Dear Abby Normal...

I know, it's been a while since we've talked. Were you worried that I'd fallen off the edge of the blogoverse? Truth is, I had a great post almost ready for you back in the middle of November. Almost complete. And so funny you'd still be laughing if you'd read it. But it's gone, kaput, poof, disappeared.

I don't know what happened...last thing I remember, I was plunking merrily away here at the computer, did that barely conscious scan of the area to make sure there were no disturbances in the force (it's a thing I have to do at regular intervals even when I'm in the middle of writing a particularly scintillating paragraph), and noticed Calvin sitting placidly on the couch trying to open a bottle of A1 Steak Sauce. He's got an uncanny way of doing things like that in between my barely conscious scans of the area, which is why these scans are so vital to our survival here in my world, and which is also why I so often have to pluck him out of both upstairs bathroom sinks while I'm trying to help Grace get ready for school in the morning. He needs to have all the toothbrushes and climbs up there to get them, but I digress.

Back to the lost blog...so naturally I had to jump up from my writing to stop the boy from either chugging A1 Sauce straight from the bottle or using it to marinate the furniture. And when I got back to business...you know what's coming and I'm still sick over it. I thought I'd clicked "save" during the nanosecond before the adrenaline and visions of steak-sauced sofa cushions shot me out of my seat. But I hadn't. It'll be back again someday, just like Frosty the Snowman, or at least I hope so since I, for one, found myself utterly entertained by the topic being covered that day. But losing the whole thing has made me too bitter to go back and redo the whole thing and all that's left is to go forward for now and revisit "Take My Identity, Please..." when the nausea of losing it subsides. Stay tuned, though. Some of my hair-raising blather never gets old.

And so, we move on. It's a new day.

I almost hate to admit this to you all, but at this point we're too close to keep secrets. I've always silently wished I was normal. Stop laughing. In high school I had visions of making cheerleading because that would have felt so...normal. P.S. Instead of actually becoming a cheerleader, I thought about it too much, was entirely certain I wasn't normal enough to make the squad, so on try-out day I maintained that my knees hurt too much from practicing...and they did, but I should have gone for it. I bet I would make it if I tried out today. One of the endless gifts of having a forty-pound child with autism (and I say this with no sarcasm or cynicism, I know it's not always easy to tell with me): It's done wonders for my strength, flexibility, and stamina. Plus, between the aerobics and the constant underlying hum of anxiety I live with perpetually, I think I could even fit into my wedding dress again. Glass half-full, folks, take it from me.

Normal. I KNOW, so white bread, so vanilla...luckily, the normal thing never quite panned out for me. Better than two decades past cheerleading tryouts, I can say that my normal ship has sailed, and for the most part I'm grateful. Some of my best moments have been totally abnormal (and a few only borderline legal, but we won't go there). Aren't everybody's?

But I think maybe I speak for all us happy Abby Normals out there, who happen also to be parents, when I say that when it comes to our kids, we fall right back into that craving for white bread again. It must be projection. You watch these little people who, through a series of inexplicable miracles, you've ended up in charge of, you carry that achy memory of wanting to be just like everyone else, to fit in, and there you have it. Which brings me to this holiday season, 2009, watching my sweet little three-year-old navigate his first semester of preschool, the only autism-spectrum child in a classroom of "normals" or "neurotypicals" or whatever's the best way to say it (knowing full well as I say it that no child, no person, is really normal or typical, and to say so without qualifying it the way I am would be an insult to everybody).

But oh, how to explain it.

It doesn't really hit home until they start doing their little onstage pageants. All of them up there singing about those 10 little pumpkins or about how they're so thankful or about dashing through the snow (that last one is coming up for us tomorrow). Ok, so not all of them up there are singing. One little guy isn't singing or doing the hand gestures, and looks not entirely sure why the hell he has to stand up there and endure these shenanigans. Oh he's up there alright, always the trooper, with his beloved special teacher in charge of supporting him through moments like these at his side. I often I wonder if deep in there he knows he's humoring us.

Yeah, people, I'll stand up here, but here's the deal. I will NOT wear the stupid paper hat you made me participate in fashioning and I will NOT sing. I will sing in the car on the way home like always, will wear nothing on my head voluntarily other than my train engineer cap, and that's that, got me?

I sobbed, a heartbroken mess, all the way home from the Thanksgiving show, and I have to stop and wonder why. Whose needs aren't being met here? Whose experience is limited? Calvin stepped down off the stage, seemingly glad to be done with it but no worse for the wear, had some snacks, and it was on to the next thing...which for him was a little catnap during the car ride home, which left him refreshed for another two-hour session with another of his teacher angels. I could search his face forever for some sign of distress over being the strange little boy on the stage who can't or won't do what the other kids do, and I'd still be searching.

I start to realized how brainwashed I am, as if there's some standard of how all three-year-olds should be, and I have one that doesn't meet the standard so I get to play the role of the grief-stricken mother who doesn't get to watch her child jump through the same hoops all the other children do. And in the middle of feeling so sad about it all, I'll suddenly have a wriggling, snuggling boy in my lap, giggling into my face, eyes sparkling with his joy and belly laughter, and I'll come to myself and snap out of it. For a while. Because this kind of process happens a million times a day, on any day, not just on preschool pageant days.

Then a few days later, turkey barely digested, time to decorate for Christmas. Five-year-old Grace kept up a running commentary over every second of the process...oohed and aaahed over every ornament, every knicknack, wanted her hands all over everything. Calvin, well, he's not so much with the chit-chat. Although he did put on my silly headband with the huge reindeer antlers, which must have put him in mind of rabbit ears, because he adorably started to do a little jumpy thing and tell us "hop! hop!"

Then there was Cal's other main contribution to our decorating endeavors, which was to keep the tree from becoming too busy with ornaments. He took them down as fast as we put them up. But finally he settled down with one pilfered ornament that happened to be Elmo playing a Christmas drum. Pretty soon I noticed him sitting with it in his lap, playing it rhythmically, saying softly in accompanyment, "drum, drum, drum, drum" as he tapped.

I sat down next to him on the couch to hear his song, he melted into me like he always does, I breathed him in like I always do, my little one, who doesn't need language to express the deepest part of him or to be understood. None of us do, really. It's all just habit. The beat of your drum tells the story you think you're telling with your words.

Then He smiled at me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

Happy holidays with ALL MY LOVE,
Tracy