Tales from the Shark Tank

I have one kid who lives here, and a couple more, friends of his, who are here daily. I also have cats. Tonight was one of those times when the similarities were quite striking.

I’ve gotten used to hearing “Hey mom! Is it warm enough to swim today?” on late spring and early summer days. The question itself is ordinary enough; it’s the timing and repetitiveness that are striking. See, the boychick (or boychicks) will start asking as soon as I peer out blearily from the space between upper and lower eyelashes. “I don’t think so, honey, but we’ll check the forecast a little later.” And by the time I have attained bipedal stance and made my way to the kitchen, it’s later, right? “Now, mom?” “J., what are my hands doing?” “Making breakfast.” “Am I anywhere near either the computer or the door?” “No….” “So I can’t have checked.” Oh, ok. Breakfast assembly accounts for another 10 minutes, during which he dances around the kitchen doing his level boyish best to make sure I trip over him. (One can work around an island, but a moving child is several orders of magnitude more hazardous.) And once I have checked and determined that no, it won’t be warm enough, he still has to check, just in case either the meteorologists or I have changed our minds.

Tonight, after a long string of amazingly warm days, it’s not only snowing but sticking. Our black cat discovered this when she demanded that I utilize my opposable thumbs for her benefit and let her out. She came back in less than 2 minutes, having collected a couple of large, striking clumps of snowflakes on her head, right between her ears. Then she came back in 5 minutes, determined to test the weather again. And again. It took three tries for her to decide that no, it wasn’t going to be warm enough for comfortable slinking. I fully expect her to check one more time, though, just in case the weather powers might have changed their minds. In between, she wound between my ankles as I wandered about the kitchen, getting myself some soup and orange juice in hopes of fending off an impending head-cold, doing her level feline best to make sure I tripped over or stepped on her. “Hey, mom! Has it gotten warm yet?”

Three boys. Three cats. Differences? Not much. Not much at all.

De minimus is Latin, meaning a thing too small to take notice of.

It never rains but it pours. My dad, now in the nursing home for rehab, has developed pneumonia. And my oldest friend has just been dismissed from her job of near to 20 years. The reasons she’s been given don’t make sense, unless you interpret it as daring to speak the truth to power, and offending someone with rather an overinflated sense of their own importance. At least my father-in-law, who has also been quite ill, is improving.

And all I can do, for any of those involved, is listen. Fortunately I’m very good at it, but I think we could all really use a break here. And if we can’t find the brake lever, can we maybe get the tool box off the throttle at least?

Our son has an overnight at school tonight, all the 4th and 5th graders “camping” in the gym, playing games, reading and watching movies. It’s called “Friday Night Live”, and the planning for it goes on most of the year. He went off this evening as excited as a nuclear powered jumping bean, bearing his sleeping bag, overnight bag, pillow and blanket. Among those things, in plain sight and unremarkable, were his comfort objects.

He has several things he usually wants at night: a pillow I made for him out of Pooh fabric, a Pooh quilt, and a rather large stuffed Garfield-the-cat. He wanted to take Garfield, but we were worried that he’d be teased for still wanting a “lovey”, even though both my own memory and the parents I talk to tells me that more 10 year olds still have them than not. Of course, most of them won’t admit to it, but that’s another story. Then we read the rules for the event. Among them was “No games or toys of any kind will be permitted. Any which are brought will be sent home with the parent.” He figured out at once that Garfield would be included in the ban, and was much distressed. So we were talking about it, and in the course of the discussion he mentioned that the reason he likes Garfield is that he’s a cat, and “that way I still have cats around me.”

Cats? It doesn’t have to be Garfield in particular, it just needs to be cats? I can take care of that! So I went and got fabric with an all-over print of cats. A smallish (about 1/2 yard) piece of it went to cover a throw pillow, which kidlet far prefers to standard pillows with pillow cases. (I make the covers so they can be easily removed and washed.) Then another 5 feet got sewn to a piece of green fleece, making a blanket about the size of a large couch throw. I could sleep under it reasonably, so it’s certainly large enough for a 10 year old. So he can use the sleeping bag for padding and sleep under his blanket with its matching pillow. He has his security felines, right there under his eyes and hands. And best of all, because they aren’t obvious things like baby blankets or stuffed toys, no one’s likely to tease him about them. I’m rather proud of that solution.

