Chapter Two
"I want to take the pre-conceived out from underneath your feet..."
Jack Johnson
I seemed to be moving in slow motion. Each movement, every action I took with my body and hands felt forced, heavy, and almost pretend. It reminded me of the day after surviving the stomach flu. I felt grateful to be out amongst people, but not quite physically up to the task yet. Still, it beat the alternative - laying in bed not moving at all.
I made my way up the aisle looking up and down the shelves, "Do they even sell lard anymore? Oh...yup. Here it is. Wow."
I finished gathering my cookie baking supplies and got in the "ten items or less" line to check out. I can always gather useful information about what my spiritual barometer is set at by whether or not I count the items of the person ahead of me. If I count them I'm a little on the spiritually ill side that day. If I don't count them, notice, or care at all, then I'm in good shape.
"Don't count his items," I said under my breath. "Don't count them. Don't count them...one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ELEVEN. Damn it! No resistance at all today." I smiled politely at the man as he walked away carrying his bag of eleven items and then dropped my basket onto the counter with a plop.
I handed my card to the check out clerk. She batted at a few of the buttons on the till with her long, white fingernails tipped off with red sparkles, her dark hair pulled to the top of her head and cascading back down around her neck in long shiny curls, and chewing her gum like it was a violent little glop that deserved it. Boredom dripped out of her dull green eyes and landed on my baking supplies while tiny silver store keys tinkled as she moved, fastened to her arm by what looked like a strip of black telephone cord. She threw my supplies in a sack, handed me the receipt, and dropped me an apathetic, "Have a nice day."
Heaping, fat mounds of winter covered my home town of Billings, Montana on Christmas Eve last year. The cold of it chewed down to the bones of this Montana native as I realized how accustomed I'd become to the warm Arizona sunshine. We'd come home for a holiday visit and were staying with my husband's parents, a blessed retreat from our tract house and tract lives.
As I walked back to my vehicle armed with the thought of baking Christmas cookies, the unforgettable wet soaked into my socks and I found myself longing to thaw out on a piece of hot concrete next to a swimming pool and paint my naked toenails bright red. The discovery that I preferred the heat to the cold caught me by surprise, not unlike the discovery that the skill of scraping my windshield with a credit card came back just as naturally as the art of riding a bike.
It seemed contrived at first, the way the snow lay over the hills in giant white sheets covering up the ground with all these distracting little sparkles and pretending like nothing was frozen underneath it. But as I drove back to my in laws' house I relaxed my back into the heated seats and let myself believe the beauty of the snow. Life as usual was carrying on, even though my life, the one I'd always dreamed of, was gone forever.
The houses seemed strained under the weight of their covered roofs. Brightly colored Santas and reindeer adorned peoples' yards and drew attention away from the stark and frigid tree branches above them, and the bushes were giant snow cones stuck into the ground, their blankets of ice all lit up by the twinkle lights underneath in soft patches of red, blue, green and yellow.
From every direction Christmas cheer was forcing it's way through the sub-zero temperatures and seeping it's way into my awareness. I welcomed the cheer with a quiet desperation, for I had just come out of a long inward slumber. I don't remember a lot about the weeks that preceded. I know that I had learned of my youngest child's autism after only having just learned of my middle child's autism, had found myself in a state of shock so thorough I wasn't sure it wouldn't be permanent, and I had spent several weeks really struggling to get out of bed. I felt like I had been blind-sided. Not only was I hit with the fact that my children would never, ever have normal lives, but I also couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it. How could I have been in that much denial?
Looking back it all made sense, the developmental delays, the tantrums and self-harming behaviors, the stemming, that incredible distance in their eyes that tore chunks out of my heart when I tried to play with them. Sometimes I'd shake Cale and scream inside of my head, "WHERE DID MY BABY GO?!"
But I did not want to know what was really going on. I kept telling myself it was temporary and that they'd grow out of it. In fact, the worse their behavior got the harder I worked to deny that something was wrong.
