Snow

I visited with Isabel’s speech therapist for awhile last week, who is helping Isabel “build social communication skills.”  After we chit chatted about our move, which is coming along slowing but surely by the way, she asked me if people ever have a hard time believing us when we tell them that Isabel has Autism.

The reason that we’re not asking for help moving yet is because we’re leaving most of our furniture at the other house until it sells.  It’ll look nicer for the open houses with furniture in it.  We’re just moving the little stuff into the new house now so that we can stay in it.  That way I won’t have to spend all of my time cleaning the other house up after my kids in an attempt to stage it.  We’ll ask friends to help us move after the other house has sold.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, the speech therapist.

“I think people sometimes do have a hard time believing us when we say that Isabel has Autism,” I answered, “People tend to tell me how well behaved and seemingly normal Isabel is, unless, of course, they spend much time with her.”

“Well she presents so typical!” she said, “She’s so polite with the “please” and the “thank you” and the “you’re my favorite therapist in the whole wide world.” 

“I know,” I answered.

“In fact,” she continued, “I even had a hard time believing it until I put her through the testing required to determine her therapy goals.  It’s a test that gets increasing more difficult as you get the answers right, so you begin to experience failure rather quickly.”

“Uh oh,” I said, “What happened?”

“She began to cry when she started getting the answers wrong,” she answered, “so I explained to her that this is what is supposed to happen.”

I rolled my eyes.

“I explained that this is how I’ll know what to work on with her in therapy,” she continued, “but she didn’t seem to hear me at all.  And when she got the next answer wrong, she started pulling her own hair out by the handful and slamming her head onto the table!  It came out of absolutely nowhere!  And I thought to myself, “Oh my GOD!  Here it is!  Here’s the Autism!””

“Yup,” I smiled, “Sounds like my little peanut.”

“I was so scared of what you guys would think when she came out of her therapy session with bald spots,” she continued, “I mean, she was literally ripping handfuls of hair out of her own scalp.”

“Oh, don’t worry about bald spots,” I assured her, “We know our Isabel.”

This therapist, luckily, wasn’t intimidated by Isabel’s behavior at all, “I was able to get her back right away by returning to some of the questions that I knew she’d get right.  Then she reverted right back to the “This is so fun!” and the “Did you know that you’re my favorite therapist ever?””

We both laughed out loud.

“But it really got me wondering how often you guys struggle with people not believing you,” she concluded.

I never have this problem with Cale.  Cale, in this one tiny way, is easier than Isabel.  People take one look at Cale and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t anywhere near “normal.”  But high-functioning Autism, especially with the introduction of psychiatric medication (Isabel is on two of them now), really can present quite “typical,” almost to the point where one might wonder why on earth a kid like this would need help at all.    

I was thinking about this as I walked Alden and Isabel to school this morning.  It was cold out.  Snow hovered over head as we walked, clinging to huge black tree branches, and threatening to drop great fat puffs of itself onto our heads.  Ice crunched under our feet.  And our breath hung in the air in front of our faces anytime we dared exhale outside of our scarves.  We all stayed warm enough though, as I had insisted on everybody wearing every snow time item - heavy coats, hats, scarves, gloves and snow boots.  And I was feeling rather proud of myself about this until I started humming the Lord’s Prayer on my way back home.

I have this tendency to think that if I can just control everything, just keep everybody safe and happy and comfortable, that everything will be okay.  But as I hummed, I was struck by the realization that just because I make my kids wear hats, doesn’t mean that snow isn’t going to fall onto their heads.  It never ceases to amaze me just how little control I actually have.

I always imagine that we were in church when it happened, singing the Lord’s Prayer.  The congregation at my church could sing the Lord’s Prayer like nothing less than a choir of angels.  Well, angels with head colds maybe.  It didn’t actually sound very good, but the passion was there.  The passion was alive.  The passion could’ve sparked a thousand fires, in fact, during all that wailing.  And, for some odd reason, these are the sounds that go through my head whenever I find myself thinking about it.

My brother was in the eighth grade the first time he made a friend at school.  He’d never known how to go about making a friend, so he asked my mom how he could to do it.  My mom told him to get the boy’s phone number.  And, the very next day at school, he did it.  He actually asked the boy for his phone number.  And the boy actually gave him his phone number.  

This was a big deal at the dinner table that night.  Besides being happy for my brother, and happy about how excited my parents were about this, I was surprised at how much it relieved my own mind to know that my brother finally had a friend at school, because this friend hadn’t been chosen for my brother.  It wasn’t me, or the child of one of my parents’ friends, or somebody that he’d been forced to group up with at Sunday school.  This boy was somebody that my brother had chosen for himself.  His name was Chris.

