She's five inches tall, quite fat, and is several hundred years old. Therefore her blood pressure is probably somewhat elevated. This is the reason we put the tooth in a small, easy to carry, zip lock snack baggie for her (but of course it's really so we don't lose the tooth in the sheets).
She wears a small gray dress, a tiny pair of silver glasses, and looks like a little grandmother with her chubby pink face and her curly gray hair all tucked up in a little bun on top of her head. She does have a wand but it doesn't do magic, so it's often more of a hindrance than anything. She still carries it around with her though because, after all, she is a fairy.
She gets a bit weighted down as she flies due to the money she carries. She should carry her quarters in a little backpack because it would be easier on her hips, but she's an old-fashioned kind of woman and thinks it more fashionable to carry a purse. She tends to run out of breath flying to his room at night due to this purse full of quarters, her obesity, and her rather small set of wings, so she often has to stop on his shelf for a little rest before collecting his tooth.
"But why does she collect kids' teeth?" he asks.
"Oh," I say, "because she LOVES kids. And she LOVES teeth."
"But why does she bring quarters? Why can't she bring fifty cent pieces?" This one caught me off guard.
"Well, fifty cent pieces are rather heavy for an old fairy with high blood pressure to carry," I answered. Thankfully he didn't make the connection that two quarters are probably the same weight as a fifty cent piece OR that it would be smarter to carry dollar bills.
One day Alden lost a tooth and didn't tell me. Instead he got a small, easy to carry, zip lock snack baggie out of the drawer all by himself, put his tooth in it, and then stuck it under his pillow that night. I had no idea. The next morning he came into my room crying and genuinely heart-broken. It took him a few minutes to tell me what was wrong.
"The tooth fairy stole my tooth," he finally said in between sobs, "but it's okay. Sh Sh she can have it."
"What?! You lost another tooth?" I exclaimed, immediately suspecting what might've happened. "Oh sweetie, don't worry. The tooth fairy never steals teeth," I continued, "I bet that we can find it in your room."
We went into his room. Thankfully, and as suspected, the baggie had fallen down the side of the mattress and was on the floor in between his bed and the wall. It was hidden really well and took some serious effort to get to. Thank you, thank you God.
"Here it is!" I said, "It fell into this crack. That poor old fairy probably couldn't squeeze her fat little butt into there! What if she had gotten stuck? Can you imagine if you had woken up to a fat little fairy butt trapped between your bed and the wall?"
He giggled.
"We'll put it where she can find it easily tonight okay?" I asked.
Alden smiled big through his tears. He was quite relieved that the tooth fairy could be trusted again. "Okay!" he answered. And the lovely little woman left him extra money that night for all the trouble.
It's a bit iffy isn't it? This business about the tooth fairy? I probably wouldn't do it at all except that I have this idea that happiness is more about the "believing" than it is about the "what's believed." The one who "doesn't believe" is always the miserable one. Have you ever noticed that? Like in the movie Polar Express where the angry ghost on the top of the train lives alone in the blizzard and tries to stay warm by drinking his own sludge. He goes on and on about not wanting to be "duped," "brainwashed," "mis-lead," or "lied to." So he chooses not to believe. And he's probably right, by God, but he's miserable and alone.
Alden may be my only chance at living out fantasy, so he'll have to tolerate being lied to. I'm currently trying to figure out how to get onto my roof on Christmas Eve. with a hoof making noise maker of some kind. He can call me a liar later if he needs to. I'll just explain my selfishness, that he was my only chance, and that he can be mad if he needs to be.
"Mommy needed to believe in Santa and the tooth fairy sweetie. We all had to make sacrifices," I'll say.
I worry deeply about Cale. What if he never understands abstract things? He's four now and his Autism is becoming more and more pronounced. What if he slowly turns into some semblance of that guy on top of the train? Off in his own world all alone? That's where he spends most of his time already.
How will I ever be able to talk to Cale about God or spirituality in a way that makes sense to him? I don't have specific enough beliefs about God to create a concrete story and I certainly won't be making one up. That's for each to do on his/her own. But how will he do that if he can't even grasp something that's semi-abstract like the tooth fairy? I know I'm getting ahead of myself. He doesn't even have a label for the pointy white things in his own mouth yet I'm worried about him believing in the tooth fairy! But that's precisely my point.