Upon getting the autism diagnosis for both Isabel and Cale, I was confronted with all this incredible guilt that I hadn't acted sooner. Why, why, why, why hadn't I acted sooner? I'd majored in psychology in college. I knew a little about autism. But more importantly, I knew a lot about the power of denial. I'm afraid I'd come to view the whole subject of unconscious motives as a bit of a joke. Now I wish I hadn't. But where had these unconscious motives come from? Why was I so afraid of autism? Oh it just made no sense.
After spending several weeks in bed trapped in all of these thoughts, overwhelmed by an ass-kicking bout of self-pity, I had heard from a lost friend which brought me half way back to my senses. My eyes still burned from all the crying and I had begun to wonder if they'd turn a permanent shade blood vessel mauve.
*
I got back to my in-laws' house and put the kids down for a nap. Alden, who was six and a half years old by then said to me as he laid down, "Big kids don't take naps Mom." I kissed him tenderly and replied, "I love you sweetie, but nap time saves children's lives."
Isabel, who had just turned five, snuggled up to her brother in her stiff, clumsy way and put her thumb in her mouth. Thankfully he tolerated it again. Baby Cale, who was almost three and a half years old and still confined to a crib for his lack of ability to stay in one spot, fell asleep immediately. I'm sure this was due to the strange barometric pressure and the comfort of being surrounded by his grandparents' love.
I began baking Christmas cookies with my mother-in-law that afternoon and didn't cry. I talked about the snow on the ground instead as I cut little stocking shapes out of shortbread cookie dough. My thoughts were trapped in this incessant loop:
"Two of my kids are autistic. And the world hasn't stopped? How can everyone just carry on like nothing's happened? Why, God, would you give me autistic kids? I don't know what to do with autism, I have no experience with it. Two of my kids are autistic. And the world hasn't stopped? How can everyone just carry on like nothing's happened? Why, God, would you give me autistic kids? I don't know what to do with autism, I have no experience with it."
This loop had gone on for several days and was finally interrupted by an extremely loud thought as I pulled the cookies out of the oven. The familiar smell jolted a load of memories from my childhood all at once like happens when one's life flashes before their eyes just before they die, or happens just before a much needed answer. The cookie recipe was my mom's. She had made the same cookies at Christmas time for as long I could remember. And the loud thought was this, "You know what to do with autism. You've lived with autism your entire life."
"What?!" I said out loud.
My mother-in-law answered, "Oh. I said that everyone's planning to come out to the house in the morning for Christmas day. That way, you guys can spend this evening at your grandmother's house for Christmas Eve. Does that sound okay?"
"Oh," I said, realizing that we were still mid-conversation, "Yes, of course. That sounds fine honey, thanks."
I thought that my head was clearly completely out of control, so I chalked the "loud thought" up to being post inward slumber craziness and went on about the day eating freshly baked cookies and wrapping the children's presents in green paper with tiny little snowmen it. The snowmen had little black scarves and orange, carrot shaped noses that sparkled with glitter. "Hmm," I thought to myself upon noticing the snowmen, "How many times have I noticed sparkles today? Maybe I'm a bit autistic myself. Or maybe it's just Christmas time and sparkles are abundant this time of year."
I completed wrapping the sparkly presents, wrapped the cookies in sparkly tin foil, put sparkly bows on everything, and later that evening walked out to the car with Shane and the kids through layers of sparkly snow. As we finished loading the presents, cookies, and children into the car, Alden said to me, "Mom. The snow is so sparkoly and pretty."
"Hey!" I snapped at him, "You're not autistic."
Shane looked at me with his soft eyes and smiled. He always gets my strange thinking. Or tries to at least.
"What is aoutissc mean Mom?" he asked.
The tears filled my eyes so fast I couldn't believe it. "Ask me later sweetie," I replied.
*
We arrived at my grandmother's house and I finally started to warm up. Her house is always a warm, steady 80 degrees year round. Everyone got up, talking to and hugging each of us as we came through the door. I dove head first into the particular sounds of my family, all smiling and talking to each other at the same time. I wish I could describe these sounds to you, but they're indescribable. I devoured the love and filled my homesick spot with all the love and attention from my family.