The traditional view of birds in farm fields involves crows. I mean, scarecrows have all but become a symbol of agricultural activity. Every cartoon that shows birds in fields shows caricatured black birds that everyone knows are meant to be crows simply because that is the convention.

There are birds settling in the fields here, especially right after they’ve been plowed for the spring or harvested in the fall, but they aren’t crows. They’re white, or pale grey and white. Like the crows, they come in flocks, lifting into the air to whirl around each other crying and land to forage some more. Their calls are no more like a crow’s caw than their feathers are glossy black, though. Instead they are high, clear and unmistakable, both pitch and volume falling from their initial note. They are also simply part of the atmosphere on the lake, or by any sea shore, but wildly out of place over farm fields and woodland.

It seems very strange to me to have gulls foraging in the corn fields. Those beaks are designed for scooping fish out of the lake, not whatever it is they’re finding in the newly plowed ground. Graceful as they are in the air, they’re as awkward and ungainly as any other water bird on the ground. But they must be getting something for the efforts, because flocks of them are absolutely everywhere. There are also a multitude of little seed-eaters in those same fields, but their brown feathers and tiny bodies disappear, camouflaged by the soil itself until they hop or flutter to another spot for a different selection from the birdie buffet. But from a distance, with those white feathers, it’s the gulls you see, and to my eye they look incredibly incongruous.

I’ve said it before: I have the most wonderful friends. I didn’t know about elastic laces; I’d never seen them. But not only did Mom call and leave me a message with the information, I got comments telling me about them, and now a whole new range of options is open because of that. (Kerry, thank you – I was able to tell Joseph that one of the best lawyers I know says she can’t tie shoes, and that it hasn’t slowed her down that I could ever see!) And it never occurred to me to check Amazon for pants. Although the problem is that most of them stop at size 10 or 12 at the biggest, and he’s a 14 now. (And I don’t know how that happened – he’s only 10!) But the pants were far the lesser concern. I can make him enough pants for a season in a day, and they don’t tear out at the seams. I can’t make sneakers no matter how much I might want to. Courtesy of friends who let me know about things I either haven’t seen or haven’t noticed, I also don’t have to.

Bill, Kerry, Mom – thank you.

Our son placed second in the township 4th and 5th grade spelling bee. We are very proud of him, the more so because I know how much work that is for him in particular, in terms of staying focused. We didn’t help him, either; he didn’t tell us about it, so we couldn’t help him practice. When I asked him why, he said he didn’t know he was supposed to. No one had told him to. It didn’t occur to his teacher that he needed to be told, and we didn’t know to ask. But courtesy of his wiring, he does have to be told, specifically, something that a neuro-typical kindergartener would do as matter of course.

It never ceases to amaze me just how pervasive the effects of autism are. I suppose it should not; it is the result of non-standard neurological “wiring”, with the degree and type of autism determined largely by in what fashion and to what extent the wiring is non-standard. Sometimes I want to tell friends who grumble about how difficult their children are at this or that stage to be grateful their kids are neurotypical, shut up and parent. I’ve never yet said it, but I’ve had the thought more than once.

Some things you can predict. Where language usage is not automatic, you’re going to have trouble if the kid is asked to understand or convey something outside of his usual experience. We nearly missed his school’s winter program our first year here, because while he knew it was taking place, and that his class had practiced all the songs, he had no awareness he was actually supposed to participate. General instructions to be in a certain place at a certain time did not penetrate as applying to him. We’ve learned to ask that the adults around him tell us exactly what he’s doing and what’s expected, because he himself can’t. Even with that, though, we can get into misunderstandings, so that at one point we thought he was conveniently not showing us his weekly progress reports and assumed it was because they were poor. We put the poor kid through a miserable weekend while we waited for his teacher to answer an e-mail. And then it turned out that what he’d been trying to explain to us was that he’d mislaid the folder she put the report in, she hadn’t given it to him to take home loose, and in fact he’d had perfect marks all week. He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t have the verbal facility to do so. I hadn’t realized it, but he’s still communicating by stringing together phrases he hears that apply. He does it very well, but when he gets into a situation where that doesn’t work, he’s at a loss. And if I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me, it’s hard for me to frame leading questions to help him. This misapprehension was relatively harmless, and we apologized to him for jumping to conclusions. In the end, I suppose it was as well we learned of the issue this way, rather than with something more important.

