love
What Little Girls Are Made Of
As Paige was packing up for college last summer, we had a dilemma. She’d been borrowing my jewelry box for years because she had way more bangles and beads and baubles than I did.
I stopped wearing earrings when the kids were babies and pulled on them. My skin has autism. It doesn’t like bracelets or necklaces or rings. She felt a little guilty about taking my box, especially since that left me without anything for the few things I do have.
On her dresser was a box she’d made at art camp in elementary school. It was empty. I asked her about the ceramic piece affixed to the top. Did she remember making it?
No, she said, but she did remember what inspired her. “I had learned the atmosphere was made up of bits of sunlight, and water, and the grass around us. I wanted to make that. I wanted to make the atmosphere.”
That went right to my heart. “I’ll trade you boxes,” I said. She didn’t think it was a fair trade, but I convinced her.
My little girl comes home for the holidays tonight.
Sugar and spice.
Happy 24th, Sam!
The only time in his life I can buy a pack of candles and use every last one of them.
Here is the cake we nearly always bake for a Wolfe family birthday, ever since I bought Rosso and Lukins New Basics Cookbook and adapted it.
The Chocolate Birthday Cake
1 c. butter
1 1/4 c. white sugar
1 c. brown sugar
3 eggs
3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
2 1/4 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
9 T. buttermilk
1 c. boiling water
2 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and the sugar in the mixer for five minutes. Add eggs one at a time. Make sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next one. Meanwhile, melt chocolate in the microwave by breaking the blocks in pieces and microwaving on high one minute. If not fully melted, microwave for 30 seconds at a time until melted. Fold into butter and egg mixture.
Sift flour, soda and salt together. Add one third of flour mixture with 3 T. of buttermilk and mix on low. Repeat two times, mixing until all buttermilk and flour is incorporated.
With mixer on low, slowly pour in boiling water and then add vanilla. Pour into two prepared cake pans (I prefer Doughmakers) and bake at 375 til it pulls away from the sides and springs back in the middle, 25 to 32 minutes.
While the cake cools, melt 1 1/2 c. chocolate chips in a small saucepan with 8 T. of butter over very low heat, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, gently store in 2/3 c. half-n-half, 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 c. confectioner’s sugar. This mixture will be thin. Refrigerate, stirring every 10-15 minutes until its stiff enough to frost the cake.
Start by applying a thin layer of ganache on the bottom cake round. Sprinkle with additional chocolate chips, pressing them down into the ganache. Top with other round, frost top and sides.
Serve. Store any leftovers covered in the refrigerator.
Miss Connie
Like most kids with autism, Sam couldn’t tolerate having his hair cut when he was little. I ended up having to cut his hair in his sleep.
It worked fine when he was a toddler, although one night he kept waking up and fussing while I was trying to cut his hair, so I stopped. The next day, we went out somewhere to get some carryout and walked past a table with a couple of older men having a cup of coffee. One of the guys looked at Sam and said, “Son, you need to have a talk with your barber.”
Mark and I burst out laughing. And I told the man the job would be finished tonight, and no payment was due the barber fairy.
Eventually, our next door neighbor, who was a stylist, said she’d give it a go. We’d do it at home, putting him in the high chair and setting out a mirror. Judy would bring her supplies to the house.
It worked!
Judy was really patient. Sam was fond of telling her what to do, and Judy went along with it.
When we left California, we weren’t sure we’d find someone like Judy, but we were wrong. Connie Clark stepped right in. Her big heart and boundless sense of humor got Sam from kindergarten haircuts through middle school.
Haircuts at Connie’s became a family affair. Everyone took their turn in the chair — another thing Sam could be in charge of, who’s turn it was next to get a haircut.
We followed her over to Robson Ranch when she moved her shop from Argyle, and that old converted gas station, to a real salon. Even though most of her clients were older, we still came as a mob.
Connie got cancer and eventually she wasn’t strong enough to stand all day and cut people’s hair. Mark started taking the boys over to Unique Stylists in Denton. After Mark died, Sam kept up his appointments with Wayne. He never lets his locks get very long.
When a life is touched by autism, it touches thousands of other lives in ways you can’t imagine until you are there, watching. Connie was one of those people who helped Sam navigate to a fairly independent, normal adult life.
Just by cutting his hair.
We’ll miss you, Miss Connie.
The Peter Principle
Oh, the holidays are coming. Mostly, they stress me out, but I like the making of the presents and the baking of the things. Recipes I don’t dare make any other time of year because I’d blow up like Violet in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory if I did.
Things such as fruitcake — the kind people love because you douse it with rum once a week — has to be started this month.
When the kids were little, we would make a gingerbread house that they could take to Cornerstone Cooperative Preschool for the Christmas party and break it apart and eat it.
I took a class from Sacramento County parks and recreation that was just Christmas cookie recipes. Got lots of good ones there — little sesame thins, which are about as addictive as sables, and one of those early versions of death-by-chocolate cookies that were more brownie or candy than cookie.
We always make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.
Those little guys were really tender the years Mark was able to score two 50 pound bags of Peter Pan flour. The bags were damaged in a delivery he was making. The flour was fine.
Oh, I loved that flour. We became baking fiends. Scones, biscuits, artisan-style breads, homemade pizza. As the bags emptied, I begged Mark to ask them next time he was trucking for Morrison (he drove a regional run for JB Hunt) to ask them where to get it. They said those big bags only went to restaurants and bakers. They couldn’t sell him any.
I know I should be able to find the little bags of Peter Pan in the stores, but I never see them. I buy King Arthur, which is good, too, and Albertsons “O” Organic.
Sigh.
I’ll go on the hunt again, but it’s going to be another Christmas without Peter Pan.
