ASD Snapshot: Two Dogs

I am at Erik’s college and I cross paths with Marla, the free-spirited fortune teller. We immediately break into big smiles and hug. Marla isn’t really a fortune teller, but if you didn’t know, you would think she was. Her own son playfully calls her a cartoon character; and if she were one, she would be drawn in animated strokes, round, vibrant, small but large in presence.

On this day, Marla is meandering back to her post behind the campus café window. She is Marla the latte lady, the mocha matron, the dispenser of delicious drinks and wise words. Erik loves her eccentricity, her creased sensibility and the way she makes him feel, in a glance. Worthy. Welcome. Wonderful. He visits her twice a week, and they check in, exchange updates. She is one of his campus tethers. He to her is gentlemanly sweetness.

Marla smiles, a crinkly one, and lights up.

“Erik’s mom! I love your boy!” And then more quietly, “I love that boy like he was my own.”

I know she means it because in some ways they are much alike, Erik and Marla. They dare to be different. Erik is. Marla dares. She goes on to say how well Erik is doing on campus.

One of Erik’s teachers kick-starts class with a walk around campus, a nature immersion, and it is to this march-past Marla refers in her next breath: “I see him once a week . . . part of the parade, you know, and we look for one another..." Marla pauses, remembers, eyes warm with memory.

"I see him looking for me, trying to catch my eye, and when he does, he beams. I feel so good inside. And I am also smiling because he is smiling. We light one another up, me and Erik.”

I tell her that when life ramps up, I reflect on something she told me in 2016 as I checked out the campus.

“Don’t push him too hard, Mamma. He’s doing his best.”

As I remind her of this, her head cocks slightly, and a smile forms. “Erik reminds me of my dog,” she says with a laugh. “And you,” waving her hand at me, “my neighbour’s dog.” She chuckles. We both do. I’ve been called many things but never the neighbour’s dog.

She continues. “My dog is slow-moving, quiet, loving. Erik,” she indicates, punctuating the air with her right index finger. “My neighbour’s dog,” she gestures with a second jab, “well, she’s all over the place. Zero to eighty.”

“Me?”

“Yes, that’s you. Pure energy. Now, the neighbour’s dog, you, and my dog, Erik, are out for a walk. My neighbour’s dog bounds ahead, races here and there, sniffs, comes back, barks, runs ahead again, exuberant. My dog, well, he sticks pretty close to me. He sniffs, he checks everything out, slowly . . . he may lift his leg and pee, stop, sniff again. He doesn’t get too far too fast, but eventually, he finishes the walk. They both do, quickly and slowly. That’s you and Erik,” she tells me, but I have already figured this out.

“And the two dogs love one another and get along well,” she assures me. “But they have their own timelines, their own agendas.”

I think about this later, this dog analogy, and I tell Erik. He laughs at first and then abruptly, he asks me what Marla was wearing. “Fortune teller clothes,” I tell him, and we both know I am only half-joking, for Marla, like Erik, sees things for what they are. I understand Erik a little bit more, his timeline and his trajectory. I am the greyhound; he is the hush puppy. We walk different paths, but we’ll both reach a common destination, in our own time. In our own way.

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Points to Ponder: There are no true failures, only failure to meet expectation. If we expect a child or a young adult—especially a neuro-diverse person—to follow a generic path, we may be setting them up for failure. Recognizing that each person needs to create a pathway that works for them is the first step toward understanding. “Don’t push him too hard, Mamma. He’s doing his best.”

Teresa Hedley is the author of What’s Not Allowed? A Family Journey with Autism (Wintertickle Press, 2020), a memoir which offers an uplifting approach to mining the best version of each of us, autism or not. Teresa is also an educator and a curriculum designer. Teaching stints in Canada, Japan, Greece, Spain and Germany have shaped her perspective and inform her writing. Teresa and son Erik co-wrote a twenty-article series for Autism Matters magazine, “I Have Autism and I Need Your Help.” Additionally, Teresa worked directly with families and school boards in Ottawa as an autism consultant and advocate. She and her family live and play on Vancouver Island.

"I highly recommend this book. Teresa is a gifted storyteller...overall a masterful blend of humour and authenticity."

–MIKE LAKE , Canadian Parliamentarian and international autism advocate; Edmonton, AB, Canada