Lost In Any Language, and Then Found

Friends had invited us to a pool party on Saturday afternoon. Jim had been asked to speak at a workshop here so I looked up directions on Google Maps, wrote them down, and off Charlie and I went—-only to spend an hour and 15 minutes driving in circles on both sides of a state road. I should have printed out a map; I mistakenly thought that knowing the names of the streets would be enough. We were going to the home of a relative of our friend but I couldn’t remember the relative’s name; I called information, but couldn’t get a phone number for her residence and my friend’s cell must have been off. So it was back and forth hither and yon and turning into many strange suburban streets.

Charlie sat attentively in the center of the back seat and put up with my sallies to find the house where I had told him we’d see “friends.” Finally, with frustration much increased and the gas gauge much lowered, we turned around, beneath a sign reading Kafka Drive. I left my friend a voice mail full of apologies and we went to the pool at our YMCA.

We stopped in the Family Locker Room where a grandmother suddenly shooed her grandson into his clothes, or I think that’s what she said. A younger woman with shiny blond hair appeared and spoke in a Slavic language.

We went to the pool, where Charlie jumped right in with a big grin. Two Chinese girls were swimming and laughing as they tried to pull themselves onto a huge green and yellow cylinder, their father pulled them across the pool. Charlie swam around them and was soon at the deep end; he commandeered the blue and red boat and kicked mightily, then pulled himself to sit at one end and semi-dove off, slowly reemerging from under the water. He did his trademark medley of back stroke/breast stroke/face in and kick kick kick and then floating this way and that, occasionally pausing to sink down under the water with his eyes closed and his head tilted back.

I swam a couple of laps. “Ni hao ma?” said a child’s voice: One of the Chinese girls was asking me, how was I?. “Hao ah,” I responded, but it’s pretty noisy in a pool and I don’t think she heard me.

She must have heard Charlie, who was vocalizing his enjoyment in the water (and probably relief that we’d gotten to the pool, if not the promised party, after driving into endless dead ends). It was getting a bit more crowded in the pool. A father stood on the side at the shallow end with his two sons and told them, “I want you to swim two laps. One free style, one back stroke.” I treaded water beside Charlie, who was backfloating with his eyes clothes in the deep end and urged him to “move left” when the two boys, dark-haired like himself, swam closer. Charlie took his time moving; he looked so peaceful, just floating, and then he was gliding into the water. The older boy was still splashing across the pool.

I swam down to the shallow end and got out and again heard, “Ni hao, ni huei shuo Jongwen?” It was the dark-haired girl, who must have been about 6 or 7. Did I speak Chinese?

“Woo huei shuo,” I said.

“Ta huei shuo Jongwen?” the girl asked, looking at Charlie, who had found his way to the shallow end and was dunking himself in and out of the water.

I leaned forward. “Ta bu huei,” I said.

“Weisheme?” she asked. Why?

Why indeed.

I said:

“Ta bu huei shuo Jong wen. Ta shi……ta…..…autism.”

She shook her head. I couldn’t remember the Chinese word (it’s zi bi zheng, formed of the three words “self,” shut/close,” “obstruction”) ) and while I was pausing a loud “You come over here NOW!” could be heard. It was the dad of the two boys; with their dark hair, it was easy to confuse Charlie with them in the water. The father raised his voice: “I have been calling you and calling you. Didn’t you hear me? Now come on over and swim some more. Now. NOW.” His son had been hanging onto the big green and yellow cylinder, which the father pushed out of the pool. The son swam slowly to the deep end.

Charlie and I swam two more times up and down the pool. Even with his eyes closed, he always managed to not bump anyone (now the two girls and the boys and their dads were all in the deep end). Charlie maintained that half-hidden smile as he moved in the water. He asked for the “stairs” and the “towel” and then “shower” and then “car, Dad!”, directions I readily followed.

And unlike my Googled directions to my friend’s relative’s house, Charlie’s were 100% right, and got us where we needed to be.