I think my brother may have chosen Chris because the other boys at school picked on him too.  Well, “picked on” is a rather nice way of putting it actually.  Every single day, and often multiple times per day, groups of boys would encircle my brother and/or Chris at school, and push them back and forth between themselves like human-sized beach balls.  They’d show them knives and laugh and threaten to kill them, all while knocking them down, waiting for them to get back up, knocking them down again, etc.

They did it in the mornings before school.  They did it at lunchtime.  And they did it in the afternoons after school.  They did in the hallways in between classes.  They did it in the bathrooms.  And they did it in the parking lot outside.  They did it anytime and anywhere they ever happened to get my brother and/or Chris alone. 

Chris only put one bullet in the gun before spinning the chamber.  Then he put the gun into his mouth.

“Give  uuus  this  daaay

Our dai –ly bread,

And  for - give  uuus  our  tres - passes

As we forgive those
Who trespass against uuus,”

The gun didn’t go off.  He smiled and spun the chamber again.

“And lead us not

Into temp - tation,

But  de-liver  uuus

From  e - vil.”

The gun didn’t go off that time either.  He decided to give it one more try.

“For   Thiiiiine

Is   The   KING – DOM!

And   The   PO-WER!

And   The   GLOOO – OORY!!”

I leaned over, looking past my parents who were sitting in the church pew beside me, at my brother who was sitting on the other side of them.  He looked back at me and smiled politely for one split second before the big climax, littered with at least eleven out of tune old lady voices peaking at top volume, “forrr – EEEEEEEEE – everrrrrr!!!”

The gun had gone off that time.  The church organ hummed, “hum hum hum hum hum huummmm.”

Softly now, “Aaaaaa - aaaaaa – mennn.”

It happened on a Sunday.  My brother had gotten Chris’s phone number on Friday.  Then he went to school on Monday and learned about Chris’s game of Russian Roulette.  Chris had died.

People sometimes ask me how important it could really be for a child with high functioning Autism to have help in building “social communication skills.”  And by “social communication skills” I don’t mean,

“How are you today, Isabel?”

“I’m fine Mrs. Smith, how are you today?”

Those kinds of social skills require little more than simple imitation.  My daughter, and my brother for that matter, both have that crap down pat.  What I’m talking about is how to actually read people, and how to make sure that others can read you.

I read somewhere one time that people with high-functioning Autism tend to bring out one of two instincts in other people – either the maternal instinct or the predatory instinct.  My brother, obviously, brought out the predatory instinct in others most of the time when we were growing up.  I really wish I could say that those bullies felt a shred of guilt for their contribution to Chris’s death, and that they then stopped picking on my brother.  But they didn’t.  In fact, that was only the beginning.

My mom used to say she felt like she was throwing my brother to the wolves every time she sent him to school.  And this was years ago.  But I know people who, even today, struggle with allowing their children with high-functioning Autism to attend school.  And I get why.  I also refuse to have any kind of opinion about whether or not a child with high-functioning Autism should attend school.  Some parents can handle it, and others cannot.  And they’re perfect either way in my opinion.

I want Isabel to attend school, even though she struggles with it greatly, because I want her to get intensive practice living in this world.  This may sound awful, but my hope is that she won’t have to live me with for the rest of her life.  I’ll probably already have Cale living with me for the rest of his, so I’m hoping that Isabel will become a self-supporting adult some day.  Therefore, I throw her to the wolves.  And I know full well that this may or may not make any difference.

It’s not that I feel I couldn’t provide Isabel with appropriate academic replacement at home.  It’s just that I think the social skills she needs for success in this world will more likely be developed at school (with therapy support) than at home.  And, again, the social skills that I’m talking about are, well, here are a few examples:

1.      How to figure out what others are thinking and feeling.

2.      How to factor those things into my own actions.

3.      How to get my own needs met, emotionally and otherwise.

4.      How to get through doing things that I really, really, really don’t want to be doing.

5.      How to be a team member.

6.      How to be a friend.

7.      How to recognize a bully.

8.      What to do when you encounter a bully.

9.      What to do when you encounter ten bullies.

10.  How to get revenge on bullies.

What?  Oh, alright.  We’d better scratch that last one.  But these are the kinds of things that children practice at school on a daily basis just by being there.  For some, these things come rather easily.  For others, however, they come with much torture.

I must admit that when I think about what my daughter goes through at school, or, more importantly, what she’ll probably go through at school as she gets older, I sometimes find myself wondering if it would really be so bad to have her live with me for the rest of my life.  And I often find that these kinds of things have more to do with what the parents can live with than anything else.

