Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The Weighting Room

We spend our lives in waiting rooms. Autism as brought us occupational therapy waiting rooms, speech therapy waiting rooms, music therapy waiting rooms, neurology waiting rooms, endocrinology waiting rooms, developmental pediatric waiting rooms, behavioral health waiting rooms . . . oh, and then there's the regular waiting rooms most kids visit, like pediatric waiting rooms and dental waiting rooms.

I think this must've been what Prufrock felt like when he lamented that he'd measured out his life in coffee spoons, but in my case I've measured out my life in stacks of waiting room Legos that probably have germs from a thousand kids.

I hate waiting rooms. It's not just because I've inherited my dad's impatience for waiting, though. I hate the kids. Not mine; other people's.

It sounds terrible to hate the kids, I know. But, see, waiting room entertainment is a laborious science for me because I'm always trying to think ahead of autism. Noah and Beh both have their waiting room tote bags, packed with Plan A, Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and Plan E to keep them contented. In the event Beh is no longer entertained by his goody bag, I switch over to working to get him interested in the assorted waiting room toys lying around. I know that if he isn't engaged in something that he'll start to stim, and his favorite stim right now is turning light switches on and off, which isn't really socially-acceptable behavior in waiting rooms. I'm working hard in the waiting room . . . and often other parents aren't. They get lost in their magazines and cell phones, and inevitably their children, who are bored and lonely, start talking to me, wanting to play with me. And I'm working; I don't want to be interrupted.

On Tuesday we went to the dentist. Noah was happily entranced by the movie playing in the lobby, so I focused all my song and dance on Beh. I entertained him with the waiting room toys. First we labeled all the plastic foods (he named them all, well, except for the tomato that he called an apple, but I'll give him that one). Then we played with nesting blocks, then nesting eggs, then ABC blocks.

Next to us was a little boy playing at the ubiquitous waiting room feature--the magnet table where kids can move objects through sand by moving a magnet on a string underneath the table. He was about four, toe-headed, and mohawked. There wasn't a parent in sight. Of course he started talking to me. He had cavities, he told me. His dad got angry at him about his cavities, apparently. Then he started trying to nose into everything that Beh and I were doing. Which, when you've got a child with severe autism who doesn't understand the concept of "share," doesn't work well. Mohawk boy kept talking and talking and talking, and I silently prayed that the hygienist would call him in next.

Then a little girl came along to join in at the magnet table. She'd just finished her appointment and her mother had left her in the lobby as she took a bathroom break. She couldn't have been three, a tiny little girl, toe-headed too, and pig-tailed. As she sat at the table, she started talking, in the most adorable little girl voice: "Sugar makes me fat and ugly and no one will love me no more."

Mohawk boy said nothing, and neither did I, too astounded to speak. Here was this tiny little girl, far too young to even be left alone in a waiting room, rehearsing the most horrific of scripts. Teen-aged girls are bombarded by it, that pressure to be perfect and beautiful because they fallaciously believe it to be equated with love . . . but here was this toddler, far too young to read teen magazines or watch Gossip Girl, reciting a horrible ideology that will likely damage both her spirit and body. She should be playing in sandboxes, not worrying about her weight.

How many times had she heard her mother say it if it was so ingrained in her that she spoke it to strangers in a waiting room?

Her mother exited the bathroom, and I noticed her twice-a-week tanning-bed-visit bronzed skin and her hair, dyed blonde to match her daughter's. I found myself wanting to put my foot out to trip her as she walked by . . .

I hate waiting rooms. Hate them.

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Photograph

















I needed a picture of the chumba cat. Beh's kindergarten class is studying animals right now, and the teacher asked for us to send in pictures of our family pets.

I figured Noah's photo album was the best place to look for pictures of the cat, so I went into his room, pulled his album off his bookshelf, and opened it.

A scattering of pictures that he'd never put into the album were stuck in the front. The picture on top was of Beh.

The second I saw it I started to cry.

The picture dated back to the B.A. (Before Autism) era. There Beh was, about eleven months old in an adorable blue and red striped baseball outfit, standing in the kitchen. He looked right into the camera, smile beaming.

He was looking at the camera, smiling.

He doesn't do that anymore.

Now I chase him around for half an hour, snapping picture after picture, hoping to get one where he happens to be looking up. Such a picture is rare.

I'd forgotten that there was a life before autism, a Beh before autism, until that picture reminded me.

For a year a had Beh. All of him. Unclouded by autism. For a year I did.

I'm so thankful for that year, but I wish then that I'd known it was going to be the only one we'd have before autism came in with its ice storms. I would have spent less time striving for perfection in my graduate courses; actually, I would have dropped out of school completely. I would have spent more time sitting on the floor with Beh, playing with stuffed animals. I would have spent more time playing peek-a-boo. I would have spent more time staring into Beh's eyes if I'd know we'd spend the next five years trying to re-teach him to make eye contact. I would have told Beh a million times a day when he could hear me, I mean really hear me, that I love him.

I miss him. I accept him for everything that he is without waiver, but I miss the boy who didn't have to struggle every day to climb over the wall of autism.