BBDO

“BBDO” meaning “Brooklyn–Bowery—D train—whOle fOOds,” rather than a certain New York-based advertising agency that is behind the New York University Child Study Center’s “Ransom Notes” campaign. I’ve obviously been a little caught up in responding to the Center’s “public awareness” campaign (a word whose military overtones I dislike, as if the whole point of “Ransom Notes” is so that someone can say veni, vidi, vici totos morbos puerorum puellarumque!——”I came, I saw, I conquered all the diseases of boys and girls!”).).

Lest it seem like this blog is itself becoming hostage to the cause of protesting the “campaign” (though I have to say, if you have not yet signed the petition, please consider doing so), here’s BBDO, Charlie-style.

A friend had invited us (as in all 3 of us) to a party in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe (whose feast day is December 12th). Jim had gone into his office to work and Charlie had an ABA session with his consultant coming over ,to rework his activity schedules to encourage more speech. Charlie and I took our time getting to the train due to having to stop in the drive-thru lane at McDonalds and to rush into a pharmacy to get some more melatonin (which has been a boon in helping Charlie to maintain a regular sleep schedule). We took the PATH train into the World Trade Center site: Charlie loves to ride the PATH as it offers great views of the bridges and all the industrial landscape of the Meadowlands. As the train pulls into the WTC station, one goes right into the “bathtub,” the deep basement of the buildings; Charlie and I looked over the construction equipment and the mounds of dirt, cold and just touched with snow. We took the escalator up and heard “Hey, hi!”: Jim was on the escalator going down; he turned around at the bottom and ran back up the stairs to meet us, and we all took the A train into Brooklyn, to the edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Our friend lives a couple of flights up in an older apartment building: Charlie took one look at the narrow stairway and said “no” and we all walked around the block, past the Golden Krust, a dollar store or two, Jennifer Convertibles, Mr. Sleepy, Chinese take-out. We went up the stairs again and Charlie—with past memories of small dogs running out—spent the next hour sitting in a chair in the landing with me talking to him or walking the block again with Jim. We kept telling him that we would only stay for a short while; Charlie clung to his blue case, turned down a suggestion to listen to his iPod, and said a very definite “NO” when we asked if he might go in to say hi, quickly. “There’s cupcakes,” I said. “NO.” “Lots of cupcakes.” “NO.” “Just a short while.” “NO downSTAIRS NO.”

Jim and I took turns going into the party; one of the guests is an Early Childhood professor and was immediately interested in hearing about Charlie. Another guest told me about interviewing a Texas family with five autistic children, all of whom were very fond of the soundtrack to Star Wars and to Jaws (giving me an obvious opener into the conversation: Avengers, anyone?). Our hostess offered me a glass of wine as I stood talking to Charlie, who jumped up and ran down the stairs. We followed and before I knew it Charlie was holding our friend’s hand and pulling her out to the sidewalk (she had no coat) and off they went. “Charlie!” I called. “It’s fine!” she called back. Charlie was starting to smile (a bit); they ran to the middle of the block and back and I coaxed Charlie inside. After another spell of sitting in the landing, Charlie assented to go (very cautiously) to “find Dad”; he ran out and down one flight of stairs, and ran in once more to say, at long last, “good bye!” (and he tried to tug his new friend, the hostess, out with him; we explained she had to stay, as it was her party).

It was past 8pm by then and Charlie was calling for his favorite eatery, “Whole Foods!” We took the C train back to lower Manhattan and, with snow flakes falling, went for a fast fast walk down West Broadway. Charlie held onto Jim’s hand and kept his blue case tucked under his arm and laughed and hummed; the two of them ran-walk much of the way, slipping around taxis waiting for the light to change, with me tagging behind. Charlie started his dinner by eating his dessert first and his sushi second and then it was back onto the subway. We caught the F train and then (after Jim had made a careful study of the map), ran across the platform to the D train and then literally ran down 34th Street to try to make a 10.38pm train in Penn Station.

We missed it by 1 minute.

“Green drink,” requested Charlie and into Hudson News we went. “Do you want to wait or keep moving?” Jim asked.

Based on what you’ve already read in this post, you may have guessed that we kept our coats on and Charlie’s green drink got kind of shaken up: We hurried over to take the subway (the 1 this time—-it’s Jim who knows where we’re going, Charlie and I just try to keep up) and then onto the PATH to Newark where (finally) we had to sit down in the waiting room. Charlie stretched out on the bench and Jim sat back; I noticed a women with a flowery scarf over her head and a padded coat, and a couple of plastic bags and an old paper coffee cup to the left of us. She was batting her hands lightly on the bottom of her face and talking to herself. I wondered if she would be able to stay in the station overnight.

It was past midnight when we got home. Charlie ran to a bookshelf and pulled out the two books whose covers he has taken a liking to and piled them up on his bed along with the blue case (which, having done some traveling, is in need of a good cleaning), his backpack, his photos, one of my shirts, one of Jim’s shirts, some blankets. He fell asleep with his hands tucked under his head, just as he used to when he was a baby.

Just keep moving: That’s always been the best advice for us with Charlie. It’s been a journey, it is a journey, of much unexpectedness. Charlie himself changes, and grows, and grows up, with each passing day. A single picture, a video clip, and a diagnostic definition—and certainly not the extremely over-simplified copy of an ad “campaign”—can never contain the real boy trying so hard to work through his anxiety in a chair in a Brooklyn apartment building. Before, we would have sighed and said hushed and hurried hellos and left; on Saturday night, we asked Charlie to wait until he was ready and calm. And he did.

And he got a new friend and a fine night out on the town one December evening.

Venimus, videmus, vivimus.: We come, we see, we live.