Overheard in the Wolfe House #217
Peggy (to Paige): So, you think you might want to make that key lime pie today?
Sam (in a stage whisper, from another room): Oh, please Paige, say yes.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #216
Peggy: Did you print out January already?
Sam: I printed January.
Another lullaby
Here she is. Jan DeGaetani singing Alec Wilder’s, The Seal Lullaby.
Ray Wright’s arrangement is amazing.
In the old days, they all helped my babies go to sleep.
Autism’s top ten research advances
I’m grateful that within the first year of Sam’s diagnosis a friend of my parents copied journal articles for me and showed me how to read them. Kitty told me it was important to keep up — there was a lot of research being done and we needed to transfer that knowledge in how we worked with Sam.
We learned all kinds of interesting techniques (social stories and video modeling were among the best). We also learned to watch for signs of “readiness.” Kitty showed us that speech has a pattern of development and that Sam’s speech could well be following the pattern, just at a more deliberate, rather than dizzying, pace. When Sam looked ready to learn something, we gave him a leg up and tried to stretch that bit of readiness into other skills.
Autism Speaks helps me continue to stay abreast of the latest in research. (You can subscribe to their science digest here.) There is still a lot of work to be done for the young, but Autism Speaks and others are looking at the problems of under- and unemployment for young adults, too. That topic made their top 10 list this year, and that is good news. We have a choice. If we provide people with autism the right support, they can work and contribute. Or we can do nothing and pay a much, much higher price.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #215
Peggy: So how did you get to work today?
Sam: Crawford Road to 35W. I’m glad there was that road at 407.
Peggy: You mean Sam Bass?
Sam: Yes. The on-ramp was too icy. I had to get out of the way of the tow truck.
Christmas Eve
No other holiday has a night before the way Christmas does. There’s this quiet that comes on Christmas Eve, if you let it. The more Christmases I celebrate, the more I like Christmas Eve.
Glass bulb, 2012
I try to make a lot of the presents we give instead of buy them. It forces me to plan ahead and, as a result, elevates the entire experience a little.
The kids and I have let some of our traditions evolve, too, so no one goes crazy trying to keep something going. When the kids were little, we made a gingerbread house and took it to preschool for the Christmas party. All the kids had fun picking it apart to take a piece home. When they got older, I made a one-dimensional piece for the mantel one year. Then I just made dough so the kids could make cookies. This year, Paige asked when she got home from the U of Iowa if there was any gingerbread dough in the freezer. There wasn’t, and we didn’t make any.
But on a whim, we stopped at the Russell Stover factory store in Terrell on the way to celebrate the season with Aunt Regina in East Texas. We bought a cardboard gingerbread house filled with peanut brittle.
New to the tree in 2012
We spent some time in downtown Kilgore, ate lunch at Nanny Goat’s Cafe, came back to Regina’s house and sang Christmas carols around the piano in the parlor. We played dominoes, too. We did cast a glance toward SantaLand on the way home (2.5 million lights strung along a driving trail in the East Texas woods), but saw the rush-hour-sized car line and took a pass. It had been a nice day. We didn’t need to spoil it.
Tonight, we are waiting for Sam to come home from work. He will help close the store. I had to work today, too. All that makes it hard to switch gears and make it to a candlelight service, but it doesn’t matter. We know how to do this. The serenity is settling in.
Happy Christmas everyone.
Great Hall, Wolfe House 2012
Overheard in the Wolfe House #214
After the Mayan apocalypse fail …
Sam: So I had a nightmare last night. Did you?
Peggy: No. I know you were worried about that. But see … ?
Sam: Yeah. The sun came up (pauses). The thing about nightmares is you know you are having a nightmare when you are having one.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #213
Peggy (outside St. Andrew’s): So, you ready to go in?
Sam: Yeah, let’s go and cry our eyes out.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #212
Sam: I thought I couldn’t remember how to do this.
Christmas magic man.
(pauses) I guess I still got it.
Random thoughts after the Isle du Bois 18K
Trail runners are very kind and will stop running their own race to make sure you have all your parts after you fall. Falling sometimes feels like flying. Do not look at the shoreline or the deer or the fisherman on the lake, look at the trail or you will fly a lot more than you want. Run with sand in your shoes long enough and it becomes pebbles. Training for physical endurance and mental toughness, and eating smart the day before, gets you through, but so does trimming your toenails the night before. Mile markers at Isle du Bois appear to be vanity-sized. Forty-nine degrees along Ray Roberts Lake is a lot colder than 49 degrees in the front yard. A handmade ornament hanging on a jar of honey is the best finisher’s medal ever.
