• Use

    Anyone who knows me won’t have any trouble believing I like new gadgets. We have a semi-regular upgrade cycle on our Macs. I have feelings for my iPhone that probably aren’t healthy. The letters “TV” are synonymous with “DVR” in our house. Wi-Fi and bluetooth aren’t just wireless technologies, they are a way of life.

    But here’s something you may not know about me. There are times I like my old stuff better than newer alternatives. I’ve been carrying around the same umbrella since college. The material that’s exposed when it’s folded is so uniformly dirty it looks like part of the design when it’s open. I’ve carried only one bag to work, slung over my shoulder, it’s weathered leather exterior originally a graduation gift for Cheryl, which she eventually decided she didn’t need. So it’s filled another. I like to think of it as a reflection of myself: a little beaten up, but still solid and unbroken.

    And then there’s my bike, an old aluminum framed model aptly branded: Trek. I know folks have older rides, but it seems inconceivable I’ve had it this long… twenty years and thousands of miles. I only wish I had the opportunity to bring it with me to more places. As it is, it’s brought me more peace and wonder than any thing I’ve owned. What little travel I’ve done, I’ve often had my bike with me. I’ve been up and down parts of both coasts of Florida, past long stretches of mangroves bursting at the seams with life – enclosing small inlets of calm, the sky so blue reflected on it’s surface, that even the simple contrast of two colors: blue and green, make you want to stop and hold your breath, lest the noise disturb something so peaceful – so right. The hypnotic whir of chain and gear, of rubber on road, accompanied me on the deserted sunrise roads of island parks and nature preserves, past the infant like dunes of the Gulf coast, seas of oats dancing together in the wind nearly obscuring another, more vast sea beyond.

    I’ve explored some of the little history we have on the southeastern coast, my bike making me feel like a sponge dripping full with the essence of a place. I’ve squeezed through the tight spaces of places like St Augustine, imagining long dead Spaniards building the coquina structures that stand today, much as they did more than 400 years ago. I rode the pre-Katrina streets of New Orleans, from the sometimes unpleasant smells of the old town, atop the levies overlooking downtown, to the sometimes bone jarring streets of the garden district, looping down around Audubon Park and its hardwood canopy filtering the glow of the departing sun.

    When my mind drifts from chores or monotonous tasks at work, it often takes me back to my bike, but to places yet to be experienced on two wheels. I imagine exploring the country roads of my ancestors, places like central Pennsylvania, northern Vermont, and the small towns of Massachusetts near the New Hampshire border. I imagine a slow pedal along the far northeastern coast, where the Gulf Stream no longer warms the waters, and cool wind catches a naturalized southerner unprepared blowing inland. I imagine just getting on and going, finding towns as I arrive, not knowing the names until my wheels cross the borders marked by signs.

    Maybe I’m a sentimental fool, but I can’t imagine replacing these things. They’ve come to feel like appendages, no more replaceable than a hand or a leg.

    Or a heart.

  • Florida, my home

    I’m a hair more moody these days, looking at life through my azure tinted glasses, but there’s a good reason. It’s nothing serious, just your garden variety, mid-medication change depression. I just thought I’d say this post is an example of effect, not cause.

    Last week we said goodbye to my in-laws. They’re doing something I haven’t done since the leukemia diagnosis, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.

    They’re taking a vacation.

    The kind where you go someplace.

    What’s worse, they’re going to New England – my first home, making stops in New Hampshire and Maine. Then they’re going to Canada, specifically Montreal.

    I wanna go.

    Most people would be satisfied with a self-pity party, but I’m the type to throw myself a parade. Poor me, I can’t go on vacation while the nation grapples with crippling unemployment.

    Before we said goodbye we all went out to dinner to celebrate Beth’s birthday early (since they’ll be gone for the real thing). Due to a series of events I won’t bore you with, I ended up meeting everyone there… and driving myself home. It was on this drive, thinking about the vacation I wasn’t taking, that I took a few back roads I hadn’t seen in a while. I passed the hill I rode my skateboard down as a kid, on a dare. I passed a relatively new subdivision of homes. I saw a flat wasteland of tasteless, identical snout-houses, and a conspicuous lack of shade. Instead, not so many years ago I saw dense woods, often with a friend around, tempting our childhood eyes and imaginations, but thwarted by chain link, dark shadows, and countless warnings: “NO TRESPASSING!”

