The Farthest Out: The New Problems of More Independence

In the red circle is Charlie, swimming in the ocean this afternoon, with Jim right beside him.

It was a perfect swimming day: Warm but not sweltering and the waves were big and foaming and came in slowly, and then crashed down volumes of water. Charlie ran down to the water, left his flipflops on the sand, handed Jim his shirt, and dove in—–and was first wiped out by a wave in the shallows, his back hitting the sand and shells. Not one to be down for the count, Charlie got right back up and, after checking him over, Jim got him back into the swim of things.

Charlie knows how to read the waves. It has become, it seems, second (first, really) nature for him to know at what moment to turn his body and tilt his head as a wave rushes over him, or to crouch down and pull his body flat, shoulders just a bit arched, and he disappears under the wave. As the waters pull back, his dark and dripping head emerges, and at first he sometimes runs back in and out onto the sand, as if to tease the waves. Today, having ducked his head into the crest of a swelling wave and gotten a full body ride in it, Charlie started swimming out. And out, and out.

He went far past where he could stand, and past where the line of swimmers (all adults) were. Jim swam by and behind him and got Charlie to turn north and swim out beyond where the waves were breaking: Charlie dunked his head in, rolled over onto his back and pumped his arms and powered his legs.

I watched from the sand, within close shouting distance of the lifeguard stand. We have a new worry: Charlie has become not only a very good swimmer. He is a better swimmer than Jim, which is a wondrous fact to report, and also reason for more than a little concern. What if Charlie swims out beyond where Jim can follow? What if Charlie gets caught in a riptide? What if………. It is still the case that, often when we call Charlie back with at least a little urgency, he laughs and keeps going in the other direction—-this is one thing when walking in a park, a serious, serious matter when swimming in the ocean.

So we have a simple new strategy: Jim swims and I stand right by the lifeguards and am ready to alert them at the first sign of Charlie going far too far out to sea. (And prepare a small speech of explanation: Autistic boy, superior swimmer, the ocean is bigger than any of us.) At 5pm, when the lifeguards leave, we get Charlie out and on the sand. “Always swim near a lifeguard” has taken on a new meaning, and urgency.

It’s a problem, a new worry, that has arisen with Charlie’s getting older. He wants to be more independent because he can, but there are still lots and lots of things that he needs our assistance with; needless to say, safety always comes first. On a similar note, while I am very pleased to see how Charlie has taken to his iPod and looks the picture of 10-year-old boyhood as he swaggered up Sixth Avenue with his headphones on yesterday in New York, I am also aware that it would not be too hard for someone to come and snatch it from him and run off, and that is a life’s lesson I am not sure I am ready to see Charlie go through, not yet.

And yet, these new problems are ones that I have to say, I am to some degree glad to be contemplating. Charlie is growing up, Charlie can do a lot: Charlie is 10 years old and he should be asserting himself, his need to do things on his own, his independence. If we had not taken him out in the ocean and taught to swim in the waves, he would not be swimming out so far now: If we don’t give Charlie the tools to push at the boundaries of what he seems to be able to, and of what people presume that he can and can’t do, he would still be standing on the shore.

If you could see the way Charlie moves so easily in the waves, I think you’d say with me that it would be a real pity—-a crying shame—if he were never given the chance to swim in the ocean over his head, and beyond expectations.