Notes on a Son
When he was sixteen years old, my son, along with the boys and girls on his high school swim team, did the Sharkfest Swim. Alcatraz to the wharves of San Francisco, one and half miles in cold, turbulent, shark infested water. I still shiver and quake at the thought. Six months later, he and his swim mates did The Catalina Relay. Twenty miles from Catalina Island to the Pacific Palisades, at least half of it in the dark. I still get seasick thinking about it. A year after that, he and his fellow team members did a relay across the English Channel. Water temp – 54 degrees, no fins, no wetsuits, stinging jellyfish, heavy currents, and industrial freighters. It worked out that my son was the swimmer who touched the shore of France, barely evading the embrace of an enthusiastic Frenchman that would have disqualified the entire team. You’d think he might have shouted a warning, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t. My son is on the autism spectrum and can sometimes have a difficult time talking to people, especially those babbling loudly and exuberantly in a foreign language. Thankfully he hurried up and onto the beach and disaster was averted. Such is life for those who don’t work quite like “normal” people. Success can be one step away from mishap. Others, even well-meaning ones, can throw you because they move and talk faster than those who measure twice – sometimes three or four times – and then carefully cut once.
In my 2017 novel, The Practical Navigator, the protagonist, Michael Hodge, is a single father dealing with the news that his son is on the spectrum. The boy, Jamie, is six and in many ways Michael’s experience reflects that of my wife and my own, some fifteen years ago. The initial shock at the diagnosis. The fear. The uncertainty. We hardly knew what autism meant and what we read seemed ominous. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we help him? We had no idea. But we slowly learned. We found people and services. We learned about occupational therapy. Speech therapy. Floor time. All of this seemed to be in its infancy then. We had no idea if any of it was even helping. All we saw were the challenges.
My son gravitated early on to the swimming pool. He loved the pressure of the water on his body. He liked going to the rock-climbing gym and because we were told it was good for his coordination, we went as often as we could. I enjoy tennis and golf and would take him with me as often as he’d let me. A favorite story. My son was about nine and we were playing an easy local track. On the first hole, he hit a short, straight drive and as he approached the ball, he pulled a lob wedge from his small bag of clubs. It was at least one hundred and fifty yards to the pin, fifty to clear a fairway bunker.
“Wrong club, Bub,” I said.
“Dad,” he said, “it’s my decision.”
“You want to at least carry the bunker,” I insisted.
“Dad,” he repeated, “it’s my decision.”
I shrugged and watched as he hit the ball into the bunker. Four or five or six shots later, he was on the green, calmly putting out, when it hit me. “My man, you do know you’re trying to get the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible?” He looked at me in surprise. “Really? But- why? It’s fun to hit the ball.” It’s something I’ve tried to remember on the golf course ever since.
My son’s elementary school was a warm and nurturing place. It was close to home, and he was surrounded by supportive teachers and typical peers. We supplemented his studies as best we could with aides and outside tutors. Looking back, we probably could have done better in the academic department. At the time it though, it seemed more important that he be comfortable, secure, and accepted for who he was and frankly, we had no idea where else to go. His first middle school experience was a disaster. It was a private school for “students who have struggled” and it promised highly trained teachers and research-based learning strategies. After one unhappy, defeating semester with far too much time spent sitting in the principal’s office alone because they didn’t know what to do with him in class, we took him out. We explored public school options which increasingly seemed wrong for him. They gave little and they expected little of him. We were then lucky enough to find a city supported private school in San Diego, a school where, we were told, there were “no labels, no excuses” and that it was “life on life’s terms”. The school motto was “I will either find a way or make one.”
Students mentored one another and when my son first found himself in one-on-one situations with peers he wasn’t comfortable with it. Several weeks in, when unexpectedly told one day that all students would be staying to spend the night at school to engage in social activities, my son slipped out the door and ran away. The school searched for him, we searched for him, the police searched for him. At one point a helicopter was flying overhead – “Be on the look out for….” Hours went by and we were out of our minds with worry. And then out of nowhere a call came on my wife’s cell phone. It was him. He was in a questionable part of town at least 18 miles away. He had walked there, somehow crossing over, under or across two freeways, and trudging through several neighborhoods in the process. Tired, he had at last gone into a convenience store and asked to borrow someone’s cell phone. The school suggested that it be the police who picked him up and brought him back. Thirty minutes later, we were outside waiting when the cruiser pulled into the school parking lot. My son quickly jumped out of the back. The first words out of his mouth? A defiant – “I’m not spending the night!” Our reply? “Yes, you are!” And he did. And then, when he came home the next day? A triumphant – “I had fun!!” We can almost laugh about it now. Almost.
