Routine routine routine.
Schedule schedule schedule.
That’s what life raising an autistic child is like, or is often said to be like: You’re locked in a vise of always doing the same old same old, lest the proverbial “all hell” should break loose. So Monday school, Tuesday school and pool, Wednesday school and bowling, Thursday…….
Yesterday, without thinking about it too much, Charlie and I stepped right out of the ol’ routine. On the one hand, he loves it, needs it, craves The Routine: All of our Sunday was punctuated with Charlie stopping to catch Jim’s or my eye, pausing, and intoning “school …read more

Two images of Charlie from the past two nights.
We’re at the Journal Square PATH station in Jersey City with my parents. We get slowed down walking through the turnstiles. My mom and I look towards the up escalator and there’s Charlie’s going up up up, all by himself.
“Wait, we’d better hurry and get on”……………
Second image is from Saturday night. Charlie’s showered and lying in bed, and Jim and I are talking about what the mayor of New Orleans and Hurricane Gustav, how the Pittsburgh Pirates had their ninth loss in a row, what was said in a scene from the …read more

A brisk walk down Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City took us to the Journal Square PATH train station. Four trains came and went and then there was ours, to the WTC stop. Charlie had been poking in the refrigerator and cabinets all morning, even after a big lunch of bean thread noodles and vegetables and chicken, and his voice sounded agitated notes as we walked towards lower Manhattan. We went by Wall Street and past the U.S. Courthouse and a very large police station, and Chambers Street somewhere along the way, then the Nha Trang Vietnamese Restaurant. We went …read more