The first thing I have to say about being at BlogHer was that, because I didn’t have to keep looking for a boy at my back (not that I didn’t sometimes turn and scan the room for him; it’s a reflex)—-because I was on my own, I got a chance to look at some things a little more.

I got in at the San Francisco Airport mid-Friday morning and took BART, and was briefly disoriented. When I growing up, BART ended at Daly City, not the airport, and went to Fremont, Concord, or Richmond. Now it goes out to Pittsburg/Bay Point and Millbrae and to Dublin/Pleasanton, places not unfamiliar to me but not familiar as BART stops. As I waited for the train, I remembered how, with my sister and father and Yeh-Yeh, my grandfather, we all took a ride on BART when it opened—a ride to nowhere in particular—and how my sister and I chewed a pack of orange gum and every time the flavor ran out, I asked for another piece.

The conference hotel was near the Powell Street station which is the one station we always went to, as it’s very near Macy’s and the stores. And the hotel, was across the street from Union Square which we’d walked by hundreds of times. Strangely familiar territory—-not that I ever thought I’d be back here at a blogging conference to talk about being the mother of an autistic son and writing on the internet about it.

Friday, I met the members of my panel “in person and actually,” went to a panel on video blogging (no plans of starting that here), and wandered around the exhibits, where I helped myself to a plate of smiley-faced McCain fries (thinking of Charlie; he only likes the ones that looks like McD’s) and got into a conversation about Charlie’s struggles to read with the folks at the Leapfrog booth. Then to BART to Oakland, where I met my parents for dinner at a restaurant across the street from where my high school was once located. I dozed off on my parents’ couch as my dad explained how he has been printing out every entry from my original blogs about Charlie, My Son Has Autism and Autismland (”gives me something else to do besides play Solitaire”) and my mom prepared to make oxtail stew—a dish that made sense since it was about 50 degrees in the Bay Area, versus (as Jim reported to me) 95 in New Jersey—as my relatives were coming over on Saturday night.

Saturday morning I left later than planned. I left my bag by the door for my dad to bring when he picked me up in the evening to go to the airport. “How about we go to the Lake Merritt station?” he said. “That way the trains come every 10 minutes instead of every 20 minutes.” I didn’t think that made much of a difference. As we were approaching Lake Merritt, my dad said, “Do you have a few minutes?” I said, of course yes; no Charlie duty going on. “Good, then you can go visit Ngin-Ngin,” and he pulled the car in front of her house.

We walked by two young Chinese American women who offered us pamphlets about their church and up the old stairs. Ngin-Ngin was in her kitchen, bright and cheerful in the morning sunlight, and one my aunts was there, too. My grandmother has a live-in aide; the aide gets every Saturday off, and my dad and his siblings stay with Ngin-Ngin, who’ll be 103 in October. “She’s going blind in one eye, we think,” my dad said under his breath and went to the dining room to check her mail. I said something in English and Ngin-Ngin said something in Cantonese: The same exchange we’ve been having all these years. I said good-bye and my dad walked me to the BART station and soon I was back at the conference.

Here’s a photo of our panel on mom-bloggers with special needs kids: Shannon Des Roches Rosa, me, Jennifer Graf Gronenberg, Vicki Forman, and Susan Etlinger, who organized the panel. Susan’s put up some photos here, Vicki’s blogged twice about it here and here, Jennifer wrote this prior to the conference, Shannon put up the photo and also here. and wrote about the most important parenting panel at BlogHer08. We talked about how we got started blogging and balancing public and private, especially for children who are disabled. Jennifer talked about editing an anthology about parent writing and how she was told that three submissions by parents of disabled children were too “scary” to include. She disagreed and worked and pushed to get those three submissions in; only one—poems by Barbara Crooker (a friend; I’ll soon be reviewing her latest book, Line Dance)—was not included. (Yes, I couldn’t believe it, and yet I could.)

The panel was too short and there’s more to be said about what was talked about, especially from the audience. I went to another panel, wandered again through the exhibits area and—when I passed the Leapfrog booth again—it was insisted that I take home a Tag and a Leapster for Charlie. I was a little flabbergasted.

After the keynote—Heather Armstrong and Stephanie Klein—-I found myself in two places that are straight out of my childhood mythology. First, the lower level of Macy’s, through which we always entered to look for school clothes before the stores got bigger on the Easy Bay side. The conference held a reception in the handbag section of the store, which led to the surreal feeling of hors d’oeuvres amid the Marc Jacobs. Then onto dinner at a Chinese restaurant, but the handbag displays made it very difficult to find my friends and I left the reception and found myself walking up the hill, pass the Sutter Street garage where my family’d squeezed in our cars many a time. Then through the Stockton Street tunnel, and into Chinatown.

My family never goes to eat in Chinatown anymore. We used to—-Joe Jung’s for the fried chicken, Empress of China for something really fancy, a place maybe called Hong Kong Garden for dim sum—but there’s plenty of places across the bay now, so no need to bother. I went down Jackson Street and only had time for 25 minutes of dinner before hurrying out to meet my dad. I watched the multiple generations of a Chinese family stand around and talk in front of the restaurant as the multiple generations of my family used to. “Ho sik?” the grandmother (who still had black hair) asked three children; the boy was wearing green crocs and running back and forth with his sisters. Someone who might be their father, uncle?, appeared with a baby in a baby carrier and a plastic bag of leftovers.

My dad appeared, very glum. “Do you have my bag—-” I started to say. “Mom called me,” my dad said, with suppressed exasperation. “It’s still by the door to the garage.”  “I said I’d put it in the car but you said not to,” I said. “Yes, I know,” said my dad.