Isabel, being a girl, will hopefully see more of a maternal instinct in other girls as she grows up than my brother saw in boys.  I don’t know though.  I’ve seen a pretty hefty predatory instinct in certain girls.  But I’ve also seen boys (not many, but a few) turn their own predatory instincts onto predators and protect my brother (Hi church camp friends!  I love you!).  How people react to stuff, I think, can be pretty idiosyncratic.  But most of the time, when it comes to my brother anyway, I find the reactions of others fairly predictable.

My brother never got help in building “social communication skills.”  He got help with a lot of other things, but they really didn’t know to target the social skills arena in high-functioning Autism thirty years ago.  In fact, they didn’t even know to call it high-functioning Autism thirty years ago.  Not only did my parents struggle with people not believing them, or, at the very least, peoples' continual tendency to minimize my brother’s problems, but they didn’t even have a name that they could call it.

I can tell you that Autism, even high-functioning Autism, doesn’t go away just by waiting long enough.  And I know that “building social communication skills” sounds pretty damn trite compared to what it actually means, but I’ve also seen the repercussions of missing this important piece.  I'm not even entirely sure that it would have made any difference for my brother to get help with "social communication skills."  And I obviously can’t go into all of this in a short blog post, but that’s why I’m putting it in my book.

My brother’s experiences are a blessing for me, in a way, in that whenever I find myself tempted to believe that Isabel doesn’t really need all of this extra help, I find myself haunted by the Lord’s Prayer on my way home from the school.  But they’re also a curse, in a way, because I find myself haunted by the Lord’s Prayer on my way home from the school.  I have learned one gorgeous, valuable, irreplaceable thing though.  I’ve learned how to not be so afraid.  And this isn’t because I’m tough.  It’s because I’m able to tell you about the things that haunt me.  And somehow, when I do this, they lose their power to dominate my decision making.

I guess I put hats on my kids because that’s the kind of mom I want to be.  And I’m grateful for the ability to recognize that this is where my power ends.  The results are then up to God.  And I guess I insist on my daughter getting therapy and going to school because that’s the kind of mom I want to be.  And I’m grateful for the ability to recognize that this is where my power ends.  The results are then up to God.  And when the snow falls, I’m grateful for the ability to trust that it’s just a communication that it’s time for something else - another idea, another tool, or another path.  But sometimes I think I just need to know that someone can be okay with a cold neck.  

I don’t always get to know the reasons for things.  But I, thankfully, don’t have to.  I do quite love not being God.  And I absolutely love living walking distance from the school! 

Home

Do you believe in destiny?  I sometimes wonder if the things that happen to us are all part of some sort of divine plan, a pre-designed arrangement of events that we’re all supposed to just passively walk through, or if it’s really just us creating our own experiences.  I mean, maybe God doesn’t have a plan.  You know?  Maybe he set it all into motion in the first place, and now he just sits back, sips his tea, and watches, knowing full well that it’ll all be okay no matter what happens, because we’re all just coming back to him in the end anyway.  Maybe having a “plan” wouldn’t have been all that entertaining.

This question has my undivided attention these days, which would be rather frustrating if I needed an actual answer to it, because it’s not a question that one could possibly ever know the answer to.  But I don’t need an actual answer.  I just like to think about it.

I tend to go back and forth with it because while there are times when it seems like God couldn’t possibly have a plan; when bad things happen for example, there are other times when it seems like something couldn’t possibly be happening without a rather concentrated dose of divine intervention.  And if we’re creating our own experiences exclusively - our bad thoughts creating our bad experiences and our goods thoughts creating our good ones – this doesn’t explain Autism.  My son’s “bad thoughts” didn’t create his Autism.  His Autism is a gift directly from God.

That’s an interesting statement, isn’t it?  My husband used to say to me, “One day, you, too, will be grateful for the Autism in our lives.”

Now, leaving aside the condescension expressed in this statement (my husband’s ever advanced spiritual development as compared to mine), it’s still an interesting statement.  I mean, grateful?  How could one possibly ever get grateful for such a heartbreaking disorder?  And I didn’t understand it at all until I began to understand it.  And do you know what’s helping me to understand it?  My book.

I’m writing my book now, which I think I’ve mentioned before.  And while I’ve been sifting through a lot of the “bad things” that happened while my brother and I were growing up, which hasn’t been easy at all I must admit, I’m also seeing all of the little spots where God was alive and well and thoroughly involved the whole way through it.  It’s been fascinating, so far, to go back and look at it through the eyes that I have now. 

