Driving on the rims

By Peggy | June 11, 2013 |

When your kids are in college, you can learn vicariously through them, and I’m picking up all kinds of new things this summer from my daughter, Paige, who is majoring in English.

Sometimes it comes in longer talks (I had to work hard to remember why I didn’t like The Great Gatsby — sorry, Doni — and defend my opinion), but mostly we share observations, like one last night, seeing the unlikely outcome of a story and reminding each other that it was made possible through the omniscience of fiction.

Not something you get in real life, which probably explains my attraction to nonfiction. Paige took a nonfiction class and got some insight into that messy framework, (did it help that she was also taking a psychology class to meet a core requirement?) but in the end, I think she’ll be a fiction writer. That’s not fictional omniscience speaking, it’s just that her Shelfari is full of fiction and mine, not so much.

So, I shared with her a story about her dad and me that I thought would make a great scene for fiction. Maybe it could still be woven into some key moment of emotional truth in a piece of nonfiction, but the story sits in my memory as a random bit, like an old key in the junk drawer you are afraid to toss because, even though you haven’t figured out for the past 20 years what it goes to, you know as soon as you throw it away, you will.

When I packed up my things in Colorado and first moved to California, Mark came to help me drive across the desert. It was the end of summer. We had not yet figured out what we would learn a few years later, when the kids were little, that driving overnight, in shifts, is a far better way to get across the desert in the summer. But, we did drive as long into the night as we could before we stopped at a roadside park in Nevada to lay the seats back and get a few hours sleep. About 4 a.m., we were startled awake by such a noise I had never heard before, or since. The racket stopped by the time we were awake enough for our eyes to focus on a woman and two men as they slammed car doors and started stumbling around the car, yelling at each other. It could have been my stupor, but I believe it was more likely theirs, because what they were saying was completely, totally, utterly incoherent. The yelling went on for a few minutes, then, they got back in the car, slammed the doors and started up again. That’s when we saw the source of the racket. They were driving across the caliche on all four rims.

I didn’t think a car could do that. Mark was incredulous, too. But there they went, down a desert road on rims, a piece of fiction in real life.

 

 

Posted in Writing

Two things

By Peggy | June 9, 2013 |

Two amazing things happened with Sam this week. I’m sure that, to Sam, they are not amazing, they are just living and being. But for me, who knows how far he’s come, and for other parents and caregivers out there who know what minor miracles look like for a person with autism here ya go …

First, I helped Sam navigate another application for work at the Target Distribution Center in Denton. He filled it out himself, but he hit a wall when they asked for his GPA, and he realized that, as a graduate, he couldn’t access that information as readily as before. I helped him brainstorm other places he could find that information and he found it on a copy of a degree audit he’d kept. Sometimes the questions in the online application weren’t clear and I translated for him. When he was done, he told me that since I’d helped him, he needed to return the favor. He put custom ringtones on my phone, which now sounds like birds and frogs, and confuse the cat, which is fun on so many levels.

Reciprocity.

Then, Sam was out with friends having dinner at Chili’s Wednesday when he saw a game on the Ziosk on the table that he recognized as one built by the clients at nonPareil Institute, where he interned. He took a photo of the game while he was there at the table, posted it on Facebook and tagged one of the institute’s directors.

Higher-order thinking (and in a social context).

Two big, gold stars this week.

 

Posted in adults with autism, hope, social life

Treatment and prevention, or blue-washing?

By Peggy | May 27, 2013 |

I don’t think we, as a nation of educated people, as a country of incredible resources, as a culture, as the ostensible leader of the  so-called free world, are very good at fixing problems.  Many problems we had when I was a young woman are still around. Some have gotten worse.

We think we’ve made progress because we talk about our problems. Families get support in the community to raise their kids with autism, instead of quietly sending them away to an institution. Women get breast exams and mammograms instead of being embarrassed to discuss concerns with their doctor. People recycle their bottles and cans instead of sending them to the landfill.

We’re being green. We’re wearing pink. We’re lighting it up blue.We’re aware.

Good things all, but they don’t have anything to do with preventing some serious and growing problems.

The occasional greenwashing we get from some environmental groups keeps us from solving problems. The Sierra Club promoted natural gas until they were against it. Can you imagine where we would be now if they, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund had been more worried about an ounce of prevention from renewables than that compromise for a pound of coal-powered cure?

Then there’s the Komen problem. Many have been trying to cast a brighter light on that group’s pinkwashing for a long time. All these promotional tie-ins and three-days and commercials and messages have actually confused some people into thinking that finding breast cancer early is the same as preventing it.

Uh, no. It’s time to pay for prevention. My mother had breast cancer. Let’s see what we can do to prevent my daughter from getting it.

What of this burgeoning world of autism research and advocacy? When Sam was diagnosed, we were told that he was one in 10,000 or more. Autism was rare. I didn’t know anyone else whose child had autism. Now we’re at 1 in 88. It takes more than two hands to count all the kids with autism that grew up here in the past 15-20 years in Argyle, a town of 3,000.

Aren’t you afraid? You should be afraid. I am. You should be very afraid. Your-stomach-up-in-your-chest afraid.

People who want to help are trying. (And if you know what the day-in-the-life for families of kids with autism is like, finding time for that is its own kind of miracle.) They are raising money and advocating for more research.

When I visited the Autism Speaks website to look at the latest in research, I got kicked to pop-up page, insisting that I sign a petition about insurance before letting me land on the web page I sought.

I get that. Parents need help paying for treatment. But it was in-your-face. It was slick. It was just a little too Komen for me.

I hope it’s just because they have some really good people working for them. I hope they don’t get lost. I hope we aren’t in for a generation of blue-washing.

No amount of blue light bulbs you buy at Lowe’s is going to light this darkness.

We need prevention, and we need it now.

 

Posted in rants

Purple joy

By Peggy | May 3, 2013 |
I’m so excited for Michael. He graduates Saturday from Texas Christian University.
I saw him briefly today and warned him I was going to say something totally parental and over-the-top. “It just seems like yesterday I picked you up from the campus visit and you were eating that purple popcorn.”
We laughed.
With each graduation, I’m more excited than the one before, especially the kids’ college graduations. I was so “meh” with my own. In fact, for both music degrees I opted out of the walk and got paid to play in the ceremony.
I suppose if you play through Pomp and Circumstance continuously for a 15-minute procession it would make you “meh” about the ceremony, too.
I was excited for my masters in journalism degree, though, and made a point of going through the ceremony. Mark was out of town, but the kids wanted to come. That was 2002, so Sam would have been 14, Michael 11 and Paige, 8. We got to the UNT Coliseum a little early, and I figured out about where I would sit on the floor and then put the kids in the nearest row next to me. That way Sam could wiggle in the aisle all he needed to. They were maybe 30 feet away, and Sam wasn’t the only one who could barely stay in his seat. It was so funny to watch them.
We went to a late lunch at a nice place with tablecloths afterward and they all ordered hamburgers.
I made reservations for Classic Cafe after Michael’s ceremony.
I wonder if they’ll order hamburgers.
Posted in hope, love, social life