In the new school, my son was expected to focus on a college bound course of academics and even though he addressed the subjects with his teachers, a single subject at a time, he struggled at first. Math was difficult but doable. Literature was a nightmare. My son is a competent reader, but he doesn’t think in words, he thinks in pictures. When asked which foreign language he wished to study, he requested Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines. He was disappointed when told it wasn’t on the curriculum. He was asked to do culminating presentations on his course work, and they were mono-syllabic, and he spent most of the time staring at the floor. But three times a week he and his schoolmates swam. First in a YMCA pool, not far from school and then, when other members complained about the “weird kids”, in the ocean where the “weird kids” often scared the lifeguards half to death, hitting the high surf and swimming out to sea at six-thirty in the morning, no one ever dreaming that in several years the “weird kids” would all be swimming the English Channel together.
As he now approaches his senior year, my son, now nineteen, still struggles with math, and it’s doubtful he’ll ever be a literature major, but he has become a competent and dedicated student. Rather than Tagalog, which he has vowed to learn on his own, he opted for Spanish and as for those presentations, he now gets up, looks everyone in the eye and speaks with confidence. He talks about being a lifeguard, he talks about being a marine biologist, he talks about studying snakes and poison dart frogs. He talks about the kind of house he’d like to have some day. He likes the idea of bright colors and round, Hobbit doors. With the help of a service dog, he has achieved a level of independence. On weekend walks, he’s made friends in our small town. Local merchants. Wait staffs. The guys who play pickup basketball at the park on Saturday mornings and of course, the members of the local swim clubs. They all enjoy my son, and they look out for him. My son has come to a place where he rejects any imposed limits that come with the label of autism spectrum, and I am so proud of him for it. And yet I still worry. I still see the challenges. If the first hump to get over as a family was the initial diagnosis and the obstacles my son would face as a boy and a teenager, the second one will be those he faces as an adult. It can be hard out there for everybody, but it can be especially hard for those that are considered – and again, it should be in quotes – “different”.
In a recent New York times piece, the columnist, David Brooks, pointed out that we, as individuals, “want to go off and create and explore and experiment with new ways of thinking and living. But we also want to be situated — embedded in loving families and enveloping communities, thriving within a healthy cultural infrastructure that provides us with values and goals.” Brooks says we look to create a contract with society through work and service and we look to create a covenant with our families, friends, and communities through love.
Contract and covenant; my son wants both. Will there be a job for him someday studying poison dart frogs? Perhaps but probably not. We have no idea yet what his calling, his contract with society, will be. More important, will there be relationships and a family – a covenant – not of origin, but of his own making? There are no courses or schools or programs for that, at least none I’ve heard of. I do know my son is long on love.
I tell myself I’m not alone. I tell myself that all parents want the very best for their children, want them to be secure, happy, and fulfilled. I tell myself there are times when no parent has all the right answers. I didn’t when my son was six, and I don’t now that he’s nineteen. I can only tell you this. At a recent fundraiser for autism awareness, my son had the opportunity to go up on stage and answer questions. He is 6’1”, has long blonde hair and a swimmer’s body. He was wearing slacks and a dark sports jacket and his favorite bow tie. In front of several hundred people, he answered the questions put to him with poise and authority. He talked about his swims, and he talked about his dog, and he talked about his school. And when asked what he wanted to do next, he smiled and replied – “Maybe go to college, get a good job and marry a pretty girl.” The audience erupted in laughter and enthusiastic applause.
I did too.
2017ONGOING EPILOGUE
My son is 26 now. He still lives with us but is ALMOST completely independent. He works five days a week at a local market where he is a valued employee, and he does volunteer work at The Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It’s not what he wants for the rest of his life, but it works for the time being. He still hits the ocean on a regular basis, he is socially active with any number of devoted friends and finally, though he’s come close once or twice, he hasn’t found that pretty girl yet. He still says he wants to. From a young man’s mouth to God’s ear.
The Practical Navigator is available on Amazon:
https://author.amazon.com/books/bookDetail?book=B01ARSJJJW&marketplace=ATVPDKIKX0DER
