punchdrunkmom

In which the boy goes to summer camp

Kai’s first day of summer camp was supposed to be Monday. But, due to Kai’s Kai-ness and an apparent lack of organization at camp on Monday, Scott scrapped the whole camp idea and we actually started on Wednesday.

“It was quite disorganized,” Scott said. Actually, that’s not exactly what he said, but this is a family blog, the recent bachelorette pictorial notwithstanding.

I had a knot in my stomach all morning. I’d sent Mr. Costa, the camp director, an e-mail about Kai. I kept it light. You know. He has autism :) Not a big deal :) LOL :), ;), ;p, ;o)! I suggested that he be put into a group with four-year-olds, as he seems to have more equal footing with younger kids.

:)!

I never heard back from Mr. Costa.

On Wednesday, Kai didn't want to go to summer camp. He wanted to go to the toy store. Until we got to the park, then he wanted to go to the playground.

“You’re going to summer camp,” I said. “You’re going to love it.”

“No,” he said. “Go toy store.”

I introduced Kai to his counselor, Abby.

“I got the email you sent Mr. Costa,” she said. “We’ll keep an eye on him.”

Kai chose this moment to disappear. I found him near the playground and led him back to Abby.

“Kai,” I prompted, “tell Abby what you want to do.”

“Need to go playground,” he said.

Abby smiled. She is so young that her skin remained smooth and unlined when she smiled. She knelt down to Kai’s level.

“Well, that’s exactly where we’re going,” she told him.

Kai stayed near the group, if not exactly in it, while the rest of the kids arrived. I stood off to the side, noting that Abby had her back to Kai while she was signing in other parents. I noted that Kai sidled farther and farther away. I noted how many exits there were to the park.

I debated saying something to Abby about watching Kai more closely, aware that I was hovering. Helicoptering, even.

“Abby,” I said, “I recommend a lot of hand-holding. Like during transitions.”

She nodded agreeably and the group started to head toward the playground. All except Kai. I walked through the volleyball court to where he was digging in the sand.

“Kai,” I said. “It’s playground time.”

He looked up and saw Abby and the group heading toward the swings, and then ran after them.

“Do what Abby says,” I said, and I kissed his head, my lips pressing against his prickly buzzcut.

I tried to block out all the scenarios in my head, where he runs from the group and out into the street, where he’s lost on the streets of Chicago.

Or worse, where I get a call that he’s bitten a camper and is kicked out, and instead of dropping him off at camp, we have to stare at each other all summer.

“I love you,” I said.

And I left.

:::

When I arrived to pick him up, I couldn’t find him anywhere. With rising panic, I scanned the kids for his blue Tom and Jerry shirt and didn’t see him. Abby only had three kids near her, two girls and a boy in a green shirt.

My heart was in my throat when I realized that Kai was wearing the green shirt that identified him as a camper.

He was holding a paper butterfly. I melted with relief.

“Hi, Buddy!” I called, and sat down next to Abby under the shade of a tree.

Kai climbed in my lap. I rubbed my cheek against his hair.

“How’d he do?” I asked Abby.

“We lost him a couple of times,” she said. “But we found him again.”

Abby, welcome to my world. Now you know, girl.

“Kai,” I said, “what’s this?” I pointed at the butterfly.

“It’s a rainbow butterfly!” he said.

“It’s beautiful. What else did you do?”

Kai paused for a moment.

“Eat lunch.”

And then he brightened, remembering something.

“There’s bugs in the potty!” he chirped, grinning at the memory.

Abby nodded. “Big ones,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “that sounds like summer camp to me.”

I could feel my stomach relax. I lifted Kai from my lap and stood up, brushing leaves from my backside.

I took Kai’s hand as he skipped and I walked through the park on a warm June afternoon.

We’ve got this, Kai, I thought.

You guys, we’ve got this.

