Monday looms, and I try to shake the fear that the day will feel like dropping off a beloved cat at the shelter. Does Alex know what’s coming? Know he’s headed to a place he didn’t even pick?
Seven years ago, he hated his weekend sleepaway camp; around that same time a therapist gave him an IQ test. I watched him hesitate on the last Friday night before camp, then grab his suitcase and stride out the door for one more try. I watched him sigh over his last problem on the test, a linking puzzle he seemed to realize he’d just never solve. Does he know what’s coming?
We pack him up and leave mid-morning. Says Jill, “I never really envisioned how this day would go.”
The drive up is two hours. “Elevator?” Alex says in the back seat. Elevator is his word for home. “Elevator?”
“You’re going to residential school, Alex,” I say. “Schoolcamp. You’re going to college…”
“You’re going to go swimming at schoolcamp, Alex,” says Jill. “Will you go swimming at school, Alex?”
“Swimming,” he says. “Elevator.”
The school has a rolling campus, swirls of one- and two-story buildings, clean and cheerful between winding paths, grass and trees, sprinkled with one goat pen I know of and a few authentic New England covered bridges. One our first visit here – what? more than a year ago – the admissions lady dropped everything and gave Alex a handheld tour. On our second visit here, a formal meeting to determine if he’d fit at this school, Alex took several pieces of paper from Jill and on each wrote CAR deep in pen.
Today we finally stop the CAR and get out. “Whatyadoing?” Alex says. We step to the cafeteria to wait for whoever’s coming to start this new part of his life, and the first thing we see is a piece of metal artwork. It seems to be welded out of pipes, with old doorknobs Alex can grab to spin it. He doesn’t want to spin anything until Jill shows him what to do. Later she will remark that nowhere near this thing is a sign that reads Do Not Touch. “Instead, you touch it and something good will happen,” she will say.
The admission’s lady meets us. She has glasses and shoulder-length brown hair, like Alex’s Aunt Julie. Alex takes the lady’s hand, places it on the top of his head, nods and says, “Yes yes yes!” A game he plays with Aunt Julie.
About a dozen of us soon sit down to discuss Alex. It’s a long meeting.
Is there Wi-Fi in his new residence house? “There’s Wi-Fi down here but none in the house.” No Elmo and no iPad connected to the Net?
What’s he going to eat? No hot dogs, processed chicken or Utz pretzels allowed here. I start to wonder who this will really fly with him when it sinks in.
No regular tub. He’ll have to take a shower and not a bath.
At the meeting, staffers twice take Alex for a walk twice. Both times the staffers come back out of breath.
“Car, car,” Alex keeps saying. “Later car.”
“I think this can work out well,” Jill whispers to me.
When they sit him down for lunch they apparently want to see if he feels adventurous. Soon he tucks into a box of plump chocolate chip cookies. He also obediently puts a forkful of quiche in his mouth, then gets up, walks to the wastebasket, opens his mouth and lets the quiche fall out.
He’s got to stretch into new directions. Nobody’s ever going to pay him to watch Elmo on an iPad. “Daddy. Elevator.”
We drive – little too far to walk, so sprawling is the campus – to his new house, which looks from the outside like a nice suburban home with an alarmed double front door and which inside would make a very passable little ski lodge if you wanted such a place with offices for a nurse and a house manager. My first college dorm wasn’t nearly this nice.
He gets out of the car, grabs his suitcase and strides for the front door, a moment of boldness to mix with the moments of determination to leave. First thing we see inside is a big construction paper sign that reads, “Welcome To The House, Alex!”
Down the hall, past the bulletin board featuring one resident’s haircut schedule, is Alex’s new room. He has it to himself, though they might move him in with a roommate in coming days – this school aims to kindle friendships. I pull his socks and underwear from the suitcase and shoot them into the dresser as if it’s the most normal action in the world. “Alex, let’s put these in here for now...” Jill stresses to Alex that she’s hanging his hoodie in what is now his closet. He arranges his two dozen plastic animals and figures in rows on his dresser. I plug together the little stereo that he listens to as he falls asleep.
“It is and isn’t home,” says Jill.
“Daddy. Daddy. Pret-zuls.”
I lead Alex to the kitchen to show him the dishwasher he can help unload. “He likes doing that?” says one of the house attendants. I see a set of bongos out in the living room; I tell them Alex likes to drum. “Anything you can tell us about what he likes or dislikes would be great.” Everyone in this school is warm and welcoming and happy he’s here. The kitchen also happens to be in the other end of the house from Alex’s room. While one of the staff shows him the refrigerator (“ … well no, we don’t have pretzels here, Alex … ”), I slip back to his room to talk to the house manager.
I point that by spring Alex might make a good messenger between the campus buildings. We agree that sans Wi-Fi Alex will just have to make do with learning apps. “Believe me,” I say, gesturing toward his new dresser, “you’ll be flattered by the plastic figures he picks to represent you.” I then notice that Alex somehow disassembled his stereo and stuffed back in a shopping bag.
Out by the kitchen Alex says “Daddy!” and tries to get back to us. One attendant gently blocks his way by sidestepping backwards then slipping in front of him while another attendant hauls over the bongos. Jill and I start looking for a good moment to exit.
“Daddy. Later car. Take a car. Elevator.” Still, no fits, no tantrums, no screeching on the floor. He doesn’t yet know what’s fun here, but he does seem willing to find out. Jill and I leave.
