Yesterday was Beth’s last day of school. It also marked Beth’s last day of middle school.
This little girl…
Will start high school this fall.
Our resident young-adult pulled straight As for the year again, not that I’m bragging, of course. Think of it more as a statement of fact that doesn’t reflect poorly on the author or the subject.
The house is getting its first showing this morning, and I feel like a thirty-nine year old man going out on his first date.
We got an email from our realtor yesterday evening saying he’d received a query from another realtor, asking to show the house this morning at 9 a.m.
No problem, right? A nibble from someone this soon, in this market, is something.
Oh, did I mention it’s the middle of the night? Did I mention I’ve had a sinus headache for the better part of the last twenty-four hours? Did I mention Beth just got sick… all over her bed, the floor between her room and the bathroom….
I’m the third load into the all night laundrypallooza, and somehow I’m at peace. It might be the fatigue talking. I might not have any energy left to be anything but at peace.
I’m also a little proud of myself. I figured I was already a lost cause today, so I handled this one solo. The wife stayed in bed, asleep I hope. Three cheers for citizen John, hero of the household!
Hip-hip… oh forget it.
There’s an instinctual calm that comes over me when I’m faced with a sick child in the middle of the night. I don’t know why. Take the same circumstances, but with the Sun somewhere above, and any range of emotions is possible. But there’s something about the night that’s soothing, even when I know I’ll pay dearly later. It seems to have the opposite effect on the kids… and maybe that’s why I’m calmer… something in the DNA – an adaptive trait that made our branch of the evolutionary tree blossom. Calm. It’s what brings the kids down from the edge. Here’s another adaptive trait for the disciples of Darwin out there keeping score: the ability to breathe through your mouth, or more specifically: NOT breathing through your nose.
That may be the most important evolutionary hurdle of all for the strange creature known as: the new parent.
Well it’s late. I hope you won’t hold it against me if I skip the proof reading – or if this is unreadable.
Everyone knows life has its ups and downs. Well, except for some folks who aren’t right somehow. Perpetual happiness isn’t normal. I think it’s a little creepy. But look at me, talking about right minds. Aren’t I just adorable?
I’ve been down. Hell, I’ve been riding the trench so long I can barely remember what the plateau looks like. Does the grass grow lush and green up there? Maybe it’s not so great after all. I really don’t like yard work.
Tonight’s an up night. The weather has cooled. It’s not much, but enough to notice a difference. It’s enough to be comfortable outside when the sun isn’t up. Hell, it’s seven o’clock and my thermometer says it’s 80F. Eighty, where have you been all my life? There’s a breeze no less. This outdoor, front porch post is brought to you by eighty – the makers of a relieved soul.
About a month ago some friends of Cheryl gave us a telescope. It isn’t huge. It isn’t motorized and it doesn’t have a computer guidance system. It’s a 60mm refractor. What makes it a gift from the Gods is the light it collects compared to my little, 30 year old reflector that’s a toy by comparison. Squint your eyes, use a little imagination, and you can just barely make out the rings of Saturn on my old telescope.
Saturn isn’t out right now, but you may have heard Earth is at its closest point to Jupiter on its leisurely, annual lap around the sun (or it was late last month).
It was still pretty darn close a week or two ago when I hurried Beth out to the back yard to watch the eastern sky. The brightest star in the sky wasn’t a star at all. It was Jupiter. The light captured from moons of Jupiter with our new telescope was spectacular. We shared an astronomy moment, awed by an image seen much clearer in too many magazines to count. We could make out bands around the magnified point in the sky, revealed as the relatively near object it really is, and looked upon the clouds of Jupiter.
An otherwise mundane Monday was transformed into an event we’ll share forever.
Many of you know Beth has high functioning autism. Some of you know Beth. A few of you are familiar with Beth’s low tolerance for discomfort of any kind, and the hypochondria that accompanies it.
More than once we’ve played the town’s folk as Beth cried wolf, only to find later the wolf was real – and caught up to her.
When she was a newborn/toddler her way too frequent complaints turned out to be urinary tract infections brought about my a birth defect requiring surgery – and removal of half a kidney.
