The Scene:Interior suburban family home. A mother and her two teenage sons are seated around a wooden coffee table in the living room, playing the board game Risk. Her older son, who loves military history and geography, is rapidly gaining control of the Western Hemisphere. The mother marvels at the fact that he now has the patience to handle long, strategic board games. Her younger son, influenced by his Eastern European ethnicity and a recent interest in dictatorships, sets up Moscow as his home base and systematically conquers Asia. The mother hangs out in Africa and Australia as the two brothers conspicuously gang up on her. Secretly, she loves the fact that they are working together and considers it a bonus that the tediously long game appears to be winding down (or at least her role in it), although she has enjoyed the family time and hopes that her sons have as well. She smiles contentedly as she surrenders another territory.
Younger son: This may not be the appropriate time to mention this, but I can feel my first armpit hairs growing.
Older son (keeping his eyes on the board): Mine are longer than yours.
The Scene: Sunny but cool day on the Oregon coast. Waves crash on the shore, birds call as they fly overhead, and a few people walk by with their dogs. A small waterfall rushes out of a fern-covered hill at the back of the beach. The water gurgles over a rocky area and forms a little creek that meanders out to the sea. Two teenage boys, their uncle, and a friend of one of the boys are building a dam out of logs, dried grass, and sand. Nearby, a woman watches as she reclines against a large driftwood log and enjoys the sun. She is glad that the boys are outside instead of sitting around in the cabin they had rented for the weekend, watching more DVDs than most people could watch in a fortnight. The dam is working; a pond forms as the water collects, and the eldest teen boy stands in it while pouring sand out of a bucket.
Teen boy (calm, even voice): This water is damn cold.
The woman, his mother, thinks it is probably a line from one of the movies he had watched the previous night - The Abyss - which involves a lot of cold water. Her son repeats the line a few times, and the mother realizes that he is most likely expecting a response from her.
Teen boy (fourth time, in same tone): This water is damn cold.
Mother: Yes, I’m sure it’s pretty cold.
Teen boy (same tone as before): This water is damn cold [gestures to the dam wall, then smirks]. Get it? ‘Dam cold’?
The Scene:A mother is driving home from work. After eleven miles, she is back in her town, and remembers that she had driven her older son to school that morning instead of having him ride his bike because it had been raining heavily. She turns around, goes back to the high school, and pulls up to the curb in front just as her son, who is already outside, starts looking around for her. He gets in and the mother starts driving home. Then she remembers that she needs to go to the post office to check the mail, since they do not have mail delivery to their home, and she turns around and drives back towards the post office. She parks and gets out of the car while her son waits in the passenger seat. She goes in the building, opens and looks in the box, and there is nothing there. Realizing that now she is late getting home to let her other son, the bus-rider, in the house and that he is probably waiting in the rain, she jogs back to the car and gets in.
Mother: Well, that was a waste of time.
Son: No mail today?
Mother (backing out of the parking space): Nope.
Son: You should have made it a second thought.
Mother (pulling out of the parking lot): A what?
Son: You should’ve made getting the mail a second thought.
Mother (pauses as she turns onto the main street, somewhat flustered): I don’t know what you mean by “second thought.”
Son: You know how you people are always saying things like, “On second thought, maybe I won’t . . . go to the post office.”
The Scene:Interior of suburban family home. A mother, exhausted from just another regular day, collapses on the couch in her living room. She has just completed her responsibilities for the evening, taken a shower, and dried her hair. Alone, looking forward to some time to herself, she takes a deep breath and picks up a book that she hadn’t been able to get back to for several days. A minute later, one of her teenage sons opens the door of his room and walks down the hallway. He stands at the entrance of the living room, waiting for his mother’s attention. She turns her head to look at him, thinking that he’s going to announce some historical or scientific fact that he has just discovered. Or that he’s going to remind her once again about theGoonies 25th Anniversary Eventthat he wants to attend the following month, in a city four hundred miles away. Or that he’s going to announce that he has to go to the bathroom. His tone is serious as he begins talking.
