Honoring Mikaela Lynch: Autism and Drowning

Posted on by February 25, 2020

For those visiting for the first time from the Honoring #MikaelaLynch link up, my kids are Caroline and Sam. Both have Asperger’s syndrome, and they attend a school for children with Asperger’s, HFA, ADHD, and similar diagnoses. The experience described below took place during their class’s field trip last Wednesday. The picture is not from the trip.

“Before we go on our sensory hike, pair up with a classmate. Buddies, now!”  Half the children dashed to stand by a friend. The other half stood waiting for an instruction that made sense.

Sam later told me, “Ms. Pair was not on the field trip, Mom. How were we supposed to pair up without her?”

Eventually, the kids were organized into partners. “Now, what I want to do here is send a teacher or parent to the bottom of the trail.” Our guide designated Mrs. Gunnels. “And once she’s down there, I want the pairs to follow her. Leave a little distance between each set so you can’t hear each other talking. Look around you. I’ve put some manmade objects on the trail, and we’ll find out how many you saw after we all get to her. Now, who wants to go first?”

Naturally, Sam volunteered.

“You do realize these kids are autistic, right?” Well, not all of them. Some have ADHD. Some have ADHD and autism. Some have other, similar, but not identical diagnoses.

The guide swiveled to look at me, “Yes?”

“This sounds like a pretty stupid idea. You can’t seriously mean to send them down that hill without supervision.”

“Mrs. Gunnells will be at the bottom,” another parent volunteered.

“We have wanderers!” Heat suffused my face as I thought about the ongoing search for Mikaela Lynch. I didn’t know they had already found her body. I still held out faint hope that she would come home alive, shaken but whole.

Did the guide, did these other parents, think that our children were immune to wandering because they are high functioning? Because they are all verbal and able to call for help?

One of the last times we lost Sam before he finally stopped escaping from us, we were biking near a lake. We had no cell service and didn’t want to leave the area when he vanished. The path forked and we each needed to explore one direction.

We spent long minutes screaming his name without getting a response. I was climbing a hill to retrieve Caroline, reach phone service, and dial 911 when Scott found him on a walking trail right beside the lake, pedaling his way back to where he thought he had left us, completely oblivious to his danger.  He could not yet swim at that time.

And now, he was planning to go first down the unsupervised trail, holding hands with an equally capricious friend. He could swim, but not in track shoes. And Lake Jordan was far too close if he got distracted and followed his eyes instead of the instructions. By no means does every child who meanders away from caregivers die. Many return. However,  when autistic children who have wandered away from their parents do die, 91% of them drown. Sam would not be going down that trail alone, and neither would his friends and classmates.

Although it felt like a lifetime, it was probably only a few seconds before the other teacher, Miss Hathcock, spoke up. “We have plenty of adults.” Too true. There were seventeen children and a total of twelve teachers and parents. “One of us can go with each group.”

“Yes, excellent.”

Sam, still determined to go first,  latched onto Mrs. Gunnells’ hand. Scott had Caroline and her friend. So I chose two children at random and shepherded them down the incline, redirecting them each time they appeared ready to go off course. At the bottom, I counted. The teachers did, too. All here. All safe.

But my heart thudded against my ribcage for too long, and I couldn’t pay attention to the guide’s spiel.

____________________________

My heart aches for the families of Mikaela Lynch and now Owen Black and Drew Howell, all of whom wandered away from their families within the last week and drowned.

Loma’ai audiocast

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I’m flying really high right now. If you know me on Facebook or Twitter, you know why. But for those of you who have NOT been bombarded by my bragging yet, a short story of mine was published, not just published, but audiocast. When the amazing producers at Cast of Wonders accepted my piece, I had no idea how extraordinary they truly were. The reader, Tina Connolly, has brought Loma’ai to life in a way I never even dreamed possible. My GOD, Tina’s novel Ironskin has been nominated for a Nebula. A Nebula! And she’s reading my story for Cast of Wonders. I’m speechless. (Only, I’m not. I almost always have words. But I’m tripping all over my tongue.)

Please, take half an hour and listen to my story, as read by someone with an extraordinary voice.

And Cast of Wonders could use some Facebook fans and Twitter followers. You could do far worse than to like their pages!!

 

 

The Girl Who Hated (almost) Everything

Posted on by February 25, 2020

She doesn’t look like a total crosspatch, does she? Don’t be fooled.

I raised my hand. “I hate writing.”

Mrs. McMullen came to my desk. “Do it anyway.”

“I’ve been to the zoo once. In Kindergarten.” I scowled at my worksheet.

“Write about that trip, then.”

