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The cure for autism part 1

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My mom said Matt was a normal baby. Brilliant, in fact. He knew the alphabet before age 2. He was speaking. Then one day she went to get him from his crib and he wasn’t there anymore. He stopped talking, only screamed from nightmares we knew nothing about. Blame. Blame. My mother sought medical help and found no answers there. Refrigerator mom, that is what they said. 

My dad thought he found a cure. My first memory, I was around 4. Matt was 3, Mark was a toddler and mom was probably pregnant with Luke. We were all crying and I remember being afraid. Matt was having another fit, screaming and throwing himself on the floor. My dad was yelling and hitting Matt. I heard banging against the cabinets in the kitchen. Crying, my mom trying to hold us back stop us from seeing. Oh, but I did see. I saw that my dad did not find the cure for autism. And that was the beginning of my mom trying to find a cure. 

The 20 minute trip to Canada

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Ok, last night’s blog was pretty intense. Whew. So I’ll lighten things up a little with the 20 minute trip to Canada. I once had an eccentric great aunt named Grace. Grace was the God fearing, feminist, firstborn matriarch of our small clan. Grace was always right, always did the right things, and was rich. She also had 3 younger brothers and out of those four siblings came one child, my dad. Grace never married, lived at home except the time she spent in the military during WWII, and made it up to VP at the local bank in a time where most women didn’t finish high school. 

One day my aunt Grace heard about a women’s church conference out in South Dakota. She loaded up my mom, dad, youngest brother Luke, and myself in her little two door Cutlass to take a drive a couple of states away to check it out. Once we got there we found that all of the hotel rooms within a 2 hour radius were sold out. Whoops! We checked out the conference for a half an hour then drove 2 hours to find a hotel room. After making several cattle stops, we ended up in a small town out in the middle of nowhere. Small charming hick town like the one I grew up in. We went to a restaurant with 5 tables and I was excited to find out that the jukebox played songs without money. 

Leaving the conference behind, I talked my aunt into driving a couple of hours to go to this amazing water park. I was so excited. We got there and toured the water park with so many kids having a great time. After the tour I wanted to stay, but my aunt said that I got to “see” the water park and it was time to go. She was hungry and she was paying for the trip. I refused my lunch. I am the type of person that can eat only one chip without eating the whole bag. 

Then we drove to Wyoming to take a one hour hike around Devil’s Tower and it was time to drive back home to WI. Except my aunt wanted to drive an extra 8 hours to Canada to buy tea. So off to Canada we go. There was a national holiday in Canada when we got there. My aunt found her tea in 20 minutes and back to the border we went. My dad bought a case of beer. Being the honest man that he is, he told the people at the border which resulted in a full car search. Who goes to Canada for 20 minutes? Crazy!! Crazy. 

The Perfect Family

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it was all I ever wanted and prayed for my whole life. My parents had four children in less than five years. I am the oldest with three younger brothers. The brother born after me is autistic. We were all 70’s babies, back in the days when autism was still rare. My parents are polar opposites and not in the magnetic attraction way. My dad was a cruel man when he took any interest in us at all. My mom was strong. Not at all the refrigerator mom she was accused of being. Sometimes I think she blamed herself too. 

My autistic brother, Matt, was nonverbal for a long time and very violent. Some of his daily activities at his worst included repeatedly banging his head against the wall (mom put a helmet on him), punching, kicking, biting, scratching, and pulling my hair, throwing things, running away from home, and breaking my things. He gave my mom a black eye and bloody lip. She cried a lot on that day.   A majority of my childhood consisted of being physically abused by my brother  and verbally abused by my father. I took on the role of parent to my brothers before I was a teen because I was the responsible first born and my mom needed help, a fixer. 

By the time I was in my late teens, I was on the highest possible doses of antidepressants with no relief. Prozac, anafranil, buspar, zoloft, Paxil, and lithium To name a few. I was never allowed to fight back when my brother hurt me because I knew better and he didn’t. I stopped feeling everything. Gradually the feelings came back, feelings of rage, depression, and anxiety. Please, please parents of the disabled I beg you not to use your firstborn as a crutch. I lost my childhood and I can’t get that back. Some days the anxiety was so bad, that I would pray for the relief of depression. Exercise has helped me exorcise my demons. I am not talking about yoga people, I mean hard core marathon training hours of exercise. 

I spent my childhood praying for the perfect family, now I have it. A wonderful husband that is nothing like my dad.  And in less than five years, I had three children none with autism. 

Birds

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I had a pet robin when I was a kid. 

I awoke early this morning, the day after my first 18 mile run. My husband kicked my foot this morning at 4:13 AM. Kind of like after you have a c section and you get a bear hug or have your in grown toenail removed and stub your toe. Ok, it wasn’t that bad and I wasn’t sore at all. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I started thinking about the birds…

I have a love hate relationship with birds. When I was young, we had a band of wild, swooping swallows by our house. They always build nests over the lights on the front door that we never used. The newspaper my dad wadded up over those lights never kept them away. One day they were particularly wild after my dad knocked down a nest and a bird flew straight into my stomach. They dive bombed my cats too, although that was funny. 

As a runner, birds freak me out. They fly next to my head and I can hear their little wings flapping. Now I run by the birds with my hands in the air like I won the Olympics. Waving my arms in the air so I don’t hear their whisperings. At least my head is safe. 

Last summer I had a bird that would fly with me for a mile every run. I could see its shadow next to me on the pavement. It reminded me of my bird long ago. One summer when I was around ten, I had a pet robin. We had 2 cherry trees in the backyard. They produced tart cherries that no one ever ate or made into a pie. My dad had a habit of shooting birds that would go in those trees and eat the cherries. (In the future they put up nets to protect the uneaten cherries and later gave up altogether). One day my dad shot a robin. She had a nest with 3 baby birds in it. We rescued the  birds, but 2 were too little to survive. The strongest survived and became my constant companion. I fed him worms every day, but he never learned to fly. He would sit with me by the lake up north. Just a girl and her pet robin. Then fall came, school was starting and the worms would be scarce. My little brother decided to make a home for the bird to protect it and accidentally dropped one of the boards on him during construction. Years later I got a f(l)inch. He was always afraid of me and it wasn’t the same. 

I decided to run yesterday and not today because of torrential downpours and flash flooding that amounted to a few sprinkles. Now that is for the birds all right!