Somehow one of my aunts got to the SF airport in record time, with my bag (containing my cell phone charger….) and I went through security and onto the plane and then to Newark Airport and a Port Authority train station in a random unweeded area on an 80 degree Sunday morning and then to NJ Transit and then I walked home, as it was only 7.30am on Sunday morning.

I didn’t start unpacking till after noon. Charlie—after devouring some Chinese treats my mother had sent—-was sitting on the couch when he saw me take the Leapster out of my bag.

“Give,” said Charlie. “Mom! I want.”

“Sure,” I said. I helped him type in CHARLIE and he fiddled around with the buttons and screen and stylus for the rest of the afternoon until a bike ride with Jim. Charlie reached for the Leapster again as I tucked him into bed and it was by his side when I went to check on him.

I’d been remembering how he had one of the first Leapbooks and loved it, years and years ago, and then things plateaued and we put the toy aside. The Leapster is the same green and green as the book, and has the blue stylus attached by a string.

And I wonder if Charlie thought, on seeing it, that’s something I had once when I was younger, and now I have it, here, again.

Photo courtesy of Ji Design.

I grew up in California and almost all of my family still lives there, and Jim and I have talked very seriously about possibly moving out west when Charlie is an adult. My dad has lived in Oakland for all but a few years of his life and has long said exasperated things about the city’s politics and politicos (and don’t get him started on Berkeley’s). On hearing about a package of eight autism bills introduced by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, my dad (who is, by the way, a really really nice guy) said that he might have to change his mind about this particular politician. (Might.)

The April 3rd Sacramento Bee reports on the eight autism bills:

1. SB 527 directs California’s Department of Developmental Services to establish a pilot project to find best practices for early “identifying, assessing and treating” children with autism.
2. SB 1475 seeks to improve coordination of transitional services between regional centers and school districts for autistic children aged birth to five years old.
3. SB 1563 directs two state agencies, the Department of Managed Care and the Department of Insurance, “to work to ensure that health plans and insurers provide equitable coverage for autism and other developmental disabilities.”
4. AB 1872 establishes a state clearinghouse for the education of autistic students.
5. AB 2302 allows teachers with “certain special education credentials” to be able to teach children with autism.
6. SB 1175 seeks to expand independent living opportunities for autistic adults.
7. SB 1531 calls for training for police officers and law enforcement personnel about autism.
8. SB 1364, would (as noted in the San Jose Mercury News) would “declare that ASD is a public health care crisis in California and direct the Department of Public Health to make services more available to underserved communities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have called autism a national public health care crisis.”

Somewhat in the tone of SB 1364, the Sacramento Bee refers to autism as a “malady” and to the “spread of autism,” both phrasings that seem—incorrectly—to suggest that autism is some like an infectious disease that is growing. Autism is not something that you can (like the measles) catch. And while it might seem that the numbers of autistic persons has grown tremendously in recent years, it is important to note that there are more autistic adults out there than might be thought, and that have an actual autism diagnosis.

A package of autism bills was passed in September of 2007 here in New Jersey where I currently live; one the bills established a task force on adults with autism. Of those appointed to the task force on April 2nd by New Jersey’s Governor Jon S. Corzine, was Ari Ne’eman, the President of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network. It would certainly mean a great deal to me if California also had a task force on issues pertaining to adults with autism, as Charlie will be an adult if and by the time we might live in California—and there is a lot to consider and plan ahead for. My dad (and an aunt and a cousin or two) are keeping track.

Brooklyn is to Manhattan as California’s East Bay (Oakland, Berkeley) is to San Francisco: Today’s New York Times draws these comparisons:

….there is a young, earnest population that is beating a path between artsy, gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and their counterparts in the Bay Area, especially East Oakland and the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, or SoMa.

The New York Times describes some 20- and 30- something year olds who, in search of a place with a “messy urbanism”—-a urban, creative vibe of the sort found in edgier city neighborhoods before gentrification sets in—-shuttle between the East and West—the Left—coasts. Maybe this transcontinental connection is now found among “creative people” in search of “alternative art and music scenes” and “a tolerance for diversity,” but mention of the East and West coasts means something more particular to me.

We live, as oft noted here, in what is called north-central New Jersey and frequently cross the Hudson in to New York City. I’m from California and, too, northern California, and Oakland and Berkeley are where I grew up, via Oakland’s Chinatown (just past the shores of Lake Merritt) and Telegraph and Shattuck Avenues in the university town where you’ll still find People’s Park. My husband Jim is from Jersey and the state has been the best place for Charlie to go to school; we left two jobs, financial security, and a lot more when we drove away from the Midwest in 2001 and moved back here. The three of us all like to be near New York, the site of many adventures, and can hardly wait to get back into the Atlantic Ocean down the shore—and we sure like the good education Charlie has had here in Jersey.

While liking the Garden State much—it is a garden spot for us—my mind’s always directed westward to the Golden State I grew up in. I have a large extended family, most of whom lives in northern California; my cousins have children who are just a bit older than Charlie. Jim and I have often talked about possibly moving out west when Charlie is an adult, as there will be many members of my family to support and help him, and include him in the life of the family. Going back and forth between the East and West coasts is a lifestyle choice, one might say: Charlie will most likely end up living in one place or the other, and it’s more than important that he feel at home in both places. With Charlie’s school schedule, we have usually only been going out to California once a year at Christmastime. I’m hoping that we can visit briefly in the summer, to see my numerous relatives (and my 102 year old grandmother, Ngin-Ngin, in particular), to familiarize Charlie with California so that he’s a bicoastal boy, at home in two places, because we just don’t know.

(One thing I do know is that I think the New York Times’s equation of Brooklyn with the East Bay is not entirely accurate: Better to compare the East Bay—-Bezerkley and Oakland where “there is no there there” with New Jersey, a place where you’ll find the Meadowlands, a certain “messy urbanism,” and more than a bit of autism education going on.)