Good thing Sam’s favorite cookie doesn’t need flour. This one came from the Sacramento class. It’s called Unbelievable Cookies
1 c. crunchy peanut butter
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 c. chocolate chips.
Mix peanut butter, sugar and egg in a bowl. Stir in chips. Shape in balls and bake at 325 for 10 minutes. Do not over bake.
Southern Impolite Meets a Yankee Can of Whoop-Ass
(Note to readers: This is not one of my best moments. I’m exploring events from our lives for the next book, in hopes that there are lessons and wisdom in these experiences. Or, at minimum, a good chuckle. Let’s see what happens with this one.)
At the end of Sam’s second-grade year, the kids and I went with Mark to Shreveport for a year-end concert with the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra.
It was a great opportunity for the kids to see their dad perform as the tubist in the orchestra. Most concert settings are so formal, even I had hard time behaving.
The Shreveport Symphony had always held their year-end concert in the convention center. They put out round tables and lots of kitschy decorations around the room. Some people decorated their tables, too, and of course the food and wine flowed as the symphony played a pops program.
The acoustics were horrible — there was a level of background noise in the room that I’m sure made it a real challenge for the guys on the mixing board. But a great time was always had by all.
The kids and I sat in the back with some other symphony friends at our table and at tables around us. Given how young the kids were — Sam was 8, Michael was 5 and Paige not quite 3 — I was thrilled how well they behaved. Especially Sam. He didn’t get up and run around the tables. He wiggled and fidgeted some in his seat. Sometimes he would slip down and stand up next to his chair, but at his size, he wasn’t tall enough to block the view for any one around us.
This was a huge accomplishment for him. We had worked hard during second grade to help Sam learn to stay in his seat and pay attention. He had such trouble with it at the beginning of the year that his teacher had begun to send him out to the hallway with his aide when he couldn’t sit still. While I could see her point that he was a distraction for the other kids in the class, the aide noticed that sending him out in the hallway was reinforcing the problem. She got worried. I called Kevin Callahan, a special education professor at the University of North Texas at the time. He came to observe and designed a little intervention that helped Sam teach himself to stay in his seat and pay attention. It was brilliant and it worked.
But Sam’s behavior wasn’t perfect, and even though his little brother and sister wiggled and fidgeted, too, Sam’s wiggles got the attention of one woman a table or two away. She would watch Sam. She would whisper to the people at her table. It was hard not for me to notice I was being judged, too.
I did my best to ignore the Chinese water torture of her judgment. We were making some good memories and I didn’t want to give her the power to spoil it.
After the concert ended, people began packing up their tables. Sam, Michael and Paige rushed to the stage to hug their dad and meet the other musicians. I stayed behind to pack up our things. I looked up to see the woman was approaching me.
She began to tell me what she thought was wrong with Sam.
I listened patiently for her to get to her stopping point. I told her that actually I was quite proud of my son because he has autism and his dad was performing and this was about the best he had sat still and paid attention this whole year.
Then she smiled this treacly smile and said, “Well, I am a teacher of the emotionally disturbed and in my experience …”
I lost it.
I leaned forward and yelled, “Get out of my face.”
She looked stunned. But she didn’t move.
“Get out of my face!” I yelled again.
She took a step back.
“I said, get out of my face!”
Rule of three, she finally went back to her friends.
I was ashamed of myself for losing my cool. And a little grateful that the room was full of ambient noise, enough that only the woman and her friends knew what had happened between us. Maybe another table, but that was about it. The kids and Mark never heard it.
I walked very deliberately towards the stage. I could feel the woman and her friends watching me. I told Mark what had happened and turned and pointed to the woman. He studied her. She and her friends finished packing up and left.
“Do I need to go over there and do something?” he asked.
“Nah,” I said. “I don’t think she’ll bother another autism parent again in her life.”
Love Letter to Steve Jobs
In 1990, Mark and I didn’t know anything about autism. But our little boy couldn’t talk and we feared the worst.
Sam was drawn to a simple, hypercard game, “Cosmic Osmo,” that came already loaded on our first MacIntosh computer.
As he played, we saw that even though Sam couldn’t speak, he could think.
We never got to thank you while you were here, Steve Jobs. Today, I’m sure Mark got that covered.
Lights in London
I promise not to subject you to a bunch of home movies — especially as aged as these images have obviously gotten — but I couldn’t help myself with this one.
When the Dallas Symphony went on its first European tour in 1997, Mark was hired as second tuba. I went along for the first half of the trip as an orchestra groupie. We had a blast.
We left the kids — Sam was 9, Michael was 6, and Paige was 4 — in the capable care of my parents. But we took the camcorder to capture things we thought would interest them on our return.
The videos sat in a box for years after our VHS player died. I borrowed one from my parents this summer and, with the help of a Pinnacle Dazzle, have begun digitizing the handful of family videos we have.
We made this little ditty in London when we realized how much fun Sam would have had, if he had been there to play with the light switches.
This was the first time I’ve heard Mark’s voice since the week he died. I’m not sure who was grinning bigger tonight when we captured this first “movie,” Sam — re-living a favorite childhood memory — or me, remembering the sound of the love of my life.
True Grit
“Thought for the day: there’s a lot to live for, and everything happens for a reason. Pain is normal, tears are how we heal, and being happy all the time is unreasonable. We hurt, but that hurt makes our happiness that much more meaningful. The key is to keep moving on, embrace life, and always be thankful for what we have (which is often much more than we give ourselves credit for).” — Michael Wolfe, Facebook
Tenacity
“Straighten up, Willie. It’s time to row.” — Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days.
Temptations
“How tempting to live in limbo and wait for my real life to return. But this was my real life now. Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways.”
— Diane Ackerman, “One Hundred Names for Love”