Wanderings and chasings
If you’ve ever chased a 2-year-old, you know the drill. Your toddler runs ahead of you, stops for a moment to look back and see how well you are catching up before she’s off to the races again. You are exasperated, but you have a longer stride. You’ll catch up eventually.
If your toddler has autism, you won’t get that look back. I devoted an entire chapter of See Sam Run to the chase and detailed the two other terrifying instances when Sam decided to go for walks on his own.
We were lucky there were only the two. When I hear stories in the news of a child wandering, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind — parents struggling with a child with autism. I always wonder if law enforcement and child protective services have it “top of mind,” too.
Some of our kids keep on wandering.
Sam started “wandering” again when he was 14. He would take his bike out for long rides. But, in this case, it really was quite a normal thing to do, a boy stretching his boundaries, learning how big the world really was, exploring.
One day, he noticed window damage to a home being built down the street and got off his bike to investigate. Unfortunately, he did that in front of a police officer, and when he was approached, he got scared. He hopped on his bike and raced home, the officer following him.
We were lucky that day that we happened to come home just a few minutes after Sam was chased home. He was pacing in the garage, talking to himself, as the officer was trying to talk to him.
It took some time to remove the cloud of suspicion that was over Sam’s head — because, of course, every parent says, “there’s just no way my child would do such a thing,” just before they learn that was exactly what their child did.
Sam didn’t do it. But he never rode bike anymore after that, which Mark and I considered a real tragedy. We coaxed and cajoled, to no avail.
Fourteen years of riding bike, whether in a trailer behind his parents, or around the patio with a trike, or down the sidewalk with training wheels.
Done.
He hasn’t pedaled since.
Sunday breakfast
I have fond, though foggy, memories of my mom making a German pancake, or Pfannkuchen, out of The Joy of Cooking, when I was a little girl. Because it used soufflé techniques (separating the eggs and beating the whites) she didn’t make it very often. When she did make it, I think we actually had it as breakfast for dinner.
Yet, as much as I liked it, the German pancake wasn’t part of our family’s cooking rotation for a long time. A souffle was a souffle, and pancakes were pancakes. Then, while living in California, I picked up a cookbook, Trader Joe’s Favorite Sunset Recipes, with a page devoted to Dutch baby pancakes. They used a blender instead of fussing with the eggs, and we were off to the races. About ten years ago, Gourmet came out with a cookbook that has a puffed apple pancake, and that recipe became one of Sam’s favorites.
Being a fan of whole grain cooking and baking, I held out hope when Eating Well finally tried to adapt it. I knew that would be tricky — getting a soufflé-like lift with heavy whole grains. Their adaptation was ok. But it’s a Sunday breakfast, so I usually stick to the white flour recipes, and cut down on the sugar. We made it again this weekend, although, like when I was a girl, it was breakfast for dinner
Apple Dutch Baby
2 apples, cored, peeled, and sliced
1 T. lemon juice
2 T. brown sugar (3 T. if using tart apples)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
2 T. butter, divided in half
3 eggs
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
Preheat oven to 425 F. Put a 9-inch cast iron skillet in oven to preheat with 1 T. of the butter. Toss the apple slices with lemon juice, sugar and spices. Meanwhile, in another skillet melt the remaining butter and saute the apples for 3-4 minutes, until they begin to soften. Put the eggs in the blender and whirl at high speed for 1 minute. Drizzle in the milk with the motor running, then the flour. Remove the skillet from the over, pour in the batter, ladle the apples and their juices over the top. Bake for 15-20 minutes. It will rise beautifully and become golden brown. Serve immediately with a squeeze of lemon juice and sprinkle of powdered sugar (my preference) or with maple syrup (Sam’s).
Overheard in the Wolfe House #203
Sam (echoing Mark, who often asked this question of the kids on the way home from church): So what did you learn today?
Peggy: Not much. The homily was too challenging. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t figure out what he was saying.
