Typical Situation

My son is Autistic. He is mentally challenged. The first time I had to tell someone this was when he was five years old. And I cried. I cried because in 1995 no one knew what Autism was really.

Oh they may had seen it on a t.v. show or saw it in some magazine, but they didn’t know what it was.

Autism is a sensory debilitation, it includes some mental challenges and some speech impairments but mostly it involves a sensory overload. The problem is, too much coming at someone all at once.

I describe it to people this way:

You’re in a car, the radio is on and people in the front seat are talking. Children in the back seat are playing a hand held game and giggling, the wind is whipping passed the car, the engine is running, other cars are passing, the road is uneven. The body of the car creaks and makes noise. And you can hear everything at once, no separation, no filter, you can’t not hear everything coming at you at the same time. It makes you crazy and so you plug your ears. And people think you’re weird because of it.

That’s Autism.

Teachers fight with you. Other kids don’t understand your problem. You annoy your parents because you can’t focus on their words.

So you go into your own world and keep to yourself and your own voice in your head is overwhelming.

I learned if I said Marty’s name and pointed to my eyes to make him look at me and focus on me, that he would listen and I would get him to do what I ask. I got him to talk by making him say what he pointed at…” No, tell me what you want.” I would say what the object was and would not give it to him till he repeated the word to me.” When he couldn’t pronounce something I would go over the sound over and over until he said it correctly.

But for some reason I couldn’t seem to get his first teachers to pick this up. We live in a small rural area in Northern Michigan, an exaggerated one room school house, was my children’s school district.

This was a wonderful place to raise “normal" children. Not so much for a child with special needs.

And I insisted that Marty go to school with his brother and sister. I threatened litigation, I called in the state, and it won me no friends.

Teachers called him a challenge. He pulled on girls hair because it was pretty. They gave him kindergarten assignments in 2nd grade and had him delivering notes and mail to teachers. All the time calling on my two other children to tell them how to handle Marty. I told them if they had questions to call me and not to bother my other children or take them out of class because they could handle their brother…Especially when their grades began to suffer because of it.

The people at the mental hospital where I had Marty diagnosed wanted me to leave him there so we could get respite from him. My cousin Paula was severely mentally challenged and was institutionalized and lived her life out in a mental hospital. She died at 38 years old. I was determined this was not going to be Marty’s fate.

Marty is extremely good at remembering details. Especially with movies. He remembers things I can’t. He remembers things that happened when he was 3 years old. He will draw movie logos in detail from memory. He will draw scenes he’s seen in movies or on t.v. He blows you out of the water. But he can’t remember front from back. And he has no spatial reference with objects in his hand. ( He would beat something down to get it to fit inside something else. )

Over the years he went from doctor to doctor, from the rural school district to a large school district in a bigger city. They handed Marty off from authority to authority.

Nights at home I would listen to Dave Matthew’s Band and drink coffee and look at the stars.

Under the Table and Dreaming CD.

The one song that reminded me of Marty most of all was Typical Situation.

“[Verse 1]

Ten fingers we have each

Nine planets around the sun repeat

Eight ball is the last if you triumphant be

Seven oceans pummel the shores of the sea

[Chorus]

It's a typical situation

In these typical times

Too many choices

It's a typical situation

In these typical times

Too many choices

Everybody's happy

Everybody's free

We'll keep the big door open

Everyone will come around

Why are you different?

Why are you that way?

If you don't get in line

We'll lock you away

It all comes down to nothing

[Verse 2]

Six senses feeling

Five around a sense of self

Four seasons turn on and turn off

I can see three corners from this corner

Two iss a perfect number

But one, well…”

They would have loved me to lock Marty away and forgot about him. But I never could. He was my baby. He looked at me with trusting eyes and radiated pure love for me even when he couldn’t speak.

“[Verse 1]

Ten fingers we have each

Nine planets around the sun repeat

Eight ball is the last if you triumphant be

Seven oceans pummel the shores of the sea

Reminded me of how Marty thought.

“If you don’t get in line they’ll lock you away.”

That’s what the doctors wanted to do, lock him away, like Paula, like so many hundreds and hundreds of people in the past. Lock him away, so they don’t have to be seen or talked to and no effort would have to put into teaching him. It was easier. Less stressful right?

Not for me. My babies eyes would’ve haunted me. Those loving and trusting eyes.

My heart would’ve broke. I would’ve had to be locked away. No.

I’d listen and drink my coffee and tears would drip into the liquid. I’d look at the stars and wonder if Mr.Matthews knew the heavy message that he sent? Maybe not. Maybe it was just nice song or a poem thathe thought twinkled like jewels waiting to be put to a melody?

It helped me. It talked to me. And it said I wasn’t alone. Someone else felt like me. Someone else thought like Marty.

As he’s gotten older, I don’t play it AS much. But when it comes on I turn the volume up and tell anyone around me how much it means to me.

We’ve gotten to where Marty is old enough to live in assisted living. It’s not a group home. It’s not an institution, its him going to work and making his own money and having people to remind him to take his medications and people to go to church and the movies with…And yet, I’m reluctant to allow him to go. I know this is best. But I still want to protect him.

So difficult and yet necessary.

There is no song to help this new transition, I’m alone with my husband on this one.

That’s okay. We’ve done our best for and love him. He’s had that. We have done what's right to raise him as a functioning member of society and made sure he just didn't wither and die having lived a purposeless life hidden from the public. Yes we did our best for him, even though its was fustrating and felt impossible at times. We trudged through the hardest parts; begrudgingly at times, but always lovingly...And we built a person who functions...And I guess, that's good, and everything else is gravy.