I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

I write fairly frequently here about Charlie growing up. Of course, he’s not the only one around here getting older: It’s my birthday today, and I’m 40.

Fout-ohmygod, as one my mom-blog-friend puts it. Like the narrator in T.S. Eliot’s poem, I grow old, I do grow old, and I actually do roll the bottoms of my trousers (ok, pants), because I’m too lazy to get out a needle and thread and hem them.

My mother did teach me to hem, years ago, and it really is years ago, due to this birthday thing. She taught us the basics; I think my first “creation” was a pocket made of fabric from the scraps of the Halloween costumes and jumpers and curtains and pillows she used to make. She put together a sewing box for my sister and me and I remember trailing behind the two of them as we wandered the rows in the fabric store. I loved seeing all the prints and patterns and colors and running my hands over the bolts of material, and always had to steal a long look at what I thought was an infinite array of buttons, snaps, rickrack, ribbon, and “notions.” When I was around 7 or 8 and my sister, sewing boxes in had, took the AC Transit bus to the big town a couple miles away (we were living in what was then a very brand new suburb) and took lessons at a Singer sewing store. I was mildly terrified of the needle on the machine going through my finger and didn’t advance beyond making an awkward wrap skirt from a Simplicity pattern.

The reason we were taking AC Transit to the sewing lesson was that my mother had gone back to work and it was just my sister and me for many hours in the long, hot summer days. The once a week sewing class broke up the time (most of which we spent, quite contentedly, reading books). A year later, we moved back to Oakland, where my father’s family is from (and where he, my sister, and I were born). The sewing machine, cover clipped securely on, sat in a corner of the downstairs room where my dad had his desk, or in an unfinished storage area.

My mother also used to needlepoint and my sister took this up, and still does (the green dragon under the words “Charlie’s room” still hangs on a wall by his’s window). I didn’t think about sewing till I was in graduate school and on my own, and, finding that I really didn’t want to have to roll up the bottoms of my pants, I asked my mom to teach me how to hem, again. I did a few pairs of pants with her, yes, “helping” to even things up—-ok, sometimes my mom, who is just a bit shorter than me, would just pin up the pants, pack them up in her luggage, hem them at home in California, and send them back to me. I probably got more care packages while I was in grad school and living in my own place than when I was in a dorm in college, and felt a bit ridiculous when finding myself really looking forward to see what kind of cookies she’d saran-wrapped in pairs.

So much for me “growing up” and being “independent.”

These days, she still sends the packages (my dad was quite thrilled to discover those flat-rate shipping postage boxes). Now there’s stuff for three and, in the latest sent two weeks ago, two pairs of pants, carefully hemmed, for Charlie, who seems to have reached a stage of his life when pants grow shorter overnight and when he and Jim can pretty much share t-shirts and socks. (And when the three of us were briefly confused the other day about whose black suede slip-on shoes were whose; Jim’s appeared only slightly bigger than Charlie’s.) I not only still don’t hem pants, but work is very busy, and taking care of Charlie, and talking and thinking through things with Jim, and everything …..

But I know I could hem pants if I had to. I still have a sewing box outfitted with needles of different sizes and different colors of thread and scissors and a thimble (though I did misplace the box for awhile in one of our moves). I don’t have to roll up the bottoms of every pair of pants, having finally found some that more or less are the right length, but I like knowing that I could if I had to. In the occasional times when I’ve sewed a button that fell off a sweater or one of Jim’s shirts, or tried to patch the lining of my coat pockets, I’ve found the activity of sewing—making the knot in the thread and moving the needle and thread in and out and in and out—focusing and, while not exactly relaxing, soothing in the repetition.

And then, my wardrobe has of late been a bit over-supplied in khaki and ripstop pants and jeans, some with elastic waists: The pants Charlie was wearing last year are pretty much the right length for me.

40 years old, and wearing hand-me-ups from a not-yet-adolescent boy.

Such are life’s lessons when you know you’re older, and you’re trying, very hard, to be just a bit wiser, especially when you know you get to spend the years to come (40, 41, and counting) with your two very, very best friends.

(But how long will Jim have a few inches on Charlie—there will be time, there will be time.)

Corduroy, velvet, denim. Leather, silk, a rock. Bubble wrap, fake fur, burlap. Not a list of supplies for a craft project, but a list of things with different textures—but if you felt each, with your fingers or on the soles of your feet, would they just be so many sensory sensation? Or might one say “security” to you, or one make you agitated, even angry? Does touching certain textures evoke certain emotions in you?

If so, you may have “tactile-emotion synesthesia.” Synesthesia is an “involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense”; it’s thought to be much more common in the general population than previously thought. Someone with synesthesia might attach certain textures or sounds to numbers or colors, as Daniel Tammet describes in his autobiographical Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant. It’s been found that synesthesia can be auditory (certain sounds are felt, smelled, and so forth).