Maybe the reason I drew more Autism into my life (via my children) was that I wasn’t healed up about the things that went on with my brother yet (and I’m not talking about a conscious decision here, of course - instead I’m making purely spiritual guesses).  Or maybe I didn’t draw any of the Autism to me at all.  Maybe it was simply handed to me.  And maybe I’m supposed to just “take what I get and don’t throw a fit” (which is what they taught my son in kindergarten).  Maybe I’m supposed to be grateful, or, at the very least, find the good things in whatever experiences God has given me.  Maybe that’s the only way God can get into them.

I guess the thing that’s been occurring to me over and over again is that maybe the answer to my question is that it’s a little bit of both.  Maybe we create our own experiences, for the most part, but are also occasionally afforded a free gift.  I say this because throughout the course of my life, there have been all of these little gifts that appear to have sprung out of nowhere.  And each is so incredible, so gorgeous, that I almost struggle to fit it into the rest of story.  It’s like trying to figure out where to place the diamond in the midst of a pile of shit.

Something else has happened to us too.  And I mean that it literally feels like it has “happened to us.”

I have wanted to live in an old house on one particular street of my home town for my whole, entire life.  And Shane and I actually bought a house on that street when we were first married.  The house was built in 1917 and had never really been touched.  So while it boasted original floors, moldings, plasterwork and mantels, it also had original wiring, the original boiler, the original roof, and tree branches that grew straight through the original walls of a small sun room off the living room.

We rented the movie “Money Pit” our first night there.  We slept on a mattress on the living room floor, and laughed hysterically until we realized that, unlike the people in the movie, we didn’t have a painting that we could sell for a million dollars when the bathtub fell through the floor.  In fact, we didn’t have anything at all except a little bit of faith that God would keep the bathtub in place.

So how in the world did two nearly broke individuals come into buying a house?  Well, that’s the interesting part.  We lived in an apartment across the street from this house originally, and our landlord allowed us to do anything that we wanted to place.  We painted everything and refinished the floors and made it a very cute apartment.  And, on occasion, the landlord would take money off of our rent when he liked something that we had done, but we didn’t do any of these things expecting to pay less rent.  We did them for the pure old fashioned pleasure of making the apartment a better place to live.

We managed to get the phone number of the owner of the house by word of mouth (we knew somebody that knew somebody kind of a thing), so we called him up and offered to buy his house.  He came to town from Seattle, saw the condition of the house (he hadn’t actually seen the place in a great number of years), and then came over to our apartment for a cup of tea and a talk.

“I love this apartment,” he said, as he sipped his tea and stared sadly out the window across the street at the house that he’d raised his children in, which had become a dilapidated college party hang out.

“I’ll sell the house to you for whatever you can afford,” he continued, “Contract for deed, of course, as I’m assuming that you won’t be able to get a loan until you’re both out of college.”

That’s how we got that house.  Divine intervention?  Absolutely.  And I might believe that, exclusively, if we hadn’t been able to reproduce the same basic story again.

Shane and I, as you’ve probably already guessed, discovered a secret that day.  We discovered that when you do something that you love, for the plain old-fashioned sake of loving to do it, divine intervention (along with the money needed for whatever it is) comes your way.  It’s the love that draws God.  If you’re doing it for the money, however, there are no predictable results, unless, of course, money is what you love.  In that case, simply experience with undying joy, having the money that you have.  Give money away.  Do it often.  Do it with gratitude.  And money will come your way.  And Isabel is standing here with me right now reading this.  She says that we should give love away.  And I agree, don’t you?  Do it often.  Do it with gratitude.  And love will come your way.

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  We told ourselves, within a couple of years of living in that house, that even once we were out of college and had become teachers, that we still probably wouldn’t be able to afford everything that that house needed.  But the truth is that we had grown to have other priorities by then – mainly, we wanted to spend our money on having babies instead of putting in new wiring.  So, after we’d done quite a bit of cosmetic fix-up, we sold the house to a family who promised to replace the wiring and the roof, etc., and made our first small fortune.  Then we bought a much smaller house several blocks away from the first one and started a family.

When I said good bye to that house, I had the strangest feeling that I wouldn’t be coming back home again for a very long time.  I remember the moment distinctly, standing in the upstairs hallway outside of my bedroom, hugging the old brick chimney that ran up through the attic bedrooms and out the top of the house, and knowing that I wouldn’t be at home anywhere else for a very long time.  And you never know if this kind of a thing is some sort of premonition, or if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Either way, that was over ten years ago, and I haven’t been home since.

Shane and I have always loved fixing up old houses, so we’ve actually had quite of few of them since that first one.  And it seems like people always try to discourage us from these.  “That house is old,” Shane’s parents sometimes say to us, “a new house won’t need as much work.  Are you sure that you don’t just want a new house yet?”