Teen son: My path is not out here [gestures to indicate the area in front of him], but in here [lays his fist over his chest and pauses before continuing.] Even if I find answers at that school in L.A., I will still have questions.
The Scene:Interior of suburban family home. A mother is cleaning out the closet in her office. Storage boxes - some opened, some closed - surround her where she is seated cross-legged on the floor. She holds several papers in her hand and emits a chuckle as she reads things that her autistic son has said over the years. He started putting two words together at age five and gradually, with time and therapy, increased. She marvels at his progression from “Green is in the finger,” said at age 6 when he noticed green paint under his fingernails, to “If it gets too cold or too warm, then I would call out for you,” said at age 10 while his bathwater was running. But his lifelong interest in geography and history produced some of his most memorable quotations. The mother laughs as she discovers her scribbled notes from when her son wondered, at age 8, “Does Canada speak Leafish?” as well as the following discussion that took place three years ago, at age 12:
Son: Would it be offensive if I was Adolf Hitler for Halloween?
Mother: Probably to some people.
Son: What about Japanese Naval General Isoroku Yamamoto?
The Scene:Interior of a small SUV. A mother is driving her teenage son, who has autism, around to several different stores looking for the DVD of the original 1973 version of Charlotte’s Web. He is 15 and it is one of his favorite movies. The mother silently wonders if there are any other teenage boys who love Charlotte’s Web as much as he does. She marvels at his innocent nature. They are stopped at an intersection and the son begins reading aloud the bumper stickers on the car in front of them.
Autistic teen: It says, “Politicians and diapers get changed for the same reason.”
Mother (pauses, wondering if she’ll have to explain the meaning by using a phrase that includes the words “full of”):Do you understand what that means?
Some of you might remember this photo from a year ago, when Nigel first said hello to his new cousin as he somersaulted in utero.
And here they are a year later! Nolan is just about ready to take off walking, and he and Nigel had fun laughing together in the back seat of the car this weekend, making silly noises. “He’s kind of humorous now,” Nigel said. “But he’s still a little drooly.”
The Scene:Interior of a suburban family home. The autistic teen has been spending most of a Saturday afternoon in his bedroom, at his computer, playing a CD-Rom game in which the player constructs and runs a Jurassic Park-themed attraction. He has owned this game for about eight years and goes through phases in which he plays it for days on end, and then moves on to some other Obsession of the Week. But he never lets more than a few weeks go by without playing this game again. It is his favorite “video” game. He studies the screen now, makes some changes to the sauropods’ feeding schedule, and gets up out of his chair. He walks down the hall and enters a room on the right - his mother’s office. She sits at her desk staring at her computer screen; spreadsheets surround her. He stands at the open door, and she looks over at him with an expression of confused amusement as he makes his announcement.
Autistic teen: My deepest desire is to build a Jurassic Park and have a girlfriend.
The Scene:Interior hallway of suburban family home. The autistic teen is in the bathroom directly off the hallway. The sound of a shower running can be heard from behind the closed door of the bathroom. The autistic teen enters the shower and begins speaking loudly. He is scripting. He begins one of his favorite and most-quoted scenes from The Princess Bride - “Battle of Wits.”His mother, across the hallway in her office, smiles as she listens to him. Last week in the shower, he scripted Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom in an original Pink Panther scene. The week before that, he sang a song from Toy Story. The mother recognizes, since she has heard it so often, that the current scene is nearing its end as her son’s voice rises. She laughs as she hears him deliver the final intonation.
Autistic teen: Never go in against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!
One love, one heart - let’s get together and feel all right. - Bob Marley
As many of you know, this family loves Bob. All three of us. In fact, it’s the only music that we all enjoy equally. It’s our go-to music for calming meltdowns, running errands, alleviating anxiety, and taking road trips. But now there’s something else that it’s good for, something only Nigel, with his keen observation, could have noticed.
The three of us were out running errands yesterday, singing along to Bob in the car. Between songs, Nigel commented, “This music is the perfect Christmas music - because it talks about peace and love.”
I couldn’t agree more. Beats the hell out of “Jingle Bells.”
From our house to yours, wishing all of you a beautiful holiday filled with the blessings of peace and abundant love.
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