cleared out her apartment, took her last paycheck and disappeared. It was all so surreal. I kept remembering how our strange little girl-crush friendship unraveled over the summer. She went from adoring me to being aggressively distant, to being just plain irritated with me…well, irritated and distant with all of us, really. I knew it wasn’t about me, but still. I wondered. I hypothesized. I went back over past conversations, searching for clues.

Mostly, though, I just missed her so much. Walking through the city at night, I’d stare up at the glittering office windows against the dusky sky feeling as if she had just evaporated up there somewhere. It was even more perplexing than the “what happens when you die” question, because she wasn’t dead. She was somewhere, not wanting to be found.



And now, I was getting lost in the woods with some woman who reminded me of her. She became less and less certain, but no less enthusiastic. It’s this way! And we’d charge up a hillside, whacking branches out of our way. No, wait, it was actually that way! Charge, whack, etc.

And then she just stopped. She didn’t know anymore. Panic! She took out a whistle and blew and blew. Nothing. She called shrill, terrified calls for help. Nothing. It was so quiet.

I was every bit as lost as she was, but somehow I felt completely calm. “I’m going to have some water,” I said, keeping my voice low and reassuring. “Would you like some water, too?” She nodded, we sipped. I don’t remember what I said after that. I just kept speaking with composure and certainty, even though I had no freaking idea where we were or how to get us back to the trail.

But it worked. She picked up her map again, and together we retraced our steps back to the point where we’d gone off the trail. Her boyfriend was there. She stayed with him while I followed the official detour around the flooded trail.

Soon I was back on the trail, taking long, delicious strides up the side of the mountain, thinking about not much at all. Sun. Pine needles. Boots. Sky. I was happier than I’d been all summer. Traveling alone is so intensely free. You can just drift with your own whims, explore your senses uninterrupted.

At the same time, I’d never felt so grounded. All that summer I’d been so lonely and tense and sad, uncertain about whether to stay at my job or even whether to stay in Philadelphia. Somehow, Ingrid’s leaving made me realize I was already entrenched; more stable than I ever could have known.

Just like that stranger on the trail. I’d followed her, trusted her, believed that I needed her. But in the end, I was the one who had to lead. And I could find my own way pretty well, it turned out.