What happened?: On Charlie growing up

“I can’t leave my child alone for a moment.” “He can never be out of my sight.”

How often have you (if you are, like me, the parent of an autistic child)—-how often do you—-say these sentences? Or are they not mere sentences to you but mantras that you organize your life by?

Knowing what Charlie is up to and where Charlie is and who he is with are the sine qua non of my days. Sometimes I think I have developed the proverbial eyes in the back of the head—some sort of sixth sense—so that I always know where Charlie is. He can talk, but in short phrases that—shades of his apraxia—are not always clearly articulated. He answers Jim’s and my requests, and those of his teachers, but is much more sporadic about responding to anyone else. He is not a runner, though, when he was younger, Charlie did walk out the front door and just kept going into the neighbor’s backyard (they had a slide).

Needless to say, when we are out in public—-at the grocery store, the library, a weekend trip into Manhattan—we always have our eyes on Charlie, if not his hand in one of ours. Our house is a 60’s split-level; it is my in-laws’ house and most of our things are on the lower level, the kitchen and living room above. The refrigerator is well-provisioned (my in-laws’ nurse also lives with us) and Charlie frequently walks by it, opens the door, looks in. For the first few months that we lived here, I had to keep that constant watch on Charlie so he would not poke his fingers into Grandpa’s and Grandma’s things, or squeeze out plates of ketchup.

This evening Charlie was fine on his own.

After dinner, I had gone downstairs to prepare a class on Roman contract law (not exactly my field of specialization); Charlie was using our bed as a trampoline, and then he was going off with his blanket and the stuffed bear he has taken a liking to (along with its red, white and blue flip flops). When I called out to him, I heard his voice say his name and knew he was in his favorite swivel armchair by the stairs, and I could just hear the TV: Grandma and Grandpa were watching Jeopardy.

“What happened,” I suddenly heard Charlie’s voice say. And realized that he was probably imitating Grandma saying that about the contestants vying to get that daily double. “What happened!”

As I was reading about contracts litteris (written), Charlie came down with the blanket, bear, and the flip-flops, quite peaceful-easy. His small but significant feat—not needing anyone to watch him upstairs but still attuned enough that he was listening to Grandma, Grandpa and (for who can know) Alan Trebek—did not occur to me until right before bedtime. I can’t remember the context; I must have said something like “they’ll wonder what’s the matter” when Charlie, who was stretched out on the fleece blanket on his bed, caught my eye with his and said,

“Whatsa matter, Charlie? What happened?” And then, “it happened!”

What’s the matter, Charlie, what happened?. These innocuous phrases had once become anathema to me because—as I learned from Charlie’s constant repetition of them when distressed—-an aide in his former class had once said that to him while he was in upset and Charlie came (I think) to associate those words with a tantrum.

But tonight—here in a different house, in a different bedroom, but still with his old blue blanket and smelling just faintly of ketchup (perhaps)—Charlie said those words clear as a new-polished bell and grinned at me. “It happened!”

“Yes, it happened,” I said, and folded up his blanket into a smooth square as Charlie likes.

“Happened!” Charlie said once more.

Yes: Whatever you wish to fill in for “it”—the change in Charlie since our move into my in-laws’ house and his being in his current school; Grandma saying “what happened”; autism—something has happened.

In the room that used to be Grandpa’s office, on a bed over-loaded with his favorite things, while I sat in the dining room with my books and Jim was coming home on the train, Charlie was soon fast asleep.