Sam: Me, neither.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #202
Peggy: Oh, no. The clerk put the onions on top of the bananas. I’ll bet they are bruised. I thought they told you about that at the store.
Sam: I’m very careful with produce, Mom. But sometimes they get frustrated with me because they want me to go faster.
Peggy: The customers? Or the managers?
Sam: It’s hard to pack fast and be careful with the produce. (pauses) Sometimes it’s very difficult to be a grocery sacker.
OMG
I wanted to pass on a particular invitation this weekend. It wasn’t the company. I’m smitten with the great people at nonPareil Institute, where Sam interned in spring 2011. They are having their second fundraiser this weekend, a Sunday night banquet and a golf tournament on Monday. No golf for this working girl, of course, but even the banquet price was a little rich for me.
I reminded Sam we were already heading to another fundraiser earlier in the day — a fajita fiesta for Denton County’s newest therapeutic riding center, Born2Be.
But he wouldn’t hear of it.
“Why didn’t you ask me to buy the tickets, Mom? It’s nonPareil. I should be the host.”
After he finished the order, it hit me.
I’m a trophy mom.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #201
Sam (after the overhead fan above the oven trips on): So how long will it take to clean the oven?
Peggy: About two-and-a-half hours.
Sam: If it trips the carbon monoxide alarm, we will have to go outside right away.
Peggy (laughing): Yeah, Sam, the oven is pretty dirty, but it’s not that dirty.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #200
Sam (muttering): The sun came out and it got hot again. The weathermen were SO WRONG.
Peggy: Yep. Suddenly summer.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #199
Peggy: (sneezes) This cake is so chocolatey it made me sneeze.
Sam: This cake is so chocolatey it tickled my tongue. (pauses) Gosh, I hope you aren’t allergic to it.
Random thoughts running a Colorado trail
Coloradoans are dead serious about their trails — they aren’t finished until they are paved with concrete and gravel shoulders from one town to the next, lined with split rail fence, dotted with trailheads along the way, and outfitted with all the supplies needed to pick up after your dog. (Though few do.) Texas flora = prickly jungle preferred by spiders, snakes, and biting bugs, i.e., not the Great American Desert depicted in your fourth grade textbook. Colorado flora = the desert depicted in your fourth grade textbook. Lungs breathe shallow and rapid, yet you are not breathless. Rabbits and coyotes run from you, but the prairie dogs stand up and squeak “high five” as you go by. Running with your 21-year-old son gets you some odd looks (trainer? body guard?). When you are all grown up, your dad can drive you to the edge of town and you can run back to the house without having any emotional duress.
What little girls are made of (reprise)
The adorable photo of the girl in the jumper comes from the Women and Girls Lead Facebook page and has been pinned around cyberspace. I saw it on the page of a comrade in single motherhood. It made me think back when Paige was in kindergarten and first grade and she went after school to the community dance program at Texas Woman’s University. For a while, she learned ballet, then she tried another dance class that mixed up the styles a little more.
You could see, even then, that she was a talented dancer, but she tired of it. I didn’t make a fuss.
If she thought of dance during the rest of elementary or middle school, I didn’t know it. For all I knew then, dance had only been an early childhood interest. But when the high school marching band added a color guard, she was all in, not just with the flags, but the dancing, too. Such a personality she had during performances!
Sam’s younger years were a gift to his siblings in some ways. We were trying so hard to get Sam to “average,” we didn’t fall into those traps that so many anxious parents fall into with their kids and their extra-curriculars. Michael and Paige tried out lots of different things: music, sports, leadership, theatre, and 4-H.
And that was a beautiful thing. Paige worked hard with her dancing in high school. Yet, because it was never a chore, never something she did to please anyone but herself, dance will be a lifelong love.
It’s a good thing to remember when you’re sinking $200 into gear or lessons. I never let myself think it was an investment in a future, four-year scholarship. It wasn’t something to distinguish my child from their peers. It was something to allow them to stretch and explore and learn and feel and discover who they really are.