As she got older, the constant stomach pains turned out to be something we’d later learn was a classic symptom of autism: she didn’t “go” when she needed to go. As a result, she became spectacularly backed up – surprising her doctor with her steel resolve in the face of pain.
It all played out so contradictory, I was completely lost when it came to Beth and illness.
Fast forward to this morning. No I take that back. Fast forward to this year. Beth’s been spending a fair bit of time curled up on the couch in pain. A few specialists gave us their answers, and their advice seemed to work… for a while. We’ve been keeping a closer eye on her diet and exercise. But we still occasionally have mornings like today – Beth impersonating a fetus on the couch.
Sometimes she makes a miraculous recovery and goes to school. Sometimes it doesn’t last and one of us makes the trip to her school to pick her up. Other times we go to the doctor for a quick check and a new piece of advice. Sometimes it’s behavioral advice. Sometimes it’s medical.
This morning Beth was on the couch again. We decided to take her to one of several doctors again.
Are you familiar with the phrase, “one more thing?”
Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for anxiety and depression.
Beth starts school on Monday, and you know what’s crazy – besides the fact that we’re only half way through August and school’s already starting – I didn’t know.
That’s right, I’m such a lousy father I didn’t know when school started.
Well, today I’m feeling charitable. I like to think I’m just forgetful. Forgetful parents aren’t necessarily lousy, are they?
Anyhoo, I’m of a mind to see this as a great step forward for Beth. Not that her father didn’t know, but that I wasn’t worrying about it coming. Dreading is actually a better word.
You see, when most parents are rejoicing in school’s return, I’ve always dreaded it. School was a time of suffering for Beth, and I suffered with her. Asperger’s made Beth different, and school kids eat different for lunch. Of course, this was before we knew Beth had Asperger’s. For a couple years we just thought she was eccentric. We thought it came in the package with a high IQ. It took a while for us to realize how different. She was our only child, and she was cursed with shy parents (me anyway). I don’t do well with people myself, so I lacked another point of reference.
Then we went through years of therapists, doctor’s of varying specialties, and finally a psychiatrist or two.
It wasn’t until someone got us in to see the department head of psychiatry at the children’s hospital in St Pete, a year and a half ago, that we learned a form of autism was the likely candidate. It wasn’t until we lucked into a study with the local university that we saw any therapy that made a difference. It wasn’t until the psychiatrist recommended a small, private school we’d never heard of, which had success with high functioning autism kids, that Beth found respite from the bully squads of public school.
She was among her own, and she was as happy as I’ve ever seen her.
The neighborhood kids can be no better than the ones from school. Their parents seem to worry Beth’s quirks will rub off on their kids, so they don’t let her inside to play. It’s only at school that she’s among friends.
So you see, the school year isn’t just good for Beth – it’s a blessing.
So I think I get a pass for forgetting the first day of school. Now it’s just another day.
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.
Here’s a few quick videos from Beth’s real birthday (we’ll be doing a few late celebrations after Adam sheds his virus).
My apologies, the quality is exceptionally poor. I forgot to recharge the batteries in our camera, so I settled for my old iPhone 3G, which was never really meant to be a video camera. It’s a pretty lousy still camera when you get down to it.
The obligatory cake shot:
Beth turns the camera on us for a change:
What does it mean to be thirteen?
Just in case you missed the last thirty posts, today is Beth’s thirteenth birthday. The title of these posts were supposed to hint at a pinch of mock doom and gloom, as our girl passes from childhood into her teen years, but in some respects I feel like Beth’s been a teenager for years.
Inheriting the sarcasm and smart-ass genes from her father created a teen-like aura at an early age. But I know better by now to assume I understand what the future will bring, so I do the only thing I can. I love my kid, and keep trying to find where I fit in life as it twists, turns, and whirls along – indifferent to my insecurities. I often wonder if she realizes where I fit in now – where I’ve fit in most of these last 13 years. As many parents can attest, the first child is the practice child. To say I’ve been equal parts teacher and student might be generous.
There’s one last post I’m going to share – one of the first posts of this blog, by date anyway. It appeared with a collection of short essays on my first web site (I’d written a few before I created the site) – the really rough birth of this blog.