But you know what’s funny?  Out of all of the houses that Shane and I have owned, the only one that we didn’t make a bunch of money on (in fact, we lost money on it) was the new, practical house in Arizona that everybody said we should get.  And we lost money on it because at the time we got the opportunity to move to back to Montana via Shane’s job, the housing market in Arizona had crashed so hard that our house was worth less than we paid for it.  But I can’t help but to believe, deep down, that it was because our hearts were never really in that house. 

We did a short sale to get out from underneath of the loan.  And this isn’t something that we ever would’ve considered doing if being with our family in Montana hadn’t become our first priority, because doing a short sale meant that, for a minimum of two years, we wouldn’t get to do the thing that we most love to do – to buy and fix up an old house.

When Shane and I moved back to Montana last December, we moved into the house that we’re living in now for two reasons.  The first reason is that I have always wanted to get my hands on this little house.  It was my mom’s house, and is an adorable little craftsman bungalow that people have destroyed bit by bit, over the years, with the addition of new, practical materials.  There are three original features left – a great front porch, maple floors, and an old bathtub.  But that’s about it really.  And the second reason we moved into this house is that it was trashed. 

My mother had been using this house as a rental for several years, and the last renters had knocked down the fence, not by accident, but by hitting it with golf clubs while drinking beer on Friday nights.  They had broken the windows, the cupboard doors, and most of the appliances.  They had put holes in all of the walls.  And somebody had literally sat inside of what is now Cale’s bedroom, and shot the walls, repeatedly, with a BB gun.  I picked literally hundreds of BBs out of the walls and off of the floors.  Poor, sweet little house.  My mother had no way of dealing with any of it either, so she was actually considering foreclosing.  Therefore, I convinced her to sell the house to us.

The arrangement that we worked out with my mom not only allowed her to keep from foreclosing, but it also gave us the opportunity to build some equity that we could use for a down payment on the next house.  Not only was it a relief for my mom, but it was a relief to me too, particularly since I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting a rental for two years wanting to sand and paint, but not being able to.  Instead, I’ve gotten to sand and paint.  And sand and paint some more.  And sand and paint some more.  And sand and paint some more.  I’ve actually become rather sick, in fact, of sanding and painting.  This house is adorable now.   

I told Shane, recently, that I really would like a big, old house again, but that I’m getting a little too old for all of the work.  And he’s been feeling the exact same way.  So when we started searching for a big, old house that didn’t need any work, a year and half earlier than originally planned (we won’t be able to get a loan from a bank again for at least that long), it seemed like an impossible endeavor.  But we didn’t really have anything to lose in trying because we had become rather accustomed to, and content with, the idea of being in this sweet little house for the rest of our lives.     

Alden, who doesn’t have a bedroom in this house (he sleeps on a mattress in the family room), has been complaining a lot about not having any privacy.  So I’ve been telling him that there are whole families in Africa that live in tents, “Be grateful that you have your very own, warm bed to sleep in my love.  It’s the only way to get a room of your own.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense Mom,” he’s whined.

“I know it doesn’t sweetie.  But it will.  You’ll see,” I’ve answered.

Somebody told me once that when the grass is greener on the other side, it’s because you’re not watering your own grass.  And Shane and I have been through a lot of heart ache in the past few years.  And when you’re going through heartache, it’s easy to forget about all of the things that you love to do.  We had moved away and had focused on careers and kids with Autism and a million other things for nearly six years, so we had almost completely forgotten that everything we touch, regarding houses anyway, turns to gold.  We didn’t realize that we had already begun to draw a miracle to us again, simply by making this house the best little house that it could be.  

When we first saw the house on the one particular street that I’ve wanted to live on for my whole, entire life, the street that our very first house was on that I said “good-bye” to, I honestly thought to myself, “There’s no way this’ll happen.  I mean, we’ve just been through a short sale, and nobody on this block would ever have to cut a deal in order to sell their home.  So why would they bother?  And besides (and here’s the only real limit) somebody like me doesn’t deserve a house like this.”

I caught myself thinking this, thankfully, and decided that it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.  So we called the lady and arranged to take a look at her house.

The house was for rent.  So we met the owner and considered the idea of renting it.  The house was even more amazing on the inside than it was on the outside, but I won’t go into the details because it would undoubtedly bore you to death.  I will tell you, however, that this lady is a genuine die-hard old house fanatic who is after my very own heart.  While she’s added every imaginable modern convenience (new wiring, new boiler, new roof, new appliances, central air, etc.), she’s also been sensitive in keeping all of the original features in place as well.

After an unbelievable tour, and after discussing the floors and the moldings and the plasterwork in the amount of detail that only genuine die-hard old house fanatics are capable of producing, we asked her if she had any loans against the place.  She didn’t of course (I’m sure that everyone on this block owns their houses outright).  So we asked her if she had ever considered selling it, and she said, “I would love to sell it.  I’m seventy five years old, and it’s a lot of work to have it cleaned and repaired in between renters.”