 

 

 

In which girls just want to have fun

The first call came in at 5:26, 22 minutes after I’d left in the taxi for a weekend in Portland.

It was the babysitter. Kai had bitten Ryan’s thumb and broken the skin.

I told her where the Neosporin was. She asked me if she should put Kai in a time out, and of course the answer was no. I told her that if she wanted to, she could draw up a social story, in which Kai bites his sister and she’s unhappy.

I never saw any evidence that this had happened, so I’m assuming she just turned on the TV, which was plan b.

The next morning, I woke to a text message that came through at 2:08 am Portland time. The kids were both awake, Scott wrote. That's 4:08 am in Chicago. They never went back to bed.

By the time I talked to them, it was lunchtime. Ryan was so exhausted that she had just fallen asleep sitting upright in a chair.

Ryan had a fever on Sunday and Monday, which Scott treated with popsicles and Ibuprofen. He kept her home from school on Monday. Kai refused to go to Summer Camp, so that didn’t happen, either. But he was able to get them to therapy in the suburbs.

On the way home, Kai had an accident in his car seat, which was completely random.

:::

I want to say I was impressed by Scott’s grace under fire, but I don't want to imply that I didn’t or couldn't expect it. He didn't make any frantic calls or complaining texts. He sent me a couple of pictures, though, and in them the children scrubbed and well dressed. They actually threw some blog-worthy scenarios at him, and it turned out just fine. Ryan even seems to have grown. There was only one thing he regretted, he said.

“I didn’t fix Ryan’s hair,” he said, sounding almost apologetic.

“It’s all right, honey” I said.

And he went downstairs to take the first shower he’d had in 72 hours.

 

In which I leave on a jet plane

Thursday night I typed up instructions for Scott to use on Monday, when he had to be me.

Ryan has pre-school. It’s Kai’s first day of summer camp. He needs a snack packed. He needs sunscreen. He needs to be spied on from the bushes until we’re sure he’s going to mind the counselors.

Ryan needs to be picked up early, then Scott needs to pick up Kai, then lunch needs to be served in the car on the way to the suburbs for group speech therapy and occupational therapy. Here are the directions. You can get on the expressway at Armitage.

The iPad needs to be remembered. Contingencies need to be accounted for (if you need to go to McDonald’s, get off on Mannheim, otherwise, continue to Roosevelt.)

Mechanics-wise, none of it is hard. It’s not vascular surgery. It’s not advertising. But it’s grueling. It requires planning and forethought (snacks! iPhones! distracting promises!). It requires managing a toddler and an autistic kindergartner, two beings remarkably similar in a way, though not a good way.

Often, on the long drive, after three quarters of a day negotiating various pick-ups and drop-offs and swimming lessons and trying to clean up the house and squeeze in a shower, I’m so exhausted that I find myself straining to stay awake on the highway.

I didn’t write that down in the instructions.

:::

Scott’s never done any of those things—dropping off the kids at school or packing a snack. It’s not that he’s incapable, but that we divide up the responsibilities of the household so completely that I had to ask Ryan’s preschool director if I’d included Scott on the list of people allowed to pick her up. (I had! Go me.)

I told Scott that the only thing I really cared about was that Kai got to group speech.

“I’ll get it all done,” he assured me.

Well, I thought that would be amazing, because I can’t. I didn’t unload the dishwasher or vacuum. I didn’t send out a bunch of e-mails I’m way behind on. I didn’t fix the blinds that Ryan trashed in the bedroom. I didn’t put away my shoes.

I did stock the fridge with food. So I guess that’s something.

:::

All the way to the airport, I had this nagging sensation that I was forgetting something. I combed through my lists of Important Things to Remember.

Flat iron? Yes. Make-up? Yes. Computer? Yes. Chargers? Yes. Underwear? Yes. Socks? I think so.

I couldn’t shake it, like I was missing some key ingredient, like my outfit for my sister’s bachelorette party (yes), or my ID (yes).

