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Alex the Boy on Amazon
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JeffsLife
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Thank You for Calling

I'm wearing iPod headphones in the kitchen while making dinner -- and who in God's name would do that? -- when I hear the front door slam. I bolt around the corner and see Alex just taking his seat in the couch in the living room. Boy, that was a close one.

Until the phone rings. "This so-and-so in apartment such-and-such," a kind older lady's voice says. "I just wanted you to know that Alex was just in my apartment. I know who he is and it’s okay, but I wanted you to know that he just left, and I just wanted to make sure you knew he wasn't home."

Typical of my life that I'd hear this statement at the same moment I could look across the dining room and see him dancing to Elmo on the iPad. "I'm so sorry," I hear myself saying. "He did come back and thank you! I'm so sorry. I hope he didn't damage anything..."

"Well no," she says. "He just used my bathroom."

Jesus Christ. So sorry. He's home. It's all right. So sorry again. That's all right. Thank you so much for calling.

He's done this before. Like years ago, when the phone rang at 4 a.m. and it was a neighbor telling us that Alex had come in and turned on every light in her apartment. Like last summer, when it was almost a bolt an afternoon and a scramble to try floor after floor of our apartment building and listen in the stairwell for the telltale slam of a distant door.

Like two minutes ago, when I was scrubbing the bathroom floor (Alex's doing, too) and I heard our front door slam. I ran out and found Alex down the hall at the door of yet another kind neighbor who earlier was going out when we were coming in. "He's not home, Alex!" How many other less-kind neighbors hear me in the hall when I say things like that? Never has a shutting door sounded like it does to me in bolting times.

“Something about summer and Alex,” Jill emails. “Maybe you need to just take him out and accompany him in the elevator? Say ‘We will visit other floors. You can pick the numbers. We are not going to other apartments.’ It's just a suggestion.”

This afternoon I thought of writing a note of thanks to the lady from yesterday. “We’re sorry Alex intruded on you. We’ve talked to him about it, and it won’t happen again. Thank you for your understanding and kindness…” I felt like I was thanking someone for the gift of a Boggle game, and actually got half a sentence down before crumpling it up. What difference is a note going to make to someone who knows who he is and it’s okay? What makes me think it won’t happen again? 


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 4:49 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 25 July 2012 4:51 PM EDT
Friday, 6 July 2012
On the Edge

The small elephant sits on the edge of our dining room table next to the “3” scrawled in permanent marker. On the hutch sits the pig, the pirate, and the guinea pig next to the scawled “3A6.” The wooden figure that Alex swiped from his Saturday rec program, a blind Chinese man that he called “Uncle Rob,” sits on the right side of the entertainment unit next to the “2016” in black numeric stickers I bought at Staples because I thought Alex deserved a gift. To the left sit the plastic lion and lioness, flanked by the tiger, the big elephant, the rhino and the turtle.

Jill values all this furniture. The dining room table was her mother’s. The hutch and entertainment unit are Danish Modern and belonged to her beloved aunt and uncle, now long gone.

The stuffed moose and lobster are next to the “310” on one side of our coffee table. One rubber duck and “1168” in stickers sits on the other. The other sides feature the plastic cat, the plastic salamander and another rubber duck. The lamp table, the walls.

“Alex, cut it out!”

Autism and Destruction seem to go together like Peanut Butter and Chocolate (Googling "autism" and "destruction" nets 2.2 million hits; “chocolate” and “peanut butter” 26.3 million, but you get the idea.) Alex has had his obsessions:  black T’s, khakis, videos and YouYube on the iPad.

Fine, except the other night at dinnertime when he hovered around the table. “Alex, chicken?”

No. He bumped me aside and tried to position the tiny plastic elephant right where I wanted my stuffing. “Alex, I’m eating!” He doesn't eat like we do. If we'd been better parents he would eat like we do now, but we weren't so he doesn't.

He doesn't hesitate to pull out permanent Marks-A-Lot, either, and scrawl the numbers that mean something to just him beside the plastic animals on the edges. On the walls he uses crayons and pencils, which at least will vanish under Goo-Gone. "Lock up the pencils!" Aunt Julie suggests, taking time out of assisting her blind Chinese husband Robert. I picture a padlocked cage like at Michael’s where they keep the X-ACTO knives and the airplane glue.

On the walls Alex has pasted “Sesame Street” stickers and scrawled numbers. On the door of the linen closet he’s pasted a “1” and a “2” and scrawled what looks like two lines of “R’s”. Is it right that I call it “scrawled?” It makes him sound stupid, which I’m coming to see he's not. Just unknowable. When we get around to scrubbing the stuff off the walls, we will make him help us. That will make us good parents.
  


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 3:40 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 6 July 2012 3:42 PM EDT
Monday, 2 July 2012
Voice

I've hauled Ned and Alex out for a Sunday afternoon. The streets of Manhattan are yellow, empty and hot. I steer the guys toward the shade, figuring this is the kind of street-smarts a good dad imparts. "Shade, guys. Hug the shade. Water's in Alex's backpack." Ned's wobbly. Alex walks and walks and then breaks into bobs and weaves. I wish he wouldn't do that. I'm sure he wishes he was home with his iPad.

"Michael's?" Alex says. This is the crafts store nearby -- and despite autism he sure as hell knows it's nearby -- where they sell the plastic animals he always and always seems to want. "Yes, Alex, we'll go to Michael's as soon as we go to the sporting goods store to buy Ned his baseball glove." Ned doesn't have a baseball glove. I had one by his age.

"Michael's?"

"Yes, Alex. We can go to Michael's now." Michael's is across the yellow hot street. It's 94 degrees. Is this the kind of future summer for the kids I brought into the world?

In Michael's Alex yanks my arm toward the aisle of plastic animals. Thing is, he got a plastic bear yesterday. Tomorrow, while Ned is at baseball, the plan calls for me and Alex to hit clothing stores to find the right cut of narrow pants and shorts that Jill insists -- and I agree -- he needs to look anywhere near, God, let's face it, normal. I think yet another plastic animal in our house would be a good reward for good behavior during clothes shopping, and tell him so.

"Fireman?" Alex says, holding up a $4 plastic fireman. I thought they just had animals.

"No, Alex. Tomorrow. If you're good while we're clothes shopping."

"Tomorrow..." Alex says. Does repeating words means he's moving ahead? We bob around this retail environment for a while: Alex fiddles with the idea of making me buy a wooden letter; Ned finds a wooden cruxifix and thinks you drive into the vampire's heart to kill him. I explain that no, you hold it up and keep the vampire away. I tried to show Ned "The Night Stalker" once. Ned didn't seem interested. "Alex, let's go!"

"Dad," says Ned, "how about some clam chowder?" He's referring to the pot of stuff at the next-door Whole Foods. I'm ashamed to admit it as a born New-Englander, but what they call chowder at this next-door retail environment isn't totally repugnant. "Okay, Ned." So we go next door into the air conditioning and scoop out chowder. They even have a place to sit down to eat it. "Ned, go find us a seat while I pay."

He does. I find him. Four chairs, three of us. In a normal life, that would be enough. "Nooooo!" says Alex. "Nooooo!" I don't know if it's the heat or the backpack or that he will eat nothing we eat, but he will not sit down. Ned has his little cup of chowder -- I've taught him to like the stuff -- and I have my big bowl and neither matters to Alex. I tell him to sit down and he bites his own arm.

"Alex, sit down! I want to eat my lunch!" Doesn't everyone want to eat their lunch? Isn't everyone entitled to eat their lunch? "Nooooo!" He bites. He squats on the floor. I feel and yet don't feel the stares of the people at the table behind us. "Alex, I just want to eat my lunch!"

Alex doesn't do lunch. Haven't I learned the simpliest lesson yet? I haul him outside. He squats on the sidewalk and when I order him to stand up he does and then squats down on the sidewalk again almost immediately. Ned appears. "Alex," Ned says, "what do you want? Do you want the iPad? The iPad isn't here. If you want the iPad we have to go home. You have to go home if you want the iPad."

I'm not sure I can reach Alex anymore. I'll know Alex 30 years if I'm lucky (at times I feel like I'll know him 40 years if I'm not). Ned may know him for 70 years, if the love and caring doesn't evaporate some afternoon on the floor of a place like Whole Foods. You have to go home if you want the iPad. That is the voice of a parent.


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 1:58 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, 2 July 2012 2:07 PM EDT
Friday, 22 June 2012
Happy Birthday 2

Alex's birthday celebration Act 2 was supposed to happen on Sunday at grandpa's lake house. Except Alex had a bathroom experience and I didn't think it was a booming idea to put him a rental car. So we stayed home.

Jill and Ned went to grandpa’s with Aunt Julie and Uncle Rob, and that would have been spiffy if Alex had been bedridden and dopey over his iPad. Unfortunately he scrambled into his khakis and sneakers, strapped on his backpack, held his arm out stiff toward the front door, and said, “Take a walk!”

