The Romans, as I tell my incredulous students, did not have a concept of a weekend. Each months had its Kalends, Nones, and Ides, and feriae (holidays) in which the usual negotia of lawsuits, labor, and other transactions concerning the res of daily life were suspended.
While he does not talk about it, Charlie’s got an internalize sense of time. He had Thursday and Friday off from school as it was the annual convention of the NJEA (New Jersey Education Association). Its a small rupture in his schedule to have the one long weekend in early November. As Jim and …read more

Try as we might, we couldn’t figure out a Halloween costume for Charlie. I found the captain’s hat that was part of last year’s costume (he was, yes, a captain) and Charlie took it off as soon as I placed it on his head. He’s never been too interested in dressing up for Halloween and has usually needed a big of coaxing to trick or treat: Charlie’s wary of walking up strange new walkways; once, a small dog appeared and started barking really loudly just as the door was slowly being opened. Charlie turned and raced back down the walkway …read more

The escalators in the PATH station at the WTC site are very, very long. Charlie paused and touched the black plastic rail before getting on and standing on the left side of a stair. I followed and then Jim and as we were going down I looked behind to see if anyone was trying to walk down the left-hand side of the escalator. At first I saw no one then I realized that a woman with short brown hair was standing in the step behind Charlie and looking confused when she asked him to move and he did not. I …read more

So after a sunny Sunday topped up with exuberant bike riding and one of his all-time favorite meals at his all-time favorite Jersey hamburger stand, Charlie woke up on Monday morning with heavy-duty sniffles, a gurgly cough, and a hot forehead. Jim had gone out to wait for the bus while I got Charlie ready and I found myself running out to tell Jim that Charlie wouldn’t be going to school today. I went back inside, where Charlie was standing up, rather wobbly, and assured him he could stay home and before you know it he was stretched out on …read more

Last week a student asked me if Charlie liked to travel and I had to pause to think about how to answer. Charlie definitely likes to be out and about and looking at things and being in different places (and going out to eat). But—as revealed when Charlie and I went to California in March without Jim—being in strange places is most appreciated when, at day’s end, he’s back in his own bed, with his favorite things and Jim and me around. So daytrips are just right.
Jim went into his office early Saturday morning and Charlie—as he’s been doing since …read more

My office in Jersey City is in an old house, on the left-hand side of a one-way street going down a steep hill. Several of the buildings and some of the other houses belong to my college, but many (including a very large apartment building across the street with aging cement steps) do not. Parking is at a premium; there’s no garages to speak of for the residents of the apartments so the street is constantly lined with rows of cars, a beat-up yellow school bus with the windows painted white, delivery trucks. Students try to park on the street …read more

So on Wednesday morning it was chaos in our house. Only for about 15 minutes, but any minutes of Not Fun is Not a Great Way to Start the Day. Charlie had woken early and got up and smiled and wanted a shirt; he was pulling it on backwards (it’s an Oakland A’s t-shirt with numbers on both sides) and I gestured wordlessly to turn it around and his eyes clouded and he made a low noise. I stepped away and then heard thump cry and the chaos ensued.
But I don’t mean the chaos of a crowd of a …read more

Compassion Deficit Disorder is the title of an August 7th article by writer Judith Warner in the New York Times. Starting with Michael Savage’s over-the-top claims that autism is incorrectly diagnosed in 99% of cases and that it’s just a way to seek “undue sympathy, victim status, and services” for autistic children, Warner writes in the next paragraph about comments by Rick Davis, Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, last week about Barack Obama as
….[playing] “the race card” by noting that Republicans appeared to be trying to suggest to voters that the Democratic candidate “doesn’t look like all those other presidents …read more

En route to go swimming at my college in Jersey City, the wail of a police siren behind us made Charlie cringe and cry out. I explained that it was a police car in a hurry to help someone—maybe there was an accident. Charlie sat up straight in the middle of the back seat and looked gravely out the window, and seemed to draw back a bit as we slowed to a halt: A car was turned sideways across the left and middle lanes and, as a state trooper car pulled away, the front of the car was not at …read more

I was interviewed in the May issue of Working Mother magazine in an article by Jennifer Owens entitled The Quiet Struggle: From heartbreak to hope: moms of kids with special needs. The mothers in the article have special needs kids of varying diagnoses (some with autism) and ages (3 years old; adults). One mother is a corporate executive, another is the editor of The Elephant in the Playroom: Ordinary Parents Write Intimately and Honestly About the Extraordinary Highs and Heartbreaking Lows of Raising Kids with Special Needs (what a title—says it all), another is a classics professor in Jersey …read more