“I got lost.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, Jessie.”

I wrote, “At the zoo, we saw the monkeys. They were very very very very very funny.” I made the ‘very’s’ huge so I wouldn’t have to cover the whole page.

Mrs. McMullen returned it. “Do over.” She kept me in from recess.

I wrote, “I hate the zoo. I got lost. It was NOT fun, and I missed lunch. Mom was worried. I guess I saw some animals. The end.” Mrs. McMullen gave me a 100.

Two weeks after that, she started the third grade reading project. “I hate reading.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that. Several times.”

“None of the other third grade classes have to read three novels.”

“And all of them have to use the reading book. The one you called boring.”

“ I loathe horses.”

My advanced vocabulary did not intimidate my teacher. She had assigned King of the Wind, Misty of Chincoteague, and Black Beauty to be read over the course of three months, in any order. When I refused to pick, She handed me Misty and kept me in from recess for a week.

I ate that book whole. From the wreck of the Spanish galleon, through the Phantom’s capture and Misty’s birth, I devoured Marguerite Henry’s words. But before I could move on to King of the Wind, I had to compose a book report. I wrote, “I hate the horses that live in our pasture. They get out all the time, and they aren’t ours. When I was four, I used to love them. I tried to ride one bareback with my friend Amanda. But it was in heat. The stallion kept trying to mount her, and she nearly bucked us off. Mom was furious. The end.”

Mrs. McMullen kept me in from recess. “I know you read the book.”

“Yes.”

“Did you like it even a little?”

“I loved it.”

“Why won’t you write about it?”

“Marguerite Henry already wrote that story.”

“Ah.” She looked at my paper.

“I don’t want to write her stories.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be your problem, Jessie.  Will you at least tell me the plot?”

I rolled my eyes and recited the book’s basic facts.

Mrs. McMullen nodded. She wrote 100 on my paper. “Go play,” she said.

“I’m going to study math.” She shrugged. I got out my textbook  and a fresh sheet of paper. But I didn’t do multiplication. I wrote, “I hate math. It’s my least favorite subject.” I didn’t try to cover my work when Mrs. McMullen came to  check.

She said, “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to write about something you like.”

“Not today. We’ve got another times test this afternoon don’t we? And I can’t stand those things.”

Yesterday was National Teacher Appreciation Day, and this post honors one of the most amazing teachers I ever had. I have no idea why she liked me so much, because the thing I really hated that year was school.

Random

Posted on by July 12, 2023

Some random facts for a Monday.

1)      Sandra Tyler from A Writer Weaves A Tale puts together an ezine called Woven Tale Press. She did me the honor of including my prose poem Hope Is in the second issue. I’m touched and honored by her recognition. The other pieces in the ‘zine are all excellent, and each one has a link back to the blogger’s homepage. This is not the same as reblogging , which I abhor.  Sandra has edited these pieces (with the permission of and collaboration from their authors) and enhanced them with illustrations. She’s formatted pages and created an amazing publication. Each piece is short. You can read in odd moments throughout the day, and it’s a wonderful way to spend some time.

2)      Last year, I think over a year ago now, I won a drawing over at Field Trips With Sue. The prize? A night at The Chattanoogan and fancy dinner for two. Scott and I tried our damndest to schedule without our kids, but for a variety of reasons, it was impossible to do so.  (Meltdown here, meltdown there, scheduling conflicts everywhere.) And the certificate was set to expire June first 2013. So, in spite of the next two months getting ready to be from HELL, we picked up and WENT last weekend, kids and all. The hotel was amazing, the food was divine, and Chattanooga remains one of our favorite family vacation spots. I wish we could afford to stay there every time we went!

3)      Speaking of “from hell”, let me talk about my schedule. At my work, we don’t take holidays, ever, and even though I teach college, there aren’t semesters,  trimesters, or quarters of any sort. Rather, full time faculty get a month off every year. My month is March. Because I don’t take a summer month and most faculty DO, I tend to pick up an extra course or two in May, June, and July. This year, the schedule is compounded by a sudden death in the faculty. (She went to the doctor with a headache. She was dead from cancer two weeks later. Fuck. Somebody else picked up the classes she was in the middle of, but the schedule is still in ‘juggle’ mode.) So I won’t be blogging as much in the immediate future. I’ll be grading my ass off.

4)        This means that I won’t be writing enough for Sprocket. And when I post over here, it’s odds on that I’ll be writing for one of my three favorite memes: Trifecta, Write on Edge, and Yeah Write. (And sometimes the 100 word song with Lance, the 100 Word Challenge with Velvet Verbosity, and the I don’t like Mondays blog hop hosted by Mod Mom Beyond Indiedom.)