“Well, we’ve just been through a short sale, so it’s probably going to be another two, maybe three years until we can get a loan from a bank, but if you would consider carrying the contract, we’d be delighted to buy it,” I felt like a complete idiot as the words were leaving my mouth, because, honestly, why would she consider doing such a thing?

“I don’t know what it means to carry the contract,” she said.

“Oh… well… you have a real-estate attorney, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“I could explain what carrying the contract means,” I said, “but I think that you should discuss it someone you know has your best interests in mind, because I think it’s something you should thoroughly understand before you consider such a possibility.  In the mean time, Shane and I will discuss the idea of renting the house.”

We arranged a time to talk the following week.  And Shane and I came to the conclusion, very quickly, that we didn’t want to go through the trouble of selling our house just to rent hers.  So when she called Shane the following week, he told her that.  And she responded by telling him that she’d had a CMA done, that she’d talked to her attorney, and that she wanted to sell her house to us contract for deed. 

We quickly realized that the down payment on a house in that price range would eat up all of the equity that we’ve built up in our house, and not leave us any with which to pay off the debts that we’ve accrued by fixing our house up.  Therefore, we called her back and told her that we couldn’t put ten to fifteen percent down (which is the usual amount down, if not more, on a contract for deed).

She told us that she didn’t want that much down.  She only wanted half of the estimated equity we have in our house.  So we had a CMA done on our house, just to confirm the numbers, and, after selling our house, we should have just enough to pay off my mom, cover the closing costs, pay off our debts, and make the down payment on that house.  It was almost creepy how the numbers slid together.

I still balked.  “I’m not sure how we would make the transition Shane,” I said, “I mean, it’s not like we have anything saved with which to make the payment on both places while our house is on the market.”

Shane talked to his Dad, who, frankly, has never helped Shane financially with anything ever in his whole entire life.  Okay, that’s not entirely true.  I mean, he did raise Shane for crying out loud.  But parting with money is not something Shane’s dad is particularly known for.  In fact, he’s rather well known for the exact opposite.  Shane’s dad, however, agreed to loan us the money to make the payment on our house until it sells, and the lady agreed to rent us her house at a ridiculously low price AND take half of the rent each month off of the down payment (leaving us enough to pay Shane’s dad back once it’s all over with) until our house sells and we actually make the down payment and begin the contract for deed.

My grandma, too, apparently wants in on this deal.  She said that if we need money for anything throughout the process, to just let her know.

Would you believe that I still balked?  “Maybe this lady’s house isn’t worth the amount that she’s asking for it,” I told Shane, “I’ll bet that her attorney told her jump on our offer because we’re the only suckers stupid enough to buy her house at this price.”

So Shane had his uncle do a CMA on her house, and not only is it worth what she wants for it, but this lady has had two other couples try to buy it in the past few weeks.  And do you know why she didn’t sell it to one of these other couples?  It’s because she, too, is an old house person.

“Look at the way that old plaster is buckling?” the wife said to the husband about a spot on the ceiling in one of the upstairs bedrooms, right in front of our seventy five year old genuine die-hard old-house fanatic, who spent fifteen thousand dollars having new kitchen cabinets custom built to be identical to the ones that were originally there, and who undoubtedly lets everybody know it.

“Oh, don’t worry Honey,” the husband responded to his wife, “we can rip out all of that old plaster and hang sheet rock on the ceilings.”

Where are peoples’ brains?  That’s what I want to know.

“This is Shane,” my husband answered his phone.

“You have to buy my house,” the lady said.

“Why, what happened?” he asked.

She told him what the husband had said.  “And I told him that the ceilings would look brand new if they hung sheet rock on them!” she continued, “And why in the hell would you buy a one hundred and four year old house if you want ceilings that look brand new?!!  I told them to just go and buy a new house.”

My God.  She’s really is after my heart.

“She’s right, you know?” Shane said to me later that evening.

“Right about what?” I asked.

“We do have to buy her house,” he answered.

With the exception of a bit of caulking in certain spots in the plaster, which, just in case you ever need to know such a thing, moves with the plaster in the natural settling of an old house, nothing needs to be done.  Of course, we’ll probably change some paint colors eventually.  You know us.  But she’s having the floors refinished for us as we speak, and we’re scheduled to move in next week.

I told this story (actually, we’ve involved them throughout the whole process) to our spiritual financial advisers of sorts, and they sat there with their mouths hanging open when it was all said and done.  They told us that they would be using this story for years to come.  “Using it?” I asked, “How will you be using it?”