“Alex, we can’t risk it, sweetie. It’s a long ride…”

“Take a walk! Grandpa’s lake house. Party!”

How did he know that we were planning to do the rest of his birthday with the family today? He heard you talking about it, stupid! Except I don’t think Jill ever talked about it with Aunt Julie except on the phone, and never discussed it with me in Alex’s presence. A lot of the time at the lake house he spends watching “Sesame Street” in the basement or, last time, hooking up grandpa’s laptop to the Internet. But this time there was going to be something different.

“Party?”

“Oh, Alex.”

If he could just tell how us how he’s feeling, we could risk the back seat of the rental car. But he can’t. And so with yet another day scooped hollow by autism, about all I could come up with is a walk to the local big supermarket.

I make it a point to leave with Alex – Jill should be the one to go to the lake house and celebrate Father’s Day with her dad – before Aunt Julie pick up Jill and Ned. Alex and I start up Madison and get as far as 116th Street when his arm shoots straight up, pointing west. “PBS Kids,” Alex says. “PBS Kids…”

I thought he wanted to go west on 116 to see some kind of billboard with Elmo or something. But at the intersection of 116 and Fifth it hit me that he was taking us toward the garage where we normally pick up a rental car. “Alex, no,” I said. “We’re not going to grandpa’s lake house today. I’m sorry, sweetie, but we’re going to stay here but right now we’re going to the grocery store.”

“Car? ‘PBS Kids’?”

“Alex, I know you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry.”

He pulled me for a moment, he looked away, then he said, “Grocery store.” There’s not much more to say. In the store I offered him cookies, crackers ans chocolate. He chose to have me buy a bag of balloons and he was okay bathroom-wise for the rest of the day, and that sucked.


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 3:20 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 22 June 2012 3:21 PM EDT
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Happy Birthday

Tomorrow is Alex's 14th birthday. I'll write him a letter, just like I have on every June 14th since that hot afternoon when I walked against the tide of people coming from the Puerto Rican Day parade in Manhattan to make my way back to the hospital. Just like I did after a sandwich in the coffee shop (now long gone) while “This May Be the Start of Something Big” actually played on the radio.

This may not be one of my cheerier letters. Tough year. A year ago he was bolting into neighbors’ apartments. More recently there have been ugly things that have nothing to do with him. Still, my toughest year as a parent -- tough too because I realize this is just the start.
 
I had a cheery piece planned for here about Alex eating corn on the cob at a street fair, but you have to go with the subject that's burning a hole in your pocket. I drill him on birthdays.

“Alex, tomorrow is your…”

“Is your,” he says. He’s munching pretzels and watching Elmo on the iPad.

“Bi…”

“Birthday!”

“Birthday!” Back to Elmo. Alex just got home from school. Ned is really late, and I bet he’s somewhere buying Alex a present.

Almost a decade and a half since the isolette and going to the hospital every damned night. Fourteen years and three schools. Fourteen years and now there's a mustache and there’s hooking up a computer when other people claim they can't. Now there's a school prom coming up. “Are you going to ask someone to dance, Alex?”

“Maybe when he has his iPad and he's dancing around to it, we could dance with him,” says Jill. “He doesn't ask for much and maybe he wouldn't like it, but maybe he'd like the company.” I'm afraid the first thing I think is that he'd sit down on the couch until we left him alone. Guess that would be okay, too.

To Jill, I'm afraid, falls most of the ideas this year. She doesn't disappoint. “”I want him to have a special day and feel special and loved,” she emails. (Hope he feels that from me when I hustled him out of the house this morning with a haul on the arm and a snap that he’d dawdled over putting on his mismatched socks and so had no time for the iPad before the schoolbus. Hope so.) 

“I thought we could decorate with balloons,” Jill writes. “I should make birthday sign tonight!! And just in general help him realize he's having a special day (which when he's reminded he seems to be on board with). I am pretty sure I have all brownie ingredients. 

You can help me make sign later. Is there any space in the living room or on a bookshelf that we could clear off/establish for him as a Lego numbers place? Window sill? Top of the air conditioner?”

Alex has been making numerals out of Legos and setting them up the edges of the coffee table, the dining room table, the entertainment unit (much as we have “entertainment”). “1976” in red Legos to the right of our TV, “946” in yellow to the left.

“You have to really think outside the box for gifts for him. Can we push some books in on a bookcase? It wouldn't be so terrible.”

No, it wouldn’t. I can’t think of a better gift. Wish I could. 


Posted by Jeff Stimpson at 4:48 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 13 June 2012 4:54 PM EDT

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