So, that’s me. How’s life with you? What shit’s going t down in your neck of the woods?

Hellhound

Posted on by February 25, 2020

This week finds us back in the car with Kelly and her daughters Luna and Amber. (Amber doesn’t have a role tonight. But she’s still there.) Although this should stand alone, you can follow the previous link to get the first part oft the story. Right after the last part ended, they were attacked. We return to the vehicle in the aftermath to address this week’s word from Trifecta: ecstasy.

_____________________________________________________

HELLHOUND

Beast’s blood splattered Luna’s face. “Pegged him!” she cheered as Kelly braked the car.

“Good girl.” Kelly took a crystal ball from her daughter and smeared the dog’s blood on her own face and shirt, then sent her mind questing. First, she found Beast, still alive in the middle of the road in spite of the ball Luna had planted in his head. He would be up and after them again if Kelly didn’t take action. Second, she followed the dog’s blood to its master.

Kip was closing the distance quickly, but he hadn’t yet passed them.

Kelly left her seat and walked back to Beast, holding out the ball Luna had given her, using it to illuminate her path. She said. “You used to be half mine.” Beast rolled onto his belly and whined. He laid his ears back against his head. “I know. It’s been a long time. You’re his dog now. But I need a favor. Do you understand what he sent you to do to us?” Beast growled. Even a hellhound was only a dog, and this one had orders.

Kelly had reached him now. She held the ball tightly, then scooped up the other one where it had landed beside the monster. She gave herself over to the peculiar ecstasy of a commanding trance. She rubbed the second ball along the oozing gauze on her own leg, mixing her blood with Beast’s, and with the dirt and asphalt of the road. Turn the spell on its master. “I need you to find him, Beast. Before he finds us. Rip out his throat if you can get to it.”

Beast staggered to his feet, his skull already healing where Luna had cracked it. He stretched his front legs out long, not a bow nor an admission of Kelly’s authority, but an acknowledgment. She held his blood. She could compel him.

Kelly shook off the trance and returned to the car. She hoped for nothing as she began to drive.

 

Charge

Posted on by February 25, 2020

And this, the lost century, we charge against our souls, holding aloft the future like some cosmic credit line. Reckless, we spend to abandon. We do not expect the bill to come due in our lifetimes.

________________________________

Those crazy cards over at Trifecta gave us three words, asked us to add 33 more, and challenged us to post the results. Mine don’t feel very original (and yes, I’m one of those writers; I refuse to accept that all of the stories have been told;  I refuse to merely hope for a unique way to retell an old thing; I hate it when I feel repetitive or wheel-reinventive), but it was a lot of fun to dig up a ton of things we should have shredded ages ago and put them in the picture. The only things that are actual, current, cards are my Sam’s club membership, the Starbucks Gold card, and the driver’s license.

Bandha UP

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“The mirrors are a distraction. Focus on what you feel.” MJ lay back on her mat.

I did not. “I feel a lot of things. I can’t tell which is right until I see how I look.”

My Yoga teacher tucked her ass up and hoisted her back towards the ceiling. “Try for that.”

“How will I know I look like what you look like if I can’t see what I look like?”

She sat up and pushed me into a reclining pose. “Concentrate on your Mula Bandha. Tilt your pelvis to make that flat back. Then lock it into your Uddiyana Bandha. Feel how hard your stomach is?”

“So I’m doing it right now?”

“Well, no.” She reached under and pushed my sagging butt a little higher. “You need to work that connection down through your spine. You’re strengthening a weak part of your body. You should feel the tension in the backs of your legs. Really squeeze.”

“If I squeeze much more, my Inna gada davida bandha is going to merge with Oh my god I hurta banda and mash me into a pulp. This is killing my neck.”

“Keep your chin tucked to your chest. Don’t put the tension into your shoulders. There you go!”

“I’m shaking so hard it’s throwing me off balance.” I looked in the forbidden mirror and corrected my posture. The quivering increased.

“Use those inner quakes. Let them rattle you. Pull into your tree.”

“My tree? Trees are green. My face is the color of a plum right now.”

“You’re almost there. We’ll work on it some more next week.” She released the class with instructions to tilt our pelvises at random intervals. She caught my eye as I walked past. “Inna gada davida bandha?”

I walked out the door into the  bright  Southern morning. “Don’t you know that I love you?”

I couldn’t tell, but I thought I heard her laughing as I stepped down to the parking lot.