What I never in a million years expected was for one of the biggest frustrations to involve his clothes. Not fashion – he does have a clear sense of what he likes, and doesn’t care a whole lot to be in fashion. But he has problems with small-motor coordination. That doesn’t sound like a huge deal until you realize that past a certain size – 8 or 10, for the current styles – boys pants all have buttons and zippers. You can’t even find snaps instead of buttons, and elastic waists are on the endangered species list. But buttons drive him crazy, especially in the bathroom at school, where the other boys are watching and he is expected to be quick. I see no reason to put him through that frustration, but I can’t even find elastic waist pants online. There are enough important things that he has to work on; this is not one of them. Same with his shoes – past size 6 or 7, they all seem to tie. But laces are another exercise in frustration. I’m having a horrid time finding ways to accommodate him that don’t make him stand out even more. I want shoes that pull on or fasten with velcro, but they too are on the endangered species list.

So there we are. I thought it was bad enough growing up left-handed in a relentlessly right-handed world, but that was nothing compared to my son’s frustrations. He’s growing up uncoordinated in a world that values physical prowess. And indeed it is true that he is 10 and cannot tie his shoes or ride a bike. But he will be going on to the county spelling bee now. To me, that’s far more important than being able to manipulate a button. I can always make his pants. In fact, I have a washing machine full of denim and twill I’ll be putting to that purpose even as I write. And the shoes? I’ll keep on hunting. Someone has to be selling them.

My husband and I were sitting in the living room when he began to chuckle. When I raised an eyebrow at him, he said he’d just remembered his dad’s summary of Thomas Paine’s resume. “Started a revolution in America. Started a revolution in France. England kicked him out.”

But thinking about that made me wonder. At the time of the American Revolution, England had repealed the Stamp Acts that had started the political rebellion, and while Parliament was insisting that they had the right to use the powers objected to, for the most part they weren’t doing so. I’m not at all sure that the generalized anger at a government perceived to be “out of touch” with the general sentiments of the citizenry would have crystallized into full revolt without a catalyst such as Paine.

We have, in the current administration, a leader as much despised and derided as that earlier George, the third of that name to hold the throne of England. (We also have who is arguably as out of touch with reality, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Like the English monarchs of that earlier time, he considers himself to hold his power as a mark of divine favor. The great difference is that we have a system of government now that holds the promise of a change in leadership on a predetermined schedule. But if there are untoward and unwelcome surprises from this administration, which acts as if, in direct opposition to the founding principals of this country, it should be “a government of men and not of laws”, I wonder if the blogs and other forms of internet dissemination of ideas might serve the same purpose as Mr. Paine’s publications and rhetoric. It seems possible, even plausible. And that is a very scary thought.

Seen on a private blog, with thanks to the Shaman….

[O]ne should not attempt to take on the conversational equivalent of a fully armed and operational Death Star when armed only with a nerf gun.

I know a goodly number of such conversational luminaria. They tend to be interesting people. I like interesting people.

Watching Miss Cloud play with Sophia is an absolute hoot now. The tiny scrap of calico fur that requested assistance last July is now the biggest cat in the house, and she’s still growing. But she’s all of 10 months old, and still very much a kitten in her own walnut-sized mind. Mama-cat’s tail is still a fabulous toy, and her admonitions to behave still Edicts from On High. It doesn’t matter, evidently, that Sophia was never Cloud’s mama; she has the tone and the attitude, and that’s all that’s required.

So here’s this slightly clumsy adolescent gawk of a cat, trying to wrestle with a plump grey puss-cat of perfect balance, coordination, and self-possession – who is about 15% smaller than the “teenager”. Watching, there’s no question who’s in charge, and it isn’t the kid. Reminds me of a woman I knew once who didn’t make it to 5 feet tall, and whose son topped out at 6′6″. She was scolding him, and said something along the lines of “I don’t care how big you are, I am still your mother, and if I have to get up on a chair to spank you, I will!” Cloud is only bigger than Sophia physically – and both of them know it.