Stockings from the sixties that belonged to my mother and aunt when they were kids hung above the gas fire that was burning artificially behind the glass. My grandparents used to have a real fireplace that burned real fire at Christmas time. And, for the first time ever, I found myself feeling grateful for modern household technology because of Cale and his complete inability to stay away from dangerous things. He went straight over to the fire and put both hands on the glass. And I didn't have to worry.
The best thing about my Grandma's house has always been that things don't change quickly there. Everything is always in the exact same spot and the holiday traditions are always in the exact same order. It can be counted on. The house has always been decorated fifteen years behind it's time. In the late eighties, it boasted an array of orange and brown flowers. They were everywhere. On the couch upholstery, the curtains, and sticking out of wavy shaped, green glass bowls. Now a days, the house has the late eighties, overstuffed, Lazy Boy furniture that looks like someone flicked at it with a paintbrush full of mauve, blue, and hunter green.
The forty five year old Christmas ornaments dangled faithfully from the branches of the new Christmas tree, their faded chrome not half as shiny as the new glass balls beside them. And the little wooden manger with only a few shreds of straw left on it's miniature roof sat under the tree on a cotton tree skirt that was covered in red and green sparkles.
Baby Jesus and his parents had the misfortune of having their bottoms glued to the floor of the manger by my grandmother a least thirty years ago, which is probably the reason they weren't stolen and discovered years later in the heating vent of my parents house along with Legos, tiny farm animals, and other forgotten items that were once treasured possessions of my brother and me. It took my kids approximately thirty seconds to discover the manger and try to free the figures from their super glued perches. I didn't worry. No one has ever been able to free baby Jesus.
Everyone was there already with one exception. My brother, only sibling, and best friend during childhood, was late.
"Hopefully your brother's coming," my grandma said to me, "I called him and he said he'd be here, but you know how that goes sometimes." Her smile was genuine but the crinkle between her eyes suggested that she was worried about him.
"He's okay," I told her, "He's probably doing his Christmas shopping right now."
Everyone looked at me and chuckled so I chuckled too. But I wasn't kidding, nor was I making fun of my brother.
Believe it or not there are multiple layers of social understanding to present buying and every other thing we humans do or don't do. And there are multiple subtle, unspoken social "rules" based on each and every single layer of social understanding. These layers are learned by most of us intuitively, not cognitively. In other words, we learn them without having to think about it.
However, if a person has a deficit in picking up on the subtleties of social cues, then they must learn these layers cognitively instead of intuitively. This is a slower, more tedious process and is often heavily influenced by all kinds of internal and external variables. So, that person might live their whole life completely missing whole chunks of common, unspoken social "rules."
The first and most blatant "rule" about present buying is that you don't buy presents at the last minute because it's not only strategically difficult and might make you late, but it's also not very thoughtful and might even be perceived as outright inconsiderate. It's not only inconsiderate of other peoples' time (if you're late), but it's also inconsiderate because it shows that you didn't think of the people until it was time to actually see them. People like to think they're thought of before Christmas actually comes. It makes them feel loved.
The second "rule" is that if you do buy presents at the last minute (which most of us actually do at some point in our lives), you don't tell the people you bought their presents at the last minute. To actually tell them you bought their gifts at the last minute would be perceived as inappropriate, and might even be perceived as not caring about the peoples' feelings.
Even if you do buy a gift for someone at the last minute and don't tell them about it, there are still all these tiny little clues as to when the gift was purchased. When one has procrastinated, that person might buy a bigger and fancier the gift than they would've ordinarily because of guilt or simply because they were out of time. Or they might buy something that's not extravagant enough. So, the more or less extravagant the gift (the determining of which has it's own set of social "rules" separate from this one that have more to do with thought and effort than timing), the more likely it was bought at the last minute. The timing can also be revealed by how well the gift fits the personality of the person and by how or if the gift was wrapped.
Even all of this is actually quite easy to cover up with, "The mall has been so crazy the last few weeks! I do hope you like what I got for you," which gives the implication you searched for weeks for an appropriate gift, but alas had to settle for something too extravagant, not extravagant enough, or something which doesn't quite fit the person's personality. And a gift bag is today's easy way around the wrapping thing. Your implication may not be totally honest, but it is better than the truth. Sometimes peoples' feelings are more important than the truth, and sometimes the truth is more important than their feelings. There are more "rules" for determining which is which for this too.