Cale has been horrible this past month. Last week as I wrestled clothes onto him while he screamed and repeatedly kicked me in the face and chest during the process, the possibility of future institutionalization suddenly became very real to me.
I can sometimes see this future decision off in the distance, looming there at the other end of the tunnel like a train powering down the tracks my way. Most of the time I ignore it. But when I'm getting kicked in the face, all I can see is that train coming. I'm starting to imagine what it might be like to have to decide whether to live with Cale abusing himself, me, his other caregivers, and my other children OR to send him to live elsewhere. I can already feel the guilt that accompanies the knowledge that I don't know how to provide the structure and safety my own child needs.
The possibility of a decision like this bothered me badly for most of last week. It was like a fly hitting one of those zapper things. You know the ones? It keeps zapping the fly, making that mechanical little snapping noise over and over again long after the fly is dead. Like that. I spent damn near the whole week shaking and crying. I know from past experience that this is often how the acceptance process begins though. Shaking and crying.
I really do have more hope than this for Cale most of the time, but I also don't want to live under the umbrella of any illusions anymore. And the way his behavior has been the last few weeks...well...let's just say it's safe to assume that if he stays this way forever then he won't be able to stay with us. That is, of course, unless we can afford to hire couple of bouncers to get him dressed in the mornings.
I have had two terrifying experiences this past month. One was when Cale figured out how to unbuckle himself from his booster chair. So containing him in any way, other than simply holding on to him tightly until he stops banging his head on things, is officially a thing of the past. The other just happened over the weekend. It targeted my real live wish that he'd not get any bigger. "Oh my God, " I said to Shane on Saturday morning, "his pants are too short! Shane? Shane?!!"
"Yes?" Shane replied quietly.
"He keeps growing, look here's proof! His pants are too short again!!" I continued.
"Uh huh. Buy him some new ones, we have the money."
How is that men always seem to miss the point at first?
"But he's getting all this therapy and isn't making any progress! He keeps getting bigger and bigger, but his brain doesn't seem to be catching up. How long will we have to wrestle clothes onto him while getting kicked in the face? Will he be doing this at eight? At twelve? At thirty?"
"I don't know," Shane said sleepily, "Maybe." Shane is under no illusions either. He just tends to be calmer and less afraid.
Did I mention that Cale has been horrible for the entire past month? Horrible. He's put fresh holes in his bedroom walls. Of course we do live in the world's cheapest tract house inside the world's thinnest sheet rock. If you breath on the wall wrong it cracks.
He's been slamming himself into corners and walls, giving himself multiple bruises and one black eye. He's been beating up on me, his respite care lady, his therapists, and his teachers. He got stung by a bee Sunday evening and we didn't notice because all of his screaming wasn't anything unusual. He screams ALL the time and my nerves for it have all been fried to bits. So how am I supposed to know when something really is wrong? I didn't actually notice it until I saw the stinger hanging out of a massive red welt on his knee the next morning. What if that had been a black widow (not an unusual visitor right out in the open here in Arizona)?
I've gotten notes home from school almost every day about his screaming and "pinching" the teachers and other kids. And I know they're putting it mildly because Cale's "pinches" involve grabbing entire hand fulls of skin and trying with all of his might to pull it off. It ALWAYS leaves bruises on me. He did this to some poor little girl at the baby sitter's last Friday night and now we can't take him there anymore. We probably should've known better than to take him out in the first place. Instead we should just all stay at home twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, because we have Cale. Oh sorry. The sarcasm isn't a pretty color on me.
The doctor is sending Cale to a G.I. specialist to find out what's going on inside his guts (literally). He's been going about four days between poops in spite of medication for constipation and the vitamins. They think there's something wrong that could be causing the agitation.
You know, just once I'd like to take one of my children to the doctor and have them say, "Nope. Nothing's wrong, you're just an over-protective mother," instead of, "Uh-oh...something's definitely really wrong here!"
My first question for the doctor was of course, as always, "Why doesn't he just SAY that his tummy hurts instead of giving himself and me black eyes? Oh that's right. It's because he doesn't TALK. He's four and, in spite of all this therapy, still not able to say one damned word! Instead he screams and hurts people." Sometimes I actually find myself beside myself.
