Finding Peter

Metaphors abound for the way an autistic child relates to the rest of the world. We only have glimpses of what it's like to live inside an autistic person's mind, although those glimpses have become more and more articulate as more autistic people turn to computers to express the thoughts that tangle behind their tongues, their ideas upended by the complex distraction of the listener's face. We try to understand, but in the day to day, the best we can do is try to translate it to our own frame of reference.

It's like a radio that's tuned to the wrong frequency. It's like she's living in another world. It's like he thinks in pictures while we think in words. It's like she speaks another language. It's like (for the Trekkie parents of autistic kids) he's living in an alternate universe that occasionally intersects with ours.

My personal favorite came from an unexpected source, the Steven Spielberg film "Hook". One of the less memorable adaptations of J. M. Barrie's book Peter Pan, it has one scene that has nevertheless imprinted itself on my mind. Peter Pan, now the unthinkably adult Peter Banning, has forgotten his childhood self, and even a visit to Neverland does nothing to jog his memories. He is weary and lined, jowls losing their fight with gravity, and the Lost Boys can see nothing of their hero in this suited businessman. One child, though, stands before the kneeling Banning and presses his hands into the unfamiliar face. He frowns as he presses Peter's nose, his chin, his forehead, trying to find traces of the boy who was never going to grow up. He pushes his little hands against the lined cheeks, smoothing out the years, and suddenly exclaims, "Oh, there you are, Peter!" It was not just the coincidence of the name that made this scene resonate with me long after I watched it.

All of these metaphors work, in a way, and on some days all of them fail, as metaphors inevitably do. Some days, no comparison is adequate for the wrenchingly lonely sensation of sitting in the sunny front yard with your son two feet away from you, and realizing that you have no idea what he's thinking, where he is in the sensation-rich wilderness of his mind.

But some days, for a brief startling moment, contact is made. Tonight, as always, I helped Peter to undress. I changed his diaper and sent him off to try to use the toilet, over his protests of "I can't, I can't, I don't have any potty in me!" I put him in an overnight diaper and helped him squirm into his plaid flannel pajamas, balancing him as he stood on the bed to pull the pants up. I usually ask for a hug, reminding him to "hug with your arms", since his initial attempts at hugging were to simply fall forward onto me, upper body awkward and tense.

Tonight, though, before I could ask for my hug he began to stroke my hair. He has done this a few times, and while an evolutionary anthropologist would have plenty to say about primate grooming activities, I enjoy these moments too much to analyze them. His face is intent, and his little hands softly stroke my hair from side to side, smoothing it away from my face. I stand perfectly still, not wanting to jar him out of this sudden personal connection. I drink in his blue-grey eyes, his long eyelashes, the curve of his upper lip (so like mine), and the nearly translucent fairness of his skin. His eyes move back and forth from my eyes to my hair, and he pets my head with an almost religious solemnity.

I have always worn my hair cut in bangs, due to the family trait of a startlingly high forehead. When Peter plays with my hair, his main focus is moving my bangs away from my eyes and eyebrows. He seems to be searching, clearing away what obscures his view of his mother, for these brief seconds trying to find me instead of looking away. Tonight, he finally moved my hair away to his satisfaction, and said in surprise, "You have a head in there!"

I had to laugh, and the connection was broken, so I swept him into a hug and said into his little pink ear, "Yeah, I have a head in there." He hopped off the bed and we were off to the bathroom for the ritual of brushing the teeth, really only a prelude to the real business of spitting water in the sink.

As we laughed and splashed through the bathroom routine, his comment kept running through my head, permutating as it went. "You have a head in there! You have a mind in there! You have a you in there!" I found myself wishing with unaccustomed intensity that I could see what needed to be smoothed away to find Peter. How much easier to smooth away his soft, silky hair with my hands, than to continue the neverending redirecting, the reinforcing, the words upon words poured upon him in hopes that some of them will trickle into wherever it is that he really lives.

Those flashes make it worth it. It sounds trite to say so, because many other parents have said the same of their children and the struggle to reach them. It has become trite, though, because there is no other way to say it -- it IS worth it. We continue to reach, to try, to talk and rub and love away whatever unseen barriers stand between us and our children, our little Lost Boys living within arm's reach.

Some days it is exhausting beyond endurance, and I wonder (deep down where nobody sees) if his world is so bad after all. Maybe I should just leave him in there where it is quiet and no one is harassing him to say it again, to try one more time. But then some nights, in looking for me he inadvertently shows me himself, that mirrored window opening for just long enough to remember why I strive: "Oh, there you are, Peter."

Read Me a Story?

I think I'm a pretty tough cookie when it comes to my children's wheedling. I effortlessly refuse appeals for curly fries from Arby's. I have no qualms about nixing requests for bites of my pizza. I can heartlessly deny the demands of imperious little voices wanting to blow out candles, drink chocolate milk, or wear orange pants and a hot pink shirt to church.

