Summer Solstice With My Son

 

Jack's Tom Riddle

My almost-fourteen, voice-cracking, Cheezburger.com-contributing, Lego-Star-Wars-YouTube-obsessed son had braces put on last week. “Now I’m a complete dork, Mom,” he said as we drove to the Arby’s drive-thru for a soft, soft roast beef sandwich.

“Oh, Jack. You’re one of the coolest people I’ve ever known,” I said, and I meant it.

“Oh, right,” he shot back with amusement in his voice. “My voice is changing, I have glasses, braces, and acne, and I’m obsessed with Star Wars!”

And you’re hilarious. He’s always making me laugh, smile, and think. On summer evenings I invite him to take walks with me, especially on those days when I’ve been especially consumed with work, or gave more attention to his sister that day than to him. It’s on those leisurely, agenda-free strolls that I have the pleasure of hearing what is on his mind. And as a kid labeled with the diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome, his mind is a colorful kaleidoscope of ideas, thoughts and inspiration.

On our walk the other night, I ran my hand across a mound of this particularly soft-leafed perennial, called Silver Mound, nestled at the base of a neighbor’s mailbox. I suggested that he touch it, since as a kid with Aspergers (or maybe just being Jack), he has a tendency to want to run his fingers across surfaces and objects to see how they feel. I remarked that I love to feel it because, for a plant, it is unusually soft. It feels like microfiber, almost. He reached down and pet the sagey-green foliage.

“Wow,” he said, delighted by the discovery. “If I were to name that plant, I’d name it Mollie.” (He specified the “ie.”)

“Really? Why Mollie?”

“I’d name it Mollie,” he said, “because the root ‘mol’ means soft. You know, like mollify and emollient.”

Uh. No, I did not know that.

This evening, we celebrated the summer solstice with a late twilight stroll in the Midwestern steam heat. As we walked, Jack perseverated with lines from a pretty hilarious YouTube video he’d seen, or a monologue from a Best of SNL/Steve Martin dvd he’d only watched a couple of times, or the Señor Wences schtick with memorable lines like “S’alright” and “No’ so close.” Anything to make me laugh.

I typically laugh the first time, which is the pay off, so he repeats the lines to get the same reaction. I’ve made it my new goal to extinguish the repetition by withholding positive reinforcement. It makes me feel callous and unloving, but I’m not doing him any favors in the long-term by rewarding repetition of content that, while amusing, will be off-putting to potential friends and classmates in his future. I try to explain that even if it’s hilarious the first or second time, it really isn’t by 25-50. (I do find still find his impersonations of Señor Wences funny after the 100th time. I keep this thought to myself.)

We walk, and he holds my hand, because he still adores me. After awhile he says, “Mom, I really wish I could meet some other Aspies.”

This announcement at once breaks my heart and raises hopes.

When his Aspergers became apparent during the 5th grade, as his classmates moved into next stage of social development without him, any friendships he did have vanished along with invitations to birthday parties and play dates at neighbor kids’ houses, until he had no peer contact outside school or local theater productions in which he was cast. He’s great with adults, and small children absolutely love him, but his then-eleven year-old counterparts weren’t as into deoxyribonucleic acid, cellular constructs, or dinosaur taxonomy as he was at that age.

After two years of trying to arrange social outings and force him into contrived friendships against his will, we finally accepted that maybe we needed him to have friends more than he did. He was completely happy to spend evenings and weekends in his room, reading and absorbing all available facts about his interest du jour, spending hours upon hours drawing in his sketchpads or constructing with Legos. [The boy possesses a more vast and in-depth knowledge, we are convinced, of all things Star Wars than does George Lucas.]

It grieves me as a mother to see him so solitary. If it weren’t for his sister, he would have nobody. “I don’t need friends. I have you guys!” he says of my husband, daughter and me. “You’re my best friends!”

So it was equal parts surprise, sadness, and joy I felt in response to his expression of desire to meet other kids with Aspergers.

“Well, Jack,” I said. “I think that can be arranged.” I thought of the times in school when he resisted–HATED–being put in a social skills group of “kids with issues” at lunch. He’s so normal in most ways–he has the most delightful temperament, sense of humor, and creative viewpoint. (And he’s handsome.) As an adult in a conversation with him, you’d just think, “Geez, this kid is brilliant.”

In fact, for four years, that was his school counselor’s take on him. Every year, when some red flag would pop up, I would approach her and say, “Are you sure he doesn’t need testing for Aspergers?”

“Nah,” she’d say. “He’s just gifted.” She was a friend of mine, and her kids were in the same classes with my kids, from first grade on. So she really knew him. He fooled her; he fooled us. “He’s the one truly gifted kid in this school,” she once said. And what parent doesn’t like to hear that kind of assessment? So I went with it, not pursuing testing outside of school until the fall of his 5th grade year.

And now that he’s asking to meet kids with his diagnosis, I wonder how he would do with other “Aspies,” given the intensity of his aversion to being grouped with “those kids” at school. And I also want him to know he is so much more than a collection of features that make him a person with Aspergers, that Aspergers is just a way to classify a person so that services may be offered in school. It is not his identity.

“Well, Jack. I think I can get you together with some other boys with Aspergers,” I said, thinking on my feet, remembering a couple moms of boys with Aspergers I’d met.

“Yeah. I think I’d like that,” he said. “Especially Aspy girls.”

HA!

“OH really?!” I said. I was pleased and amused by a very normal desire from this boy who has been made to feel abnormal by other kids and the label of “Aspergers” in school. “I wonder what that would look like, a girl with Aspergers.” I couldn’t imagine it.

“Hmm,” he said. “Maybe girls with Aspergers and boys with Aspergers could marry and create a superior subspecies of human!” he joked.

Maybe.

Jack’s Snape

NOT Jack’s Harry; It’s Tom Riddle. (Thanks, Moira.)

Early work by Jack from Monart 2004-2005

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