“It’s an example of what can happen when you set a clear intention, do the footwork, and have an immense amount gratitude for what you already have.  I mean, here you’ve had this dream for your whole life of living on this one particular street (which is probably about as clear of an intention as one can possibly get), you’ve been working diligently on your finances (amongst other things), and NOW, during the time in which you’re least likely to do able to do such a thing, the gift is literally handed to you.  I have only one concern,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Why aren’t you packing yet?” he asked.

I think it’s because I don’t actually believe it yet.  And I’m probably jinxing it by writing about it.  She’ll probably call tomorrow and let us know that she’s sold the house to somebody else, but that would be okay too.  I mean, we really are comfortable right here.  But I spent some time by myself in that house the other day, studying each detail of it like it was the last time that I’d ever be allowed there again, and I stopped for a moment, at one point, to lean against the wall. 

I’m so tired.  You know?  I’m so ready for a rest.  And as I put my face against the cool, old plaster, I was quite sure that I heard the words, “Welcome home.”  And maybe it really is about setting intentions and love and gratitude and all of that.  But it sure felt to me like plain, old-fashioned destiny.

 

Crazy-makers

Cale has been selected for a Medicaid Waiver!!!!  YEAH!!!!!!!!  IT’S ABOUT GOD DAMNED TIME!!!!  THAT SOUNDS UNGRATEFUL!!!!  WHAT I MEAN IS - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!  And things have been so very good around here.

We’ve gotten nearly all of Cale’s therapies set up already, and, between this and his medication (that we no longer have to worry ourselves sick about how we’re going to pay for) Cale has almost completely stopped hitting us and kicking us and destroying our house.  Not only that, but I believe that I have probably found the single best speech therapist on the whole face of the entire planet.  Cale is imitating words (and songs and phrases) again already!!  And I cannot even begin describe to you how magnificent it’s been to hear.

The wait for the Medicaid Waiver (particularly this past summer) nearly landed Cale in a group home.  But that’s all over with now, and the only damage remaining is that I still have one chipped front tooth.  I should be able to get that fixed soon though.

I’m afraid that I’ve been so busy lately with all of the paperwork, and with all of the meetings with our caseworker (who’s been an absolutely fantastic advocate for us), and with all of the running Isabel AND Cale BOTH (finally!) to all of their therapy appointments (we’re back to four different therapies per week EACH – that’s a total of eight therapy appointments per week, just in case you couldn’t do the math yourself - my husband has been telling me lately that I’m a tad too explanatory in my writing – Shane is my most adorable crazy maker, although there are a few others around here that are pretty cute too), that I haven’t had much time at all for writing.  And, what little time I have had for it, I’ve been working on my book instead of updating my blog.  So I thought that I should give the blog a quick update here on this gorgeous, snowy afternoon.

It seems like anytime I start working seriously on my book, I’m interrupted.  This week, for example, after an entire week straight of daily interruptions - two appointments with the psychiatrist, three appointments with the therapists (so far), one meeting with our state caseworker, and one half day of school (and I can’t seem to get any writing whatsoever done while my kids are at home) – I had finally gotten everybody off to what was supposed to be a full day of school, and I didn’t have to take anybody to any therapy appointments until later in the afternoon.  Therefore, I had an entire, uninterrupted school day in which to write.

It was around 10am when I got the call, and I had only been compiling stuff for about an hour.  By “compiling stuff,” I mean that I actually have an obnoxious amount of material already.  And this has been a bit of a surprise.  Somebody asked me once, fairly recently, how many chapters I have written for my book, and I answered that I only have the first three chapters written.  But the truth, I’ve discovered, is that I have literally hundreds of pages already.  And I discovered this because when I told another friend of mine, very recently, that I really needed to get working on my book again, she said, “Oh, you’re already writing a book.  You just don’t know it yet.”

She was talking about my blog, I think.  And this got me wondering if she might be right.  There’s a ton of material in the blog about my kids, but I also have a bunch of material that isn’t in the blog, material that I’ve been “processing” in spurts here and there as things have been coming back to me over the past couple of years.  And, between the two, I’d bet that I have roughly half of a coherent story already.

It’s kind of disgusting, when you think about it, that I’ve spent so much time writing about myself and my own life.  But this kind of thinking is a trap, I think.  I tend to tell myself that nobody’s going to care.  “Who do you think you are anyway, that anybody would want to read a book about your life?” is what my “inner voice” likes to say.  But this is just ego in reverse – rather than thinking that everybody’s going to care, thinking that nobody’s going to care.  It’s still extreme self-centeredness, while the truth is probably actually somewhere in the middle.  Some people might care, and others might not.  Therefore, I really try to respond to this “inner voice” with, “Hey, if nobody cares, then nobody has to read it.”