One question, though, leaves me helpless every time -- "Read me a story, Mama?"

Anna Quindlen writes, "I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." This is unquestionably the kind of home my children live in. Partly because I am completely missing the interior decorating gene, but mostly because we have more books than the Salem Bookmobile. One wall of the family room is a custom-built bookshelf with books from knee-height to ceiling, picture books on the bottom, a nearly complete collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books at the top, and everything from Newbery Award winners to Plato in between.

Mary has bookshelves of her own, Peter has a large toybox that inexplicably filled itself with books instead of toys, and in the rest of the home, the stairs and the laundry room are the only places that are reliably free of books. There are magazines in the dining room, children's books under the couch, Bibles on the nightstands, atlases on the coffee table, and philosophical texts in their sixth year of temporary storage on the office floor.

If it's true that the best way to teach is to do, my children will learn that almost anything can be done while you read. At the end of a particularly talkative evening with one of my children who shall go unnamed, the parents will frequently look at each other over the dinner table and simultaneously say, "Books." There is a quick scramble, and quiet reigns, broken only by the sound of rustling pages and intermittent chuckling if someone is reading Terry Pratchett again. When I fix a dinner that involves more stirring than creativity, I can frequently be found with a wooden spoon in one hand and a novel in the other. I read in the bathtub, although I am no longer allowed to do so with first edition hardbacks. I keep a magazine in the car against the highly unlikely event that I actually arrive somewhere early and have to wait. And really, is there anybody who doesn't read in the bathroom now and then?

Our family came by it honestly. I read at the age of three, to my parents' delight and surprise. (They claim I was reading my father's Greek texts as an infant when I sat in his lap during his study for seminary courses, but I think that may be parental pride speaking.) My mother recalls me coming home from kindergarten exclaiming, "We learned "N" today, and now I can spell my name!", and then settling down on the couch with the Readers' Digest. Michael learned to read a little later, but made up for lost time by reading (at his father's encouragement) the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of eight, Crime and Punishment at nine, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at twelve.

My sister and I read voraciously, and our mother's only rules about checking out library books were as follows: 1. Only half of the books could be about Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, and 2. she wasn't going to help us carry them. We mastered the art of carrying a stack of books balanced on our fingertips and held down with our chins. My mother tells of us nearly causing a librarian heart failure when we approached the desk of the tiny public library in the coastal town where we vacationed with twenty books apiece (including their entire collection of Carolyn Keene). The poor lady gasped, "Do they know they can only check out five books?" We stared at her, goggle-eyed -- that was only going to get us through to dinnertime! We reluctantly put thirty books back and came to the library nearly every day for the next three weeks.

So when my children sidle up to me at five minutes before bedtime, book in hand, it's hard to say no. They haven't yet acquired my sister's devious strategy of getting the parent to agree to just one book, and then choosing the longest one on the shelf. It worked, too -- I remember many nights of happily reading in my own bed for an extra forty-five minutes, half-listening through the thin walls as our father rumbled and muttered and roared his way through Beatrix Potter's interminable The Tale of Mr. Tod. I know the day is coming, though, and I suspect I will be no more able to resist the tactic than my dad was.

Mary is starting to get the idea. She plays quietly until 8:57 p.m., and then comes into our home office with an elaborately surprised expression on her face. With an innocent voice worthy of an Oscar, she asks, "Isn't anybody going to read me a story?" We smile ruefully, caught again at having let the last few minutes of the evening slide by while she hid out in her room. Michael settles down with her for the next chapter of The Chronicles of Narnia, or she and I embark on another giggle session over the absurd adventures of Paddington Bear.

Peter isn't far behind in creative methods of obtaining bedtime stories. He knows that even if it's 9:15 p.m. and we got home late and we're all tired and cranky and need to go to bed, he can always get a result with "Mama, you read me?" He has now adapted this strategy for our normal bedtime reading routine. I will read three or four of the short children's books he loves to hear again and again, doing my best to evoke the proper awe at "He was a beautiful butterfly!" at the end of my 293rd reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As soon as the last page is closed and I am preparing to call it a night, he is already hopping off his perch on the rocking chair and announcing in an eminently reasonable tone, "We read one more." I open my mouth to tell him to get into bed, but I am always swayed by the sight of his pajama-clad backside bobbing over the edge of the toybox as he rummages through it for our long-time favorite, Where's My Hug?

I put him to bed, finally, and he insists that we leave the door open and the nightlight on. He claims it is for "No dark!" but last week I discovered otherwise. I looked into his room and saw, as parents probably have since the first ancestors of Frog and Toad made it to papyrus, the manifestly guilty little face of my child pop up from behind a blanket carefully arranged to conceal the Little Bear book half-hidden under the pillow.

I know I ought to make him stop it. He's disobeying, and he's not getting enough sleep. I'll go talk to him in a few minutes, really I will. Just as soon as I finish my chapter.