Here’s today’s Neurophilosophy on work published in the journal Neurocase by researchers at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego:

In patient AW, a 22-year-old female, the most vivid emotions are evoked by denim, which causes in her strong feelings of depression and disgust, and silk, which produces feelings of happiness and contentment. Other textures evoked a wide variety of emotions and feelings: when she touched corduroy, AW felt confused; leather aroused feelings of receiving criticism; multicoloured toothpaste made her feel anxious; wax made her feel embarrassed; tylenol gel caps made her feel jealous; and different grades of sand paper made her feel either guilt, relief, or as if she was telling a white lie. In patient HS, a 20-year-old female, the same textures often evoked different feelings. She felt no real emotion when touching denim but was disgusted instead by the texture of fleece and wax; corduroy made her feel disappointed; bok choy made her feel irritated, but smooth metal made her feel sedated and calm. In this subject, the strongest emotion was evoked when she touched soft leather, which made her feel extremely scared - she described the sensation as “making my spine crawl.”

Charlie’s always been drawn to things based on color and shape and also—as we later noted—texture. When younger, he seemed to prefer toys (blocks, puzzles, beads) made of wood, rather than plastic (ok sometimes, but much more rarely) and metal (never an interest). As I’ve often noted, he (and we) have become a bit dependent on polarfleece in the form of jackets, vests, gloves, hats, and blankets. Light cotton t-shirts and pants made from some kind of cotton-based material with not too many fasteners are pretty much what Charlie wears day in and day out, along with a dark blue hooded sweatshirt—a long time since we’ve bothered with knit sweaters for him and forget the potential slipperiness of polyester. While Charlie seems quite uninterested in drawing or coloring or painting with a brush, we’ve been noticing that when he can touch the materials—-clay or putty—he’s been quite motivated.

Kind of gives the phrase “how are you feeling” a whole new dimension.

Did Thanksgiving and now full speed ahead into December with all of its festivities, plus a few extras. Today is “Black Friday” here in the US, formerly known as “the day after Thanksgiving when people line up at 5am to charge the stores to get super-special-deal-discounts on holiday purchases”—as you probably guessed, we didn’t hit any malls with Charlie in tow. He has a general aversion to shopping for clothes, electronics, and anything in the closed confines of the modern mall. Once upon a time, we went to malls with pretty much the sole intent of walking around for exercise on a cold winter day, with the promise of escalator and elevator rides. Charlie’s interest—desire—to ride the likes of those has waned (and, too, some rather painful memories of dragging a very unhappy boy away from the down escalator, which he wanted to go up on).

Fortunately, there’s cyber-shopping, and no need to drag Charlie on any shopping expeditions. A lot of the bloggers at b5media have put together gift guides and I’ve included the list at the end of this post (just click where it says “read more”). I haven’t put together a guide of “stuff” that’s appealed to Charlie (and that he’s actually liked and used……) but I might, could, if anyone’s interested………. here is one suggestion:

Can I Sit With You Too? is the second collection of stories from the Can I Sit With You? project, which gathers together tales from the “stormy social seas of the schoolyard.” Here’s the book blurb:

These new tales represent an even wider range of schoolyard experiences, including best friend disappointments, new kid fears, harsh discrimination, living with disabilities, and emerging sexuality. By sharing moments from kindergarten through high school, these stories once again remind us that we are not alone: chances are, if it happened to you, it happened to someone else, too. The Can I Sit With You? project has been featured on NPR, and in live shows and readings from Seattle’s Annex Theatre to the San Francisco Bay Area’s Book Passage. Proceeds from this book benefit SEPTAR, the Special Education PTA that Jennifer Byde Myers and Shannon Des Roches Rosa helped found in 2007.

As related, we had an incredibly quiet Thanksgiving with just the three of us. We used to go to the club where Jim’s aunt, Aunt Joan, was a member; she passed away, very suddenly, last June; she was happy, well-loved, liked, and regarded, and she’s more than missed. Thanksgiving at that club would not be the same without her ushering us in and sitting down with some white wine beside her husband.

The club was a challenging place for Charlie to be; he had to get all dressed up and after he ate, there was never much for him to do (or, rather, never much that would have been considered “appropriate” for him to do), and his whole day would be thrown off because of eating “dinner” at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. People—and no one more than Jim’s aunt, whose oldest son is severely disabled—were understanding but I guess difficult, awkward moments in social settings still feel, well, difficult and awkward.

Shannon Des Roches Rosa recently posted about helping peers understand our kids’ social challenges and some of what she notes might be helpful to mention to others—relatives, family friends—too, especially at a time of year when there tend to be more social gatherings, parties, and other “holiday cheer” (that often doesn’t feel so cheerful). I’ll just quote some bullet points from the post:

• Don’t to give up on [kids with social challenges]
• Don’t ignore them
• Make them listen to you sometimes!

I’d also suggest, we should listen to kids and those with social challenges all the time, however they’re communicating, with words and without.

