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’m speaking at the 2008 BlogHer conference in San Francisco, on a panel called MommyBlogging: Blogging About Our Children with Special Needs and with some other more than noteworthy mother-blogger-writers:

If parenting in general can be isolating, it can be more so when raising a child with special needs. Susan Etlinger, Shannon Des Roches Rosa aka Squid Rosenberg, Kristina Chew, Jennifer Graf Groneberg and Vicki Forman are among those MommyBloggers who are blogging their experiences…and finding both a community…and a cause. Join them. Share your story. Find out how, to quote Vicki, “…to embrace and treasure what makes us all different. And the same.”

The panel is this Saturday, July 19, 1:45-3:00 pm; heartfelt and lively discussion expected.

As noted, the BlogHer conference is in San Francisco and I, as you know, live in New Jersey. I’m flying out Friday morning and taking a red-eye on Saturday night so I’ll be back at Newark Airport around 6.30am Sunday.

I did go to an academic conference in Atlanta last November; I stayed over one night and made sure that my parents were visiting. This time I’m going to be gone for two full nights—-I haven’t been away that long from Jim and Charlie for four years, since 2004. Actually, though I bought my ticket a while ago (mindful of fast-rising airplane ticket prices), I wasn’t sure until this week that I was going to go at all.

Jim, as I’ve mentioned a bit, injured his back very badly while giving Charlie a piggy back ride at the end of May. Jim’s been in pain more or less ever since, sometimes excruciating. For the first couple of weeks, he couldn’t walk more than a few steps and it’s been a long stream of visits to doctors and the orthopedic surgeon. He has a herniated disc—some serious measures are being discussed—-the days of piggy-backing Charlie are completely over. By some great grace, Jim is able to ride his bike and somehow that motion is soothing to his back and leg, so he and Charlie have still been able to go on their journeys around town. Jim’s been able to walk more in the past week and things have been looking much more hopeful.

We’ve both wanted to carry Charlie as long as we could, as if—so long as we knew we could swoop him up into our arms or on our backs—we’d be able to protect him and keep him safe. I stopped carrying Charlie when he was turning 8 and he was on the verge of being able to look eye to eye with me; I still have the muscle in my left arm from years of holding him, supported on my hip as he smooshed his face into my upper arm and shoulder. Jim, being much taller and stronger, has been carrying Charlie longer, but no more. From here on in, he has to walk on his own two feet.

Scary, the thought.

Inevitable, though.

We’ve both been thinking even harder then ever about the realities of Charlie growing up. The challenges ahead often seem greater than if we were to try to scale Mt. Everest. But the fact that I’m going to San Francisco, and that Charlie’s doing so well at school and has shown so much understanding about Jim’s injury—getting himself out of bed without much cajoling to go to school, looking extra serious when I’ve explain that “Dad has to go the doctor right now”—-that I think we’ll be able to keep moving forward (if a bit more slowly; there is no rush); that we’ll be able to keep walking the long road with Charlie. He’s never, ever, a burden and now, indeed, he’s begun to take up his share of the load.

And hope very much—very, very much—- to meet you if you’ll be at the conference.

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.)