________________________

The last time I wrote about Yoga, I was merrily faceplanting my Crow. (Update on that: Largely unchanged.) This was about two years ago. I wound up not doing Yoga for a rather long stretch, as I’d had enough of the YMCA’s noise and the resistance to the word “Namaste” or even, in some cases, a replacement of “Namaste” with “Amen”. Fuck. I started back recently with a beginner class at a private studio, and my form sucks. (Not that it ever achieved great things before.) My arms forget to stick to my sides, my ass sways out and back, and I can’t lock my body for shit. It makes for great blog fodder. Lucky me that Trifecta wanted to know all about my color this week.

Guest Post: The Color of Hope

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Oh – and he’s an awesomesauce nature photographer

My husband has got, bar none, the coolest friends. He’s not a party animal, and he only connects with a few people. But when he does, it’s a lifetime bond. And they keep cropping up. Seriously. We’ve been married eleven years now, and just last year we found a college buddy of his on Facebook.

Randal Horobik works for a newspaper in Wyoming, and he coaches the high school NFL team. (That’s National Forensics League to the underinformed, and NO Forensics doesn’t have to mean Kay Scarpetta’s on line one.) Not surprising, since he and Scott did speech and debate together in their Wooster Years. He also has kids, and this poignant response to one of his children is so utterly touching that I asked if I could reprint it here. He said yes.

 

What Color is Hope? (v. 1.1)

Randal Horobik
All rights reserved, reprinted with permission
—————–

Questions.
When you have kids, you get asked a lot of questions.
And as a parent, it is your job to know the answers, even when you have no idea. Because just like sophomore English class, ignorance in the pursuit of understanding is not an option.
And my baby is trying to understand, so I get questions.
Questions like, daddy, what color is hope?

What color is hope?

I think hope is sapphire blue. That cool tone you witness when the first rays of sunlight are just beginning to climb out of bed on the eastern horizon and gradually tickle the sky awake in the morning. Sapphire blue. Like the tranquil waters of a mountain lake on a summer day when you don’t have to stick your feet in to feel refreshed because simply seeing the water’s surface reflecting the world around you is enough to recharge your soul. Hope is sapphire blue.

Except when hope is orange. Orange with the heated hungry anger of a fire’s flames devouring the house on the corner. People gather as walls, pictures, furniture, clothing, memories all ascend skyward. Folks from up and down the block stare ensconced in its glow as they mumble among themselves, ‘I hope everyone made it out all right.’

Hope is red. Red with the blood that stained the ground in so many wars fought for so many reasons in so many lands that history long ago lost its mind and broke down in tears trying to keep up with their number. Fathers, sons, friends, brothers — one day I hope we prove worthy of their sacrifice.

Hope is yellow and hanging on the front door of a 22-year old military wife who goes to bed every night praying to God there won’t be a knock the next day unless it’s her husband falling into her arms and saying ‘honey, I made it back to you.’

Hope is green and legal tender. I hope I win the lottery. I hope we can afford it. I hope we have enough. I hope I can eat tomorrow. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with, and unless you’ve been without it, don’t you dare tell me what it can or can’t buy.

Hope is black. No, not skin black, because in a nation where one out of every three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime, that’s anything but hope. But hope is pitch black. The sort of absolute darkness that envelops your bedroom as you lob your own questions at the ceiling. How did that happen? What am I going to do? What happened to my life? Is this all there is? Are you there God? Are you there God? Are you there? God, is anyone there?

I swear, hope is transparent. Because I’ll set it down and then something will come up and life will get hectic and I’ll turn around and, whoops — lost it! Like my cell phone and my car keys, I’ve spent so much time searching for hope because sometimes I can’t even remember the last time I had it. I’ve called family and friends. I’ll wander like a neighbor needing a cup of sugar asking if someone can give me hope. Just a little, don’t need much. Sometimes I don’t even have to leave the house. People knock on my door and hand me little books and pamphlets offering hope. I’ve even been told that some people believe hope hides at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. But if it does then hope looks like a worm and tastes like turpentine, and that would just be wrong, so I think it’s safe to say that hope isn’t found there.

The craziest thing is, when you find hope again, you feel like such an idiot. How could you miss it? It was right there all along.

Hope is tan like the carpet in my children’s room, where we used to sit and play before their mother took them five states away. I hope one day soon they will return and ashes, ashes we can all fall down there once again.

Hope is pink with the color of ribbons trying to raise awareness of the 235,000 people, including more than 2,000 men, who will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the next year. So screw your macho fashion sense and wear the damn ribbon, because those folks are going to need all the hope they can get. Could we please find a cure for this fucking disease?