And in regard to holiday gifts—just today I found and carefully refolded the silk Christmas tree scarf Aunt Joan gave me in a drawer, and thank her always for some very wonderful memories.

Read more

Hoodies banned at some NJ schools, the September 12th NJ.com reported.

Fortunately, not Charlie’s school: What would one do without a soft blue hood to pull over one’s ears and head, whatever the weather? And now that it’s gotten fall crisp and cool, a hooded sweatshirt isn’t just fashion, it’s necessary, especially while waiting for the schoolbus on a misty morning.

We’ve gotten Charlie a new blue hooded sweatshirt as the sleeves on the one he wore up till July are now “bracelet length” on him. The new sweatshirt’s big and floppy and not quite the right fit. But a little room to grow into is good too.

Has lugging loads of (soaking wet) laundry led to your developing the muscles in your arms (though not as much as this Olympian mom)? Imagine if you had an iBasket, a combination laundry basket/washing machine, rendering the lugging-laundry-basket step unnecessary—-now, how about automating the next step, hoisting the cleaned but still wet items into the dryer………

96 degrees here in New Jersey today. I don’t mean to turn this blog into a weather report, but changes in the weather—-in particular, when it starts to get humid before a thunderstorm—can affect Charlie. He’s not able to tell us why he might be feeling uncomfortable: At school and home we have been working on teaching him what’s the right clothes to wear when it’s hot, cold, raining. (Not that Charlie’s yet ready to relinquish his hooded blue sweatshirt.)

Whatever the season, we go to the pool (indoor and outdoor) several times a week, both for the physical activity and also, as I’ve learned, because being in the water is just something Charlie needs. It seems to soothe and calm his sensory needs; it’s fun; it’s good to be around other people. Charlie often likes to swim right among kids his age playing basketball (there’s a small hoop at one end of the pool) and just to be around them.

I have to agree with what Joe DiPietro, assistant principal at the Southern Regional autistic program in New Jersey, said in an article in today’s Asbury Park Press:

“Though no formal studies have taken place, surfers and parents have witnessed the calming effect the ocean and surfing has on children with autism.”

The students are learning to surf under Wave Hog Surf Shop and Brighton Beach Surf Shop instructor Michael Lisiewski and will hit the surf in July.

It’s supposed to be in the high 60s and into the 70s all this week and sunny. This means yet another transition for Charlie: He’s been donning his blue fleece vest, blue fleece coat, and blue fleece gloves routinely for the past several months. Last Saturday in New York he kept moaning in 60-plus degree weather and that fleece get-up, and looked surprised then was smiling when he removed his fleece items (his armor, I guess you could say). I do think Charlie been grateful for the big hood on the coat to screen out sounds (which he has been much more sensitive too of late) but summer is coming, and the sensory delights of the salty ocean, foamy waves, and sand (wet and dry).

I think we’ll be able to make an exchange of fleece for the beach. Eventually.

Seven extra hours of washing, dusting, vacuuming, tidying up, putting away: A new study from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research has found that that’s how much more housework women who are married do. From Science Daily:

“It’s a well-known pattern,” said ISR economist Frank Stafford, who directs the study. “There’s still a significant reallocation of labor that occurs at marriage—men tend to work more outside the home, while women take on more of the household labor. Certainly there are all kinds of individual differences here, but in general, this is what happens after marriage. And the situation gets worse for women when they have children.”

The researchers did find that the amount of housework that women have been doing has steadily decreased since 1976.

Well. Until we bought our house in a town in northern New Jersey in 2003, we always lived in apartments or condos and, aside from more clothes and a few more dishes, I don’t recall any significant increase in housework on my part after Jim and I got married. Charlie’s birth definitely inaugurated a new era of Lots to Clean, mostly in the form of laundry (clothes, sheets, towels upon towels) and the floor (whether linoleum, hardwood, or carpet.) Some experiments making gluten-free bread on a hot summer day in Minnesota and some memorable “it’s all over the rug and spreading!” moments have tested my cleaning and multitasking skills, as has the need to mop up a major mess while simultaneously tending to a distressed child in need a shower.

And of course, it’s not just the house that needs to be cleaned, but that other place where we semi-live, the car, proper cleaning of which would probably add a good hour or two of “carcleaning” time (a whole 40 minutes would be needed to pry out the dimes, French fries, pens, and plastic utensils lodged under the front and passenger seats and in one of the seatbelts). And the soda, and the sand in the summer (but what’s a trip to the beach without getting sandy?).

Happily, as Charlie has gotten older, he’s been doing more and more around the house, from taking out the garbage to folding laundry—-if (quoting Prof. Stafford above) the “situation gets worse for women when they have children,” it’s possible for it to get better as they grow up, and for more hands to lighten the (house) work load.

Self-cleaning clothes, made from wool and silk, no less?

Can’t even begin to imagine the possibility of spending less time with the washing machine, and the Shout, and the ketchup and soy sauce stains…….