Living Well Is the Best Revenge (GBE2 #115 Topic: Faith)

I go out of my way to try NOT to write about autism.  

For starters, there are so many other bloggers that do a much better job of capturing life with autism than I feel I could.

And then...my life with autism...isn't really all that difficult.  I see what other parents go through...what other children have to endure...the lives of some of the individuals that I have cared for during the course of my career...and I figure that I'm pretty damn lucky!

On their worst days, my kids just seem to be a little weird. 

Nathan can come across as kind of a jerk...uncaring...cold...a kid who has no use for the world around him or the people in it.  It's just his way...personal connections are difficult for him and sometimes, I think he'd prefer it if we all communicated in the virtual world--his comfort zone being almost strictly behind a keyboard.  But there can just as many moments when he does engage with us and his smile and sarcastic sense of humor--that took forever for him to develop (he had no idea we were joking for years!!)--light up the entire room.  

Bear is Nathan's opposite.  He loves to interact...too much sometimes.  He loves to ramble on and on (and on...) about his favorite topics:  the video games, Minecraft and Skyrim, and watching videos on Youtube.  Even at the age of almost eleven...and at the size of a small adult...his favorite place to be is wedged between Jeff and I on the couch with me scratching some part of his body.  He walks around the house with "t-rex arms" and spins around and/or flaps his hands (what he has named "advanced jazz hands") whenever he hears the theme song to the television show "The Big Bang Theory". 

Nathan has one really good friend.  Bear maintains that his family are the only friends he needs.

While Nathan tends to keep things inside and doesn't like to talk about what's bothering him, Bear freaks out about almost anything and is prone to meltdowns over seemingly minor things.  As Bear has matured, the meltdowns have become smaller and easier to come back from...but they still happen...frequently.

These differences, I think, are why Bear was easily diagnosed at the age of five but Nathan wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until he was fifteen.  Bear can be loud, obnoxious, and rude.  Nathan is generally quiet and well-mannered.  Adults like Nathan because, even when he was younger, he acted like a tiny adult.  Bear's emotional and social age is at least 3 years younger than he actually is.  A ten year old, who is five feet tall and weighs 150 pounds, having a "temper tantrum" like a five year old isn't an easy pill to swallow for people who just don't get it.

All of Bear's life, people have shunned him.  Sometimes he notices....sometimes he doesn't.  And sometimes, people pull me aside to tell me what a rotten child he is and how it's all our fault!

Sometimes...they say these things when he is in earshot! 

We didn't discipline him enough.

We coddle him.

He isn't really on the autism spectrum--we're just bad parents.

He doesn't need special ed--just a good smack every once in a while.

He should know better not to give us a hard time by this age.

You dropped the ball with this kid...shame on you!!

Sometimes, these statements come from people who are supposed to be loving and supportive.

Often, the very idea that people feel that way--when they are supposed to love us unconditionally--causes more pain and anger than I can handle.

But I have faith.

Not necessarily in them...but in my kid.  That he will continue to be the happy, charming, amazing kid he's always been...and that he will grow into an even more amazing adult.

Proof...

that we never dropped the ball....

This Used to Be My Playground--GBE2 #22 (Topic: Safe Haven)

There is a house in the middle of Albany, New York.

It is in one of the not-so-great neighborhoods.  The ghetto.  The 'hood.  Whatever you want to call it--the street looks like the very definition of a poor, urban neighborhood.

All the houses on the block look the same--just different color schemes.  They all have a stoop with roughly six or so steps, wrought iron railings and a matching awning overhead.  I would just about bet that I could go into any one of these homes and be able to find my way around to each room...each house being a cookie cutter copy of the next.

This house is shades of brown.  Beige vinyl siding with dark brown trim.  The awning is beige and dark brown stripes.  Double doors with huge full panes of thick glass lead to a small foyer where the mailboxes are and two more doors--both with huge panes of glass that are taller than I am--lead to the upstairs and downstairs apartments.

There is a postage stamp of a yard in the back that used to have grape vines until the neighbor accidentally chopped them all down--his purely innocent attempt at 'weeding'.  Tulips would be planted every year in precise patterns, only to have the squirrels dig them up and replant them.  It was a surprise every spring to see which colors were going to sprout in what parts of the yard.

My grandma bought this house right around the time that my biological mother was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.  She wanted my father and I to always have a place to return to--no matter what life brought our way. 

Sometimes we lived there...often we didn't.  My father and my step (we don't used that word and it's only for clarification purposes) mom made their own way in the world and we lived in several different places over the years.

But grandma's house was my house and there was no place like home.

I spent my summers in that house.  I spent my holidays there as well. 

I lived there off and on when my parents didn't get along as well as they should.

My grandmother was my whole world.  As far as I'm concerned, she was my mother, father, and best friend all rolled up into one neat and tidy package.  When I was fourteen, I decided to move there permanently.  Nobody stopped me.

I had my first date on the stoop--splitting a pizza with my first boyfriend.

I had my first kiss on that stoop.

I kissed a few other boys there too.

I fought with my best friend.  Fought with a few boyfriends.  Tried to beat up my sister a few times too.

I discovered my grandma's body after she'd passed on.

I went to prom.  Graduated from high school. 

Inherited the house.  Had my first wedding reception there.

I moved away.  Then moved right back.  Then moved away again.

For a long time, this house was exactly what my grandmother set out for it to be.  It was always a place I could return to...no matter where life had taken me. 

It was home.  It was my home.

Sometimes, I drive through the old neighborhood.  It was bad when I lived there and it's only gotten worse.  I get nostalgic...this is where I lived...where most of my major life milestones occurred.  I wonder who lives there now and hope that the memories that they are making are happy ones.

I wouldn't want to live there now.  My current home isn't perfect, but there is way more grass and trees.  It's a much safer environment for my children than what I experienced.

But I realize that my love of my childhood home has nothing to do with the house, the windows, doors, and rooms.

It was my grandmother and the love that she brought into that house.  The love she gave me everyday.

And that....I can carry with me no matter where I live.