    Well, it kept us sufficiently warned most of the time.

    I turned left at a traffic light and looked in my rear-view mirror. The four-lane divided highway that used to stop at the traffic light, now wound it’s way down the hill, where more woods had succumbed to asphalt. Although I’m used to this sight (I see it twice every day), it still brings more pain. These woods were ours – all of the adventure and imagination, and none of the chain link. It was a jungle of hardwood canopy, dense hanging moss, saw palmettos, hard fought trails, and dug-in, hidden nooks to hide if on the run. There was always some reason to be on the run, those ruthless palmettos sawing at our shins with every misstep. It was a seemingly endless expanse of adventure on demand.

    In the moment, this moment of negligent musing behind the wheel, this same intersection contained my parents’ neighborhood – another walled in subdivision, protected from the unknown evil of the wandering outsider’s eye. When we first moved in, the lots sold but no one built. Oddly, our upper-middle class house and a few others like it spent my childhood surrounded by well protected, abandoned sand. It was all that was left of another clearcut orange grove, ground up to feed the beast we call sprawl. Over the years this sand grew wild watermelons. For a while it grew into a small test track for my (off-road) motorcycle. It was lots of room to line up imaginary, long, game winning field goals off a kicking tee, over a swing set in my back yard. I only broke a few of the cement tiles on our roof.

    Down the street, on the other side of the neighborhood, we had another natural playground – a mix of pine, gentle undergrowth, and relatively hard packed sand. It was more open, the ground more accommodating to bikes, allowing deeper expeditions further from parents’ eyes. We were on our own, or so it felt, and it was exhilarating. Then as startled kids we watched the fences go up, the trees come down, and a giant hole appear. Now it’s the county’s largest manmade, drainage detention asset, tastefully decorated with chain link.

    The moment passed. In a blink, my mind shifted from the present to my childhood an back again. It was all gone. It’s been gone for a long time.

    I drove down one hill, up another and I was home.

    Or was I?

    They say you can’t go home again, but what if you never really left?

    What if home left you?

  • When the autism spectrum wins

    After a month of hunting down posts about Beth’s childhood, my mind wandered to our other child. How has he fared through all of this?

    I remember first thinking in terms of Beth’s disorder “winning” during a Skype therapy session for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The therapist sought to personalize, yet disassociate the disorder from Beth in a way. She tried to objectify it – make it seem separate and distinct, to make it into something for Beth to fight. It also served to lift some of the shame from her shoulders. “This isn’t you Beth. This is OCD, and we can make it go far away. It may come back from time to time, but it’ll get easier and easier to send it away.” In the case of OCD it kind of worked, with a LOT of effort and tears. There were exercises which helped her to overcome some of the distinguishing characteristics of OCD (in her case), while not letting it define her.

    Asperger’s Syndrome, in the larger context of our family, has been another animal. One of the ways I fear it’s won is the attention we’ve shifted from our wonderful son to endless therapies, doctors, and counselors with Beth, before and after diagnosis (but mostly before). You may have noticed the daily posts leading up to Beth’s thirteenth birthday – my sort of mock countdown to the end of her childhood, with a few re-posts from the early days.

    It got me to thinking.

    I don’t have nearly as many posts about Adam’s early years. We’re still in them so I still have time, but still – not a whole lot of Adam in here.

    It’s not that Beth isn’t wonderful, or Adam hasn’t been noteworthy, but damn it all if we haven’t fallen into a tradeoff trap.

    There are a number of harmless explanations just dying to dive off the tip of my tongue. Some of the magic of raising a child may seem more routine the second time around. Beth had the stage to herself for seven years, while Adam has to share it with a veteran of the theater. There are a bunch more where those came from.

    They all sound like reasons, but even to my mind they sound more like excuses. Yet somehow, deprived of his share of attention, Adam has thrived. Even though I haven’t read to him as much as I would have liked, he’s been reading on his own for almost a year now – and he doesn’t start kindergarten until this Fall. He writes notes in a little notepad, sounding out the words. How many times have I heard him say, “Wait! I just want to get this down before we go!” It’s precious and hilarious.

    Maybe Aspergers hasn’t won, not entirely. Maybe it’s beaten me down a little, but my little boy is a little stronger.

    It surely hasn’t bested my daughter.