Hello and welcome to #2!
In this issue: My writing process, an apology, a little story about the source of my worry in January, and part one of All About Oscar. And autism.
I promised myself that this would be in your inbox at 7AM Central Time.
I made all these little deadlines in the middle of the month of January…
I wrote and rewrote every day. I used my new favorite writing website, 750 Words to write ugly duckling first drafts. I used my Evernote app to keep everything in one place and to add tags. I used Microsoft Word for Mac to write my second more organizable drafts…
…But Stuff came up and I replaced the deadlines with worry about the Stuff that came up.
Giving myself time is as hard as going somewhere I have no inkling how to read or speak the language!
Sometimes I can only concentrate during a 12 minute period of time. That’s like the minimum when I’m antsy and worried.
After my 12 minute timer goes off, I get up and stretch for as long as I need and then set the timer again. And again until I believe I’ve done enough.
Sometimes working calms me down and I go beyond the 12 minutes, look up and find that what I was working on is done.
I apologize in advance, if this one doesn’t flow as well.
Happy February! Vaccinations work!!
In some ways, February is my favorite month. I love how the light changes in February and in the quiet after a blizzard, you can tell that spring is coming. The trees are still bare, but if you look closely, some of them are budding. Spring is coming!
It’s also when 32 years ago, my son, Oscar was born.
Oscar has been a lot of the Stuff that has me worried. He’s on the autism spectrum. He caught COVID, a few weeks ago and we dealt with that. He lives on his own, and we made sure he was on the phone with his supervisor and we let his friends know. He was tired, had a very runny nose, sore throat and fever, but felt better in less than a week. Vaccinations work.
Oscar: Part one
This is Oscar, in Colorado, summer of 2022. He was on a difficult hike that neither I nor Scotty could do. But he was with his Aunt Cathy and cousin Anna and family friend, Eden and managed beautifully.
His journey, to get to this point in life is like a difficult hike. Rocky, steep, breath-stealing at times, but the reward for doing it is beyond the best thing in the world.
When Oscar was four he got a diagnosis. This was about 1995-96.
People were just starting to learn more about autism.
Autism: What is it?
The Autism Research institute has a huge diagnostic checklist that we filled out several times, at any medical or social service practice we consulted.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is different for every individual. But there are some typical behaviors associated with it :
Lack of eye contact
Sound sensitivity
Closely focused interests
Repetitive gestures and sounds
Delays in some motor skills
Delays in speech
And there are more things that I could list. But these were the most prominent ones that Oscar demonstrated at the time, as we went through the assessment process.
Some thought we should do anything possible to cure him, or that he might grow out of it. We did what we could, joined advocacy and educational groups. We read books. Some of those books written by anguished and desperate parents, scared the shit out of me: one family sending their 4 year old to Japan. Their 4 year old!
One family using the Applied Behavior Analysis techniques that were very exacting and time-consuming—I did not know if I was capable of such intensity, if I had the inner resources to ask for the daily help I’d need in order for this to work.
And one in which a marriage was wrecked. And their autistic teenager, a higher functioning young man, suffered from debilitating depression.
There were descriptions of the disorder that sometimes matched our experience of Oscar’s behaviors. There was a sense of validation, but none of these books promised help or even relief, without heroic or self-and-family-sacrificing actions.
It didn’t matter.
Because, best of all, Oscar himself taught us what to do. And none of it had to do with “curing” him. And that part of the story is coming in the next newsletter.