I don’t write in this blog so that it can be read, and I’m not writing a book so that it can be read.  Don’t get me wrong, I get really happy when I check the counter on this blog.  I had to stop doing it, in fact, because my head was getting too big.  And I would be equally as happy if my book (when it’s finished) was read too, especially if somebody could actually get something out of it.  But that’s not really why I’m doing it. 

You see, I’ve never had any kind of a dream about being a writer.  My dream was to be a painter.  I even went to college for this and, since I turned out to be a relatively mediocre painter, ended up with an education degree so as to actually be able to do something with my knowledge of Art.  And, as it turned out, I was much more gifted at dealing with “behaviorally challenged” kids than I ever was as an artist.

I was a high-school Art teacher until my career was uprooted by my children with Autism, whom no day care center, rightfully, in the entire city of Phoenix, Arizona, was willing to take care of (my kids couldn’t even make it through an hour in the babysitting room at the gym before getting kicked out).  And this was how I became a stay at home mom.  It had literally never even occurred to me be a writer, instead of a painter, until I had kids who, were they ever allowed anywhere near paint, destroyed the carpeting with it.  But I found that I had to have a creative outlet of some kind (and a very tidy one), so I started writing.

I was a mediocre artist, so there’s nothing to say that my writing is, or will be, any better.  But, then again, that’s not really the point, is it?  The point is that I have had Autism in my life since the day my brother was born (since I was a year and a half old), and our story (about our growing up, and about the lives of my own children) is a story worth telling.  So, even though I may be telling it to God, and God alone, I’m still going to be telling it.  I like to think of it as my own, personal little gift back to God, since he’s always done so much for me.  And I realize that this probably sounds perfectly cheesy, but I can’t really say that I care.  I mean, my baby is getting therapy again, getting nearly all of his little needs met.  Therefore, God absolutely deserves some of my time.   

It’s all sort of “Frank McCourt – esque” so far.  By that I mean that it’s all still gorgeously tragic, and I suspect that some of it will probably have to stay that way.  But this has presented me with a fairly serious problem, one that’s been quite a little road block for some time now.  It’s been hard for me to write about my brother.

I haven’t known how my brother would feel about being written about.  That’s why I haven’t put much about him in the blog.  Well, that and the fact that the blog is called The Spears Family Project, and my brother isn’t a Spears.  But there are others, too, whose feelings I’m concerned about.  I mean, how would you feel if you were written about in a non-fiction story, without your permission?  It might be grounds for the immediate dismissal of any kind of relationship with the writer, don’t you think?  So, even though I’ve already been writing about my brother (and a few other people) for some time now, I haven’t shared any of this material.  And, until recently, I haven’t been sure that I ever would.

I know that, from a literary standpoint, you’re not really supposed to ask a person’s permission before you write about them, because it may exact an influence on what you’re willing to say.  But I had to ask my brother’s permission.  Everyone else in the story is probably just going to have to live with it, but my brother, since quite a large chunk of the beginning of the story is about him, needed to be asked.  And the funniest thing happened when I asked him.

You see, my brother has high-functioning Autism (which, thirty five years ago, while the proper diagnostic tools weren’t yet readily available, went left undiagnosed).  I had completely forgotten that the only people on the planet that my brother really cares all that much about is me, my parents and grandma, and a few of the people that we went to camp with in the summers when we were kids.  So, when I told him about all of the stuff that I had already written about, but hadn’t yet shared with anyone because he was actually diagnosed with PTSD at one point because of some of it, he said to me, “I think you should just write it all, and get it published if you can.  And I don’t think you should care what anyone thinks.”

So the book is on.  I’m more excited about it than I’ve ever been before, to the point that I’ve been working on it for at least a little while every day no matter what, and to the point that I actually became rather irritated when the school nurse called me at 10am, after I’d finally gotten everybody off to full day of school and was left with whole, uninterrupted school day in which to write, to tell me that Isabel had head lice.   

“WHAT?!!!!” I yelled.

Now, I can handle a lot of things.  I can handle screaming and head banging and shattered glass and poop smeared on the walls.  But tiny, parasitic head bugs?  Sorry.

“SHAAANE!!”

He did the shampoo treatments on everyone in the family (well, I did his) even though Isabel was the only one with an infestation, while I washed and steam cleaned everything single thing in the entire house.  It ate up the whole day - stupid little parasitic crazy makers.  But, oh well.  I guess I’ll just keep trying.  Oh, and here’s a little tip – about fifteen drops of tea tree oil in the bottle of shampoo that your child uses daily, will forever prevent head lice no matter who, or what, your child is around.  NOW they tell me.