Hope is every color of the rainbow, and all that rainbow wants is to be able to walk down the street hand in hand with the person it loves without fear of violence, without fear of prejudice, without fear of Fred Phelps and his freaks showing up to scream and wave a sign. Hope is a gentle rainbow, because if anyone did that to me I’d shove the sign so far up Fred’s ass he’d feel like a mailbox.

Hope is white. It’s a great white hope. The white of a canvas before the paint gets applied. The white of a page before the words begin to flow. That vacant white that says you can do whatever you want here, because the only boundaries are the limitations of your own imagination.

That’s what color hope is, sweetie.

2002 A San Francisco Odyssey

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“Jessie, where the fuck are we?”

“I’ve been lost since the Presidio.” Broken glass littered the sidewalk, and Scott had just stepped on a spent shotgun shell, its ruffled blast end an unmistakable sign of what had happened to the mason jars around our feet.

Kelly at the Presidio

Scott’s friend Kelly, who had joined us willingly enough after lunch, said “The Presidio. That was awhile ago.”

“How long have we been walking?”

Scott checked his watch. “Four, five hours, give or take.”

“I’m starved.”

Kelly said, “That’s pretty low on the old priority list right now.”

He had a point. What had started as a ramble along the waterfront to reach the Golden Gate bridge had delivered us to a neighborhood of thinly spread houses. A few blocks ago, this had meant large yards and fancy fences. Now, it meant broken windows and detritus in the road.

“I should have climbed up on those rocks to get to the bridge.”

Scott studied the hotel map, tracing our route with a finger. His finger fell off the page.  I had assumed he was mentally tracking our progress all along. Turned out, he and Kelly were too busy talking Native American relics and the plight of German Americans in World War I. And since we had walked off the map, he was as confused as I was.

Although it was a sunny day, we had been in shade for some time as the sky changed from blue, to orange, to twilight gray.

Kelly said, “At least there’s no fog.”

Yes, these are pictures from the exact day we were lost, earlier in the day. You can’t see the San Francisco on my jacket. But I still own and use it.

Yesterday, I had walked alone through Chinatown while my new husband and his friends genuflected at the altar of research. Today, my Fisherman’s Wharf jacket with “San Francisco” emblazoned above the breast branded us tourists more completely than even our hotel map and bewildered huddle. It had been sixty five degrees when we left the hotel and the annual historians’ convention.  It felt much colder now.

“Hey, there goes a bus!”  Kelly sprinted after it, Scott and I in his wake.

Even Kelly’s lanky legs and athletic build weren’t fast enough to catch it.  We waited ten minutes before trying another stop. Four hikes and three fast trots later, we finally caught a ride. The driver jotted notes so we could remember what transfers and streetcars would get us back to Union Square. A homeless guy sitting in back added two stops in the middle for routes he assured us the driver had forgotten. Kelly tipped them both handsomely.

When we finally pulled up to the hotel, from exactly the opposite direction as the one I had expected, the city was dark. A history subgroup was hosting a wine and cheese reception, so we changed out our tourist togs for slightly nicer attire. Soon, we were holding appetizers like the afternoon had never happened.

Kelly asked me, “What are you going to do with yourself while we’re in sessions tomorrow?”

“Don’t know. But I still haven’t walked on that bridge. I’ll probably start there.”

 


My friend Alex over at No Defective Ducks wrote a post about how technology helps her manage the transit anxiety caused by Seattle’s public transportation system. Hers is a story of the ways the world is moving forward. It demonstrates that the nation my children will someday inhabit may be a little better geared to treat autism as one of many degrees of normal.  But her description of public buses, routes, and timings reminded me of something from my own life. I’ve already told you I have no sense of direction. But back when we were newlyweds, in the dark ages before Smartphones, Scott didn’t really understand how ‘lost’ I could manage. (This was even after the fiasco at Niagara Falls, which I shall recount at some other time.)

Use your words

Posted on by February 25, 2020

This is how the advice sounds when I’m exasperated. It’s not fair at all, because one of the things about Asperger’s for my kids is that it makes the path from idea to vocal cord very cumbersome indeed, and one of those concepts that I have to explain regularly is, “The words in your heart don’t reach my ears if you don’t use your mouth.” But it’s been a “Use your words” kind of weekend around here, and so I give you the advice I all but shouted to my children earlier today. (Parenting fail.)

Thanks for letting me vent, Trifecta. Hey, by the way, there’s a new kid in town over there. OK, she’s really not new. She’s been posting some fabulous writing for quite awhile now. But Draug has joined the editorial team with Lisa and Joules, and I find that to be kickass awesometastic.