I wish I’d saved a copy of that first little piece of HTML I’d typed – even if it was just a running list of links to text files I periodically uploaded, or a back up of that first site for that matter.
– – –
“Independence Day”
Written: 7/4/1997, originally posted sometime after Dec 1998
July 4, 1997 makes it eight years since my own independence day. It was July 4th, 1989 and I was just starting my first semester at UF. I remember sitting alone atop the Broward Hall parking garage. I remember thinking that I should be happy, that I was free on this Independence Day. In reality, I was free to be alone that night. I was free to worry about my future. I was free to have life’s unknowns weigh down on me like the weight of the universe. It was such a beautiful night, looking out across the campus from high above, the sun spectacularly lighting the evening sky. All around was such beauty, yet such turmoil resided within me.
I look back, now eight years later, and I don’t have that freedom anymore. Then I was moving away from a family. Now I’m on the brink of starting my own.
Sometimes freedom is over-rated.
– – –
I’d sprinted up the deserted Broward parking garage at the end of a cathartic, self-loathing circuit of campus on my bike.
What can I say? I was a lonely, moody kid. If there is a sense of doom and gloom now, on the day of Beth’s baptism into teen-dom, it was born of neural pathways and chemical bonds formed long ago in my head, in the memories of my own experiences growing up. My daughter’s life has already been filled with its share of social challenges, and now she’s running headlong into the odd phenomenon we refer to as adolescence.
But enough of the gloom. I’m going to do something unusual to you. I’m going wax optimistic. There’s a part of me that feels Beth is uniquely prepared for the awkward years of adolescence. Because of autism, she’s been dealing with being the awkward one in the room all her life. Though I could be naive. The combined effects of autism and adolescence could make life that much tougher. However, Beth’s made great strides this last year since she started at a new school, one that finally knows what to do with her combination of gifts and shortcomings. She’s much happier. Her anxiety doesn’t drive her to tears after school anymore. Instead of a glum, “ok,” she actually wants to talk about the specifics of a school day.
Well, sometimes.
I prefer to think that having survived the shock of an autism spectrum diagnosis and catching a break being accepted into the study at USF for OCD therapy, after spending most of her childhood stumbling around in the dark treating phantom disorders, not knowing the real problem, living some of the horrors of unnecessary medication, adolescence will be a refreshing dose of normal.
Beth’s childhood is gone. There are parts of me that morn its passing. Its innocence. Its playfulness. Although we had plenty of good moments at home over the years, as you can see by many of the last month’s worth of posts, there were many more heartaches. But there’s obviously nothing I can do about it now, and as much as I’ll miss those aspects of her childhood, I won’t miss the near constant worry that I was making a mistakes. Mistakes where there was no remedy. All those years of therapy, doctors and medication. All those years of frustration. All those years believing it was my fault. Now I know it wasn’t. Now I feel like we have a clean slate.
Part of me worries a little about the coming years. I’m a worrier by nature so there’s no way around it. Things are not perfect. No kid is. No parent is. Perfect is WAY over there and I’m WAY over here. We still fight over various things. There’s even yelling involved. She still has high functioning autism/Aspergers. I try to be patient when she has a social misstep, hoping if it doesn’t come naturally, she’ll remember the next time that folks will usually take it personally when she asks about some part of their body which is out of proportion in size with the rest of it. We still occasionally work together to beat back OCD. However, more than at any other time in her life, I feel like we know what’s going on. I ‘get’ my daughter, or as much as a father can anyway.
Stripped down to its core, here’s the take away from this post:
As Beth turns thirteen I feel like I have my daughter back.
More than any birthday, anniversary, or holiday – that’s worth celebrating.
Counting down the days until Beth’s thirteenth birthday with a few reposts from the archives.
Originally posted: Jul 16, 2007, Beth’s age: 10
Listen to Beth’s family sing off key…
Counting down the days until Beth’s thirteenth birthday with a few reposts from the archives.
Originally posted: Jan 23, 2007, Beth’s age: 9
“Dad, what happens when the sun isn’t bright?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it brong?”