Things small and familiar were the gifts that Charlie most liked: A pale blue Mugen Pop Pop, a new copy of a DVD he already has (and that’s gotten so scratched up and smudged that it skips and gets stuck), a case for his Leapster (which we should have gotten a while ago, as Charlie’s dropped his a couple of times). We’d be happy to get him some more elaborate gifts, and have over the years. Iused to spend quite a bit of time choosing toys and then even more time teaching Charlie to play with them (some of the toys are still in closets in our house and in my parents’, shiny and wrapped in plastic to protect them from the dust).

Charlie pretty much seems to lack consumer consciousness. He likes what he likes.

And so, while experiencing the sort of quavering feeling many (most…) of us have been as more words like “dismal” and “downturn” are used along with “economic crisis” and “home sales” and “mortgages” and “banks”—-what will this mean for Charlie’s public school program? he’s quite a ways from looking for a job but won’t it be even harder to find employment for a disabled worker in a challenging economic climate”?—-we’ve also felt that there’s not going to be some totally drastic change in our everyday way of life.

Ever since Charlie was diagnosed, we’ve scrambled to pay for the things he needs, and managed. Corners have been cut (and will be) ,and we’re both feeling very fortunate to have full-time employment. With Charlie’s needs, we’ve long known that some things are just out of the question, and we always have an eye on his future. While we very much hope and intend that Charlie will be able to have a job, it’s highly likely that it’ll be far from high-paying. Certainly, Jim and I are both hoping we can work as long as we can.

Caryn Sullivan writes about a generation of kids accustomed to having more now having to adjust to having less. It’s “stuff” —-electronic iStuff and the like—-that she’s referring to, while she also notes that one of her children, who’s autistic and living a “cloistered lifestyle at a remote, old-fashioned school,” gave her a list of 24 items that he’d like. As Sullivan writes in yesterday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press, she’s readying herself to “try to explain the financial facts of life without bursting his bubble this [Christmas] morning.”

I’d like to know how this went. Having been living with what people think is less, but I’ve learned is more —a son who’s disabled, who’s autistic—I think it’s possible to keep managing on less and little, and still come out feeling like you’ve got much, much more than you’d have ever bargained for.

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.