The doctor looked at me with that crinkle between her eyes. I think she thought I was being dramatic until she bent over to put the stethoscope on Cale's belly. As she pushed the cold, flat metal onto his warm skin he grabbed her hair with both hands, pulled her head down, and tried to "pinch" her face.
"Oh be careful!" I said grabbing his hands, "Don't let him get your face."
She sat back up a little stunned. Then she wrote a few things down before continuing her exam.
"He's seen the psychiatrist already," I pleaded, "he'll be starting a new medication soon that I'm sure will help him."
"Oh good," she said and gave me a smile that said, "Relax. It's okay."
We discussed a few of the other medical problems Cale seemed to be having before we talked about the hearing test he still needs. And when she agreed to have him knocked out for it, my face lit up. "Oh my God!" I thought to myself.
I had to tried to convince Cale's last doctor that he needed to be knocked out for his hearing test last year, but he wouldn't prescribe it. And since me and an entire team of audiologists couldn't get Cale to hold still for the testing, it was never completed. I had forgotten that we still don't know if he can hear! I had given up on this entirely, yet now this doctor was offering to have him knocked out for it! Pull her hair again Cale! Just kidding.
"Well," I said, "I could try to take him in and do the hearing test again the regular way. Maybe this time if I gave him a sucker I could make him be quiet enough..."
We both stopped and looked down at Cale.
"Naa," she finally said, "Just have him knocked out for it," she said smiling. God BLESS this woman.
Cale's teachers finally called a meeting to discuss Cale's behavior at school. I went in on Thursday and learned some valuable information. After we all compared battle wounds (the scratches and bruises my son has left on each of us and whose was worse), the teacher told me an earth moving piece of information.
She has an emotions board which is basically a pretty piece of cardboard. Velcro ed to this board are twenty-five pictures of little faces, each displaying a different facial expression for one of twenty-five different emotions. These faces are scattered randomly throughout the board and are NOT grouped in emotions that go together. So one has to be aware of which emotion each of the twenty-five cards represents in order to pick out an appropriate one.
She showed this board with all the faces on it to Cale ONE time, trying to get him to pull off the "mad" face during one of his tantrums a few weeks ago. He didn't seem to get it so the board went by the way-side as I'm sure many of her classroom tools do in the midst of all the chaos. Then it sat on the shelf for several weeks untouched.
Then one day last week, during one of his tantrums, Cale went and grabbed the board off the shelf, brought it to her, and pulled off five different faces from five different locations on the board. The faces he pulled off were "mad," "frustrated," "don't like," "crying," and "afraid." He handed them all to her and calmed down immediately. Every teacher, therapist, and aide in the room got goose bumps when this happened. They'd gone over these faces with him ONE time weeks ago! Holy shit.
I knew that Cale was understanding more than he appeared to be, but I also really tend to think of him as a baby because that is the level at which he functions. So I was struck with the oddest sensation as I walked to the car after the parent/teacher meeting. "My baby is not a baby," I thought to myself, "and he's really smart. And this time I'm not just saying that to make myself feel better. There's really a four year old child in there with some sort of language barrier."
We're doing a lot of drastic things to help Cale now that we know more of what he understands. The expectation level for him has gone up, but I'll have to go into this later because I'm about out of time for today.
I finally talked to a friend of mine about the institutionalization train because the shaking and crying wouldn't stop. Even the thought that this might be in the future somewhere is too much for me to tolerate, but she said to me that sometimes the thing that looks like the scariest thing in the whole wide world turns out to be the best thing that could happen for everyone. And I believed. I have to. And then of course she said, "But you know, you're not anywhere near that right now."
I can't help but think that Cale's God is more real than mine. Maybe Cale's God is in the leaves in the trees he always stares at, or in the details of the water he pours out of cups over and over again. Maybe he's in all the REAL, "right here and right now" things that comfort Cale. Maybe he's even in the things that don't comfort, but teach Cale. Maybe Cale doesn't need the tooth fairy. And maybe he won't need God or spirituality explained to him. After all, he's proven that just because he can't say it doesn't mean that he doesn't understand.
