On the Up and Up

Autism is not keeping 11-year-old Alex Wyatt down, today’s Enquirer Herald (South Carolina) notes. Diagnosed with autism at the age of 2, Alex was recently “awarded the ‘Soaring Eagle’ award for his class at Clover Middle School for being helpful and responsible in the classroom.” Alex is in a self-contained classroom for students “who need a little more teacher attention.”

I’m reminded of what actor Peter Johnson, who stars in the movie The Child King, said in a recent WBZTV story: Johnson describes himself as having “Up” Syndrome.

Today is our last day out here in California. Yesterday Jim and I went northwards to visit friends who we last saw 10 years ago when Charlie was just a few months old. Charlie made the trip up as a baby, but yesterday stayed with my mom and dad and, not surprisingly (as he knows that we are leaving for Jersey tomorrow), he had moments of stomping stress and anxiety. But he navigated through the day. He told my parents that he did not want to see a movie as they had planned and instead went for a walk and hung around their house, changing the numbers on the digital clocks. They went out for hamburgers and, when they had to leave one restaurant because the wait was too long, Charlie readily assented: In the past, if he had to leave a restaurant without getting to eat, it would have been a very noisy exit. While watching photos on my dad’s laptop, he excitedly pointed to one of the red minivan that used to be the “schoolbus” taking him to the private autism school Charlie attended from December 2005 – June 2006, when it closed.

Charlie called out a name, a woman’s name ending in an “a,” my dad told me when Jim and I got home late. Charlie had been lying on the living room couch by the front window, waiting for us to come home and went off to his bed with a smile; I tucked him in. My dad repeated the name to me and I knew immediately: It was the name of his teacher at the private school, a wonderful, compassionate, smart young woman who helped Charlie learn to like school again after he was in effect “kicked out” of a former school district.

Things have indeed been looking up on the docks for Charlie, and us, ever since he was at the school with that more than fondly remembered teacher, and as we told our friends yesterday. We gave them one of Charlie’s school photos, in which he is wearing an apple green Life Is Good t-shirt: A most appropriate sentiment these days.