From a November 16, 2006, post on autistic adults in relationships, a couple of questions and comments from readers: A suggestion about a dating agency—–queries from mothers—-and some comments on those who are dating or married to autistic individuals.

On leaving the YMCA swimming pool yesterday evening (Charlie jumped in fast and then asked to go on the water slides and I skipped up the steps after him; after his first ride, he was so excited that he turned three somersaults in the water and swam half the length of the pool with powerful strokes), we walked past a group of teenagers, one blondish boy and the rest girls. I was watching the SUVs in the parking lot when the boy said,

“Claire, why don’t you date any normal guys?”

I’m not sure who “Claire” is or what, to teenagers in our town, “normal” means. Charlie, noting no cars hurrying by, had stepped off the sidewalk and I quickly followed as the teenagers said snatches of “well” and “she” and “I wouldn’t,” etc..

Go Claire.

I really think of this piece as a love story between a husband and wife, between a mother and a son and between a father and a son.”

Says playwright Stacey Dinner-Levin of her play, Autistic License, which will be performed April 25 and 26 at the Illusion Theater in Minneapolis. More from Dinner-Levin (who has an autistic child) about her inspiration for writing Autistic License:

“This play is based upon our experience of raising a child with autism - the things that happened in our family that were tragic, surreal and funny. This is the kind of stuff you can’t make up! Nobody sees what goes on in families with a child living with a disability. To me theater was the perfect vehicle to tell this story and to give voice to all families living with disability. I really wanted to open the doors, take down the walls of our house and say, ‘Come in, take a good look, and see this for what it is: the struggle of my life, along with the beauty and the joy.’”

The play offers a glimpse of what it is like to raise a child “in a world that has far too many opinions on what is ‘normal.’” Michael Paul Levin, the playwright’s husband, plays the role of the autistic son.

Dinner-Levin’s comment about the play as about a couple of “love stories”—between father and son, mother and son, and between husband and wife: This rings home most of all with me. Even on the toughest, darkest gray days it’s love and sticking together that sustain.

“…….happy endings are possible, even if they’re not quite the endings originally envisaged.”

So an article in today’s Telegraph about love and Asperger’s syndrome describes the relationship between Sarah Hendrickx and Keith Newton. The couple met through internet dating:

……the first stage of their relationship was fiery and fraught. To Sarah, Keith was ‘a puzzle’. He’d plainly state that their blissful weekends were enough for him, that he’d never live with her or even move nearer. Sarah frequently found him selfish, cold and distant. Keith found Sarah hard work, demanding and ’screechy’.

Hendrickx got a job with ASpire, an organization which works with adults with Asperger’s, and realized that Newton might have Asperger’s; he eventually was diagnosed.

Learning about AS, he says, was ‘life-changing’. Suddenly what Sarah describes as his ‘isolated, biscuit-eating life’ made sense. Keith had been bullied at school and gone through university with no friends at all. He’d had only two jobs in his life doing the same thing and two very short-lived relationships (the first at 31). ‘From an early age you try to join the world, but gradually, with rejection and not being able to understand social situations, it becomes too taxing,’ he says. ‘I wanted relationships with women but didn’t have the confidence, the tools or the means.’

Hendrickx and Newton have co-written a book, Asperger Syndrome - A Love Story.

And as for that opening description of a happy ending being possible, even if not as “originally envisaged”: This is very much how I think about life with Charlie, a good and a happily ever life—-with a lot of twists in the plot and surprise of an ending. And always, lots of love.

“Reinvent date night” proclaims the New York Times (on February 14th, “heart day” no less): Doing something different, exciting and new is, for long-married couples, the “simple prescription for rekindling the romantic love that brought [you] together in the first place.”

Don’t know about you, but “going out,” on a “date” or not is a fairly novel occurrence for us, due to a few reasons.

First is the perennial Finding a Babysitter problem. Over the years, we’ve had two great babysitters who we called frequently in order to attend school meetings or even (more rarely) to go out for dinner. One was a high school student who went to college in Maryland a few years ago. The other is now a speech therapist; while she is able to babysit occasionally, her time is much more limited. In the next month I have to be at work around 4pm for some student events (of course, they are afternoons when Jim is teaching) and one of my students is going to babysit some days, but can’t all the days, so I’m looking for another student.

Finding babysitters is one thing that has gotten more difficult for us over the years. It was simply easier to find a sitter when Charlie was younger and, well, smaller, and while I don’t think any “challenging behaviors” might occur, you never know. Certainly Charlie is very used to being with individuals who have a lot of knowledge of autism; why the more you talk to him, the more he can get agitated; what to do if he does get really upset. As he’ll be in an unfamiliar environment—-a college campus on very urban Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City—there will be a lot of newness to absorb. I’ll figure something out; certainly I’ve been very grateful for this past week with my parents visiting.

The second reason that Jim and I often have not done the date thing is because, we have too much fun when we go places to Charlie, as when we took him to a Christmas party in Brooklyn, rode several subways with Charlie running and holding Jim’s hand, and got him dinner at Whole Foods in the East Village. Charlie loves to go places and to be on the move (and to end up in his own bed at the end of it) and seeing his face lively and lit up in the glow of city street lights as we walk down Broadway to Penn Station is a treat in itself.

A third reason, which is probably as unromantic as they come is: After a week of working full-time, driving back and forth and forth and back on the interstate and running to catch trains, and school, and whatever adventures in grocery stores or the library or parking lots we manage to get ourselves into and extricate ourselves from, we’re tired. Hanging around home seems not only the best, but the only thing, to do.

Anyways, as this started off as a post-Valentine’s Day post about how to “reinvent date night,” I will note that, yes, I did go into New York after work to meet Jim for sushi (on a restaurant we had never been too on 9th Avenue) and dessert (at a just-opened place). We passed the Alvin Ailey building and saw rows of dancers doing pliés, arms curved and I remembering doing ballet when I was in the third grade. We walked around the Village and promptly ran into one of Jim’s colleagues in front of the red-lettered signs of Village Cigars. I guess that adds up to a few sort of new things—here’s another one: At no point in the evening did we look at each other and say, “What’s going on with Charlie right now?”

Though guess who was kneeling on the carpet and staring in the direction of the door when we walked in.

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, the February 13th New York Times had an article about romantic relationships that persevere in the face of great differences—-vegetarians/vegans falling for carni/omnivores:

Sharing meals has always been an important courtship ritual and a metaphor for love. But in an age when many people define themselves by what they will eat and what they won’t, dietary differences can put a strain on a romantic relationship. The culinary camps have become so balkanized that some factions consider interdietary dating taboo.

True love does find a way, though—-I’ve been a vegetarian since I was in high school but when you’re the mother of a growing boy (I have just one inch over him still), you do end up finding yourself frying him burgers, roasting chicken, peeling shrimp for stir-fry, and boiling hot dogs. Food is love, or maybe it’s that love constantly asks us to do more, to change, to be for the needs of those we love (making hamburger patties while Charlie pushes at my elbow).

(Though I will admit that, when we’re at the Jersey shore—Jim’s favorite place—–in the summer, I do “break the vegetarian thing” and eat…….seafood, and even a mussel or two.)

In our household, we’ve learned that sometimes the best way to say something (”I love you” included) is with brown noodles (with or without the shrimp).

Bento box heart photo courtesy of Rob in London via Flickr