Tuesday morning Jim and I were interviewed for an autism documentary in the making. The director and his crew came to my office in Jersey City, which is in an old single-family house, with barely any space between it in and the neighboring houses (one of which contains my college’s mailroom). Jim and I were interviewed together, which was, frankly, fun. Not that we don’t spend rather a lot of time talking to each other, but it’s a different thing to be asked questions—about autism, neurodiversity, “recovery,” how I got started blogging, when we first thought “something” was up with Charlie, how we ended coming back to New Jersey in 2001—-with the camera on you. Amazingly, Jim and I managed not to interrupt each other.

I spend (as you can gather) a fair amount of time discussing and writing about autism; Jim is in the very last days of finishing his book on the port of New Jersey and New York and it’d been awhile since some topics had come up, such as Jim’s work on the conversion narrative in autism literature (more about that in this book on autism and representation). Jim just taught a course on conversion narratives—often books with a religious topic, such as The Long Loneliness, by Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement; another topic in the course was recovery, spiritual and otherwise.

It’s possible to see Jenny McCarthy book about recovering her son from autism as such a conversion narrative. As an article in the June 1st Orange County Register puts it,

By 2005, McCarthy was no longer the ditzy blonde from MTV and Playboy, but a best-selling author who wrote about motherhood. That was disrupted when her son, Evan, was diagnosed with autism.

The Orange County Register article is entitled “In the Autism Wars, she leads with her heart” and profiles Lisa Ackerman, founder of Talk About Curing Autism (i.e., TACA,  a sponsor of the Green Our Vaccines rally). “Recovery” and “curing” autism and the intense emotions that parents and other bring to discussions about these came up several times during Jim’s and my interview.

Charlie was around 5 when I started to let go of “recovery” as a goal. When I thought about “recovering” Charlie from autism, I realized that I wasn’t thinking so much about what Charlie needed as what I thought I had to do as a parent. I thought I had to do everything in my power to make it possible for him to not be in special education, to go to college, to live on his own—-if I could make sure of this (I used to think), I could go to my grave in peace. And when Charlie was 5, he needed 1:1 teaching, he couldn’t read, he couldn’t really talk, and we’d done almost every educational and other (as in biomedical) treatment we could read about. Our focus shifted to the day by days of teaching and being, and listening to Charlie.

I think at that point I realized that the “autism wars” were inside of me; that however much I don’t see eye to eye with others about causes or treatments and so forth, the population of people who talk and think about autism every and all the time is hardly everyone, and that we’re more in this together than it might seem, or than we might wish it to seem. I had an image of what Charlie “should” be, and I wasn’t keeping my eyes focused on the real boy really in front of me. The boy who likes bikes over books, and hanging under the pool water than curled up on the couch with one of those books.

With these thoughts in mind, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on reading an editorial in the July 2nd Washington Times entitled “The Pentagon and Autism, by Karen Driscoll and Michael O’Hanlon. Far from declaring a “war on autism” or suggesting that autism poses some kind of “threat” to the nation, the article is a thoughtful call (though some of the references to autism are more than puzzling, as noted here) for the Department of Defense to provide adequate (at the least) services and treatments for autistic children with family members in the US Armed Forces; the authors call on the DoD to provide “a model for other insurers and health plans to emulate.”

I’m not sure at all where rhetorical calls to “make war on autism” are getting us, but good teaching and treatment for autistic children are simply necessary.

Again and again in our interview, Jim and I kept returning to themes of isolation—how alone families of autistic children can feel and be—and of the simple importance of other people in Charlie’s life. After family, these have been Charlie’s many therapists and teachers, starting with the five young women who were his first ABA therapists in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1999. The highly structured teaching suited Charlie’s learning needs and the data we meticulously kept taught me how carefully I needed to observe Charlie, to see the nuances of his growth and understanding. Most of all, having all those therapists spending hours with Charlie created, as Jim likes to say, a rich communal experience that neither the therapists (many of whom we are still in contact with) nor Charlie, nor Jim and I, can forget. It’s why our autism experience has been, through some really tough and bona fide terrible times, full of of witness and of hope, and love.

And, as at that interview Tuesday morning, fun, even when life seems at least a little too trying.

Until two years ago, Karem Awad, the former chief of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang, was “one of Adelaide’s most feared men—even by police. Today he’s a “churchgoer with a job earning an honest living helping others battle their demons.” The Advertiser reports that Naomi, who is now ten years old and who is autistic, was the reason:

Mr Awad says it was a little autistic girl with a beautiful smile who convinced him to turn his back on a life of guns, drugs and violence.

She was born to the then 14-year-old sister of his ex-girlfriend and her plight touched his heart.

As Mr Awad devotedly cuddled 10-year-old Naomi this week, he seemed like any normal father.

But until two years ago, he was one of Adelaide’s most feared men – even by police.

“Whatever I was doing in my biking lifestyle, I was thinking of her, you know,” he said.

“She’s definitely been the front and centre of my change of attitude to life.

“I basically lost interest in what I was doing before. I had no interest, no passion for it.”

Mr Awad had never heard of autism when he started caring for the toddler and soon took on the role of teacher – helping her with everything from reading to brushing her teeth.

“I definitely believe that God used her to open my eyes and change the way I live my life,” he said.

“I felt important because she needed me. It was just one of those things where you look at someone and you feel like they know you and you know them.

“Her learning disorder didn’t come into the equation at all, although in the early years she was difficult to look after because we didn’t really understand her.

Awad began to “babysit” Naomi when she was three and “unable to talk or communicate like other children her age”; he is now studying for a Diploma of Fitness University of South Australia. Many parents and teachers about how they have been transformed by the experience of raising and teaching an autistic child and Awad’s story is indeed a story of conversion and, too, of redemption and change.