A Small Metal Square Amid the Ashes

Jonathan Reyes is 7 and lives in Sylmar in Southern California—-his family lost their house in the recent wildfires in Los Angeles County. Joshua is autistic and his family has been, amid everything else, especially concerned about what the impact of losing all that was familiar to him will mean. Yesterday’s CNN described the family visiting the ashes of their house of ten years:

On Tuesday, they brought Jonathan to the site of their home to see if any of his cherished Hot Wheels cars survived the fire. And maybe, they hoped, seeing the house would help their son understand.

“One of the first things he asks is, ‘Are we coming home today?’ ” said Jan Reyes, Jonathan’s mother. “Now that he sees this, maybe it will bring closure for him.”

As they drove to their house, instead of trees and a neighborhood, they saw a valley of metal and ash.

Pulling on heavy-duty gloves and strapping on masks, Jonathan and his parents shuffled through the debris searching for one of the boy’s treasures — his Power Wheels, a beloved blanket he always sleeps with or maybe his tricycle.

A favorite toy is like “a familiar anchor in the world” “for a child with autism, [Lynda Geller, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the New York University's School of Medicine] said. It can comfort the child when their world is in flux.

“We’re going to try and find your cars, OK?” said his mother. Jonathan nodded.

Shards of glass and pieces of their home crackled underneath their footsteps. Pieces of an air conditioner, the skeleton of a jukebox, molten bed frames, Christmas ornaments jutted from the ground.

“There’s nothing here. There’s nothing here,” Augustine Reyes said, holding a gutted time capsule that once held Jonathan’s baby tooth, their family photos and baby photos.

“I guess everything’s gone.”

CNN reports that the family found the frame of Jonathan’s tricycle in the rubble, and that he sighted a small metal square that was once part of one of his HotWheels cars.

A familar environment and familiar objects all in their familiar places, the nooks and crannies of a house: These are essential for my son’s need for order. We’ve moved several times in Charlie’s young life and, while he’s always been able to adapt to a new place to live, it always helps to have the old usual stuff: the rolling office chair my parents bought for me from the Price Club when I was just starting grad school, the pink IKEA footstool that’s served as a chair, table, oversized plaything, and much more over the years, his bed and various fleece blankets.

And then, we’ve moved so much that I think the three of us have just gotten used to, as Jim says, “traveling light,” and to having a bag packed with a couple of things. Charlie himself keeps his old blue backpack packed with his duct-taped-up ghost photo bucket and some old picture books: He still always loads this into the car when we go on anything longer than a trip to the store or other short errand and I suspect that, if we lost everything else, it’d be enough to have that backpack (with a few more things, like his Leapster and a certain blanket, stuffed in).

Jonathan’s parents note that, so far, he’s taking it better than them, though maybe because the full impact of their loss has yet to really sink in. Mattel has said that it will donate new toys for Jonathan and hope they come, real soon.