This brings me to the final "rule" which is that people (especially older family members) probably don't actually care that much what it is you get for them. And they probably don't care whether or not you thought of them "weeks" before. But they do want to think that you at least put some thought into their gift. Of course it's ideal if you actually thought of them weeks before and put thought into their gift. But, let's face it. There are times that it just doesn't happen. And when it doesn't happen, you should at the very least pretend it did. I should also mention that each family may have different ways with these "rules."
Once you put all of these "rules" together, you must make educated guesses about when to buy each person's present. Because there are no guidelines for this. After years of experience in trying to buy presents at just the right time, sending cards at the perfect moment taking mail time into consideration, etc., you can then joke about it when you or someone else messes it up.
We're not supposed to buy gifts at the last minute, but it's common knowledge that everyone does it sometimes. And that's why we have the "rule" about not telling them that, and the one about pretending we'd put some thought into them and their gift even if we didn't. So when someone makes a comment about someone else screwing up the "rules", it's viewed as making fun of them. A harmless little jab extrapolated from a slightly inappropriate social situation. That's why my comment was funny. That's why everyone chuckled.
These things take years of experience to learn and confuse most people to some degree because each family is different, each person is different, and each Christmas is different. Now, imagine how hopelessly confusing these layers would be to a person who couldn't even comprehend the basic understandings underlying the very first social "rule" about present buying within the context of his/her own family.
Not only does my brother see nothing wrong with buying Christmas presents at the last possible minute leaving the whole family waiting for him on Christmas Eve., but it honestly makes no sense to him why one would do it any sooner. After all, when exactly is the appropriate time to buy Christmas presents? No one can really say. And what does present purchase timing have to do with love anyways? Also, if some people at some times don't follow the first "rule" then why is it a "rule" at all? Obviously, it's not something people really take seriously so why should he? And if the "rule" really is that important and everyone followed it all the time then there would be no need for the complicated second and third "rules" and the world would just make a hell of a lot more sense.
If one could get him to believe that it actually is more considerate (and that perceived consideration is important) and that present purchase timing really is one of multiple thousands of ways that people determine how loved they feel, and if that same someone would tell him exactly when to buy Christmas presents each year, I have no doubt that he would buy the presents at exactly that time every year like clockwork. Because he loves his family very much. But, he doesn't understand the subtle variations of consideration, the variations between "loved" and "more loved." He understands these variations to some extent cognitively, but he doesn't understand them intuitively, experientially, or emotionally. He just doesn't think that way.
I'd tell him about the "rules" regarding Christmas present purchasing (and have made countless attempts at such things during our childhood together), except that it would resemble someone who was a master of painting landscapes trying to take a physics test without studying first. Having to learn these thing cognitively would require memorization, time, and lots and lots of practice. For every single layer of every single social understanding that makes up each unspoken social "rule."
It's got to feel hopeless to try to learn all these "rules," within which there are more "rules" that sometimes people follow and sometimes they don't. Why take any of them seriously? How is one supposed to guess what they are, when to follow them and when not to, and why do they exist anyways? And why do people laugh at you or get mad when you can't figure it out?
I'm afraid that my brother has no idea about the first "rule" regarding present purchase timing, let alone the second or third. And I think he gave up on understanding most such things a very long time ago.
We started in on the massive array of holiday appetizers my grandma had prepared. Crackers of every kind, cheese balls, mixed nuts, cookies, and coffee. We never eat dinner on Christmas Eve. We just munch on finger food and open presents, the best part of the holidays in my opinion.
I picked up one of the shortbread cookies I'd made and asked, "Did you realize your cookies have lard in them Mom?"
"Sshhh!" she answered.
We waited about forty five minutes and just when we started talking about opening presents without my brother, the bell rang and he came through the door walking in his stiff, clumsy way. He had an arm load of gift bags and three unwrapped boxes for my kids which he set down under the tree so that he could politely tolerate hugs from each family member.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, "The mall was crazy."
