As we were leaving a subway station on Friday night in Manhattan, Jim paused for a moment, pointed to a dingy wall, and said “here’s the sign to the PATH.” On a pale green piece of paper
PATH
train
————>
was written in black marker, with the arrow pointing toward a staircase.
Someone had carefully placed four long strips of masking tape like a picture frame around the edges of the makeshift sign.
Yes, there’s a lot you can do with tape. Charlie’s had a longstanding fondness for the sticky stuff, or perhaps a better word to use is intrigue. I guess there is some magic …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

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

Marla who blogs about life with her daughter Maizie wrote recently about Maizie’s uncertainties about change and preference for things to stay the same. This is a topic I have thought about a lot: My son Charlie, like many (most?) autistic children, is hesitant about change and doing things differently. He’d like me to always wear a certain brown and pink shirt, and Jim to wear a certain pair of black shoes with black socks; going to the grocery store means he has to get sushi, whether or not he might want to eat it. Transitions can be hard precisely …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