I kept telling myself that whatever I forgot, I could pick up in Portland—a cell charger or some tinted moisturizer, but it didn’t really help.

Because I think what I was missing was Kai and Ryan.

:::

I will be gone for 67 hours, far and away the longest I’ve ever been gone before.

And I will be glad to be back, which is good, because Scott will be ready to go back to work, where not one single soul will ask him to carry them up a flight of stairs or make a collage resembling an Angry Bird out of breakfast foods.

At least not anymore. Not since he got out of advertising.

 

Eggsession

My friend Jen asked me what was new as she handed me a glass of wine.

“Kai’s driving me insane,” I said. “He’s obsessed with eggs.”

At that, she shot out of her chair and over to the stove.

“I’m so glad you reminded me,” she called. She had been making hard-boiled eggs for her own son, Jack.

Jen went about draining the saucepan of water, letting the eggs cool on a plate.

“What do you mean ‘obsessed?’” she asked.

You guys, I mean obsessed.

:::

I think it started over Easter. There were many Dora episodes involving Easter eggs. I bought a kit to color them at the store.

He made me color dozens and dozens of eggs, both hard-boiled and, when those ran out, raw. It got to the point where every egg in the house was dyed and Scott or I would crack an egg into a pan and it was 50/50 if it was already cooked.

When I threw away the egg coloring kits, because OMG that’s enough of that, Kai began to draw on the eggs in marker.

“Wook,” he’d say, showing me an egg, “I draw a heart!”

On one set of eggs, he asked me to draw pictures of him and his friend Jovan.

“Now draw Kai and Jovan holding hands,” he’d say.

And it’s not just about art. He likes to take the eggs from the refrigerator and hide them or roll them around or use the pieces of his marble roller coaster to make stands for them of varying heights.

Often I’ll come upstairs after one of his sleepless nights to find eggs cracked on the floor. Once I just found the whites, a pile of clear gelatinous goo on the rug, but in the early morning fog I didn’t recognize it for what it was.

“Kai,” I asked, “what’s this?”

“Egg is slippery,” he replied.

Oh. Oh, I see.

Crap.

We go through dozens and dozens of eggs. I buy them at Costco, two 18-packs sealed together in plastic. 36 eggs. They’re gone in 10 days and I’m running out for more. He eats them scrambled, hard boiled, with fake cheese, colored with food dye.

“What color eggs would you like?” I ask.

“Gween!”

:::

Kai had gotten into egg-related trouble two times just that day, once for insisting that he wanted four scrambled eggs and eating exactly none.

“Kai,” I warned, “if you don’t eat those eggs, I’m going to make you, um…make you, uh…”

I looked at Scott, who shrugged. I cast about for an appropriate punishment. Refuse to serve him eggs for the rest of the day? Take the egg money out of his allowance? What allowance?

What I finally landed on was:

“I’m going to make you wear them all day in a pouch hanging from your neck.”

Scott looked at me like I was crazy.

And obviously, I didn’t make him wear his freaking eggs because, well, am I going to make the boy wear a pouch of scrambled eggs? That would be weird.

Right?

Later, I read him the riot act for escaping the house and rolling raw eggs down the slide, where they would crack on the cement. When I caught him, he carried all the eggs inside and into the bathroom wastebasket.

“Those cost money, Kai,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, and ran off.

While I was emptying the garbage, he came back with more eggs.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my patience rubbed raw.

“Eggs down the slide,” he said.

:::

Jen asked Kai if he wanted a hard-boiled egg.

“Careful,” I warned her. “The last time we were at my mother’s, she found an egg in her bathroom vanity. Two weeks after we left.”

Jen seemed unconcerend. She gamely offered him a marker and told him to draw on his egg. He drew a self-portrait, complete with eyebrows, and then peeled the egg to eat it.

Later, after I’d taken the kids home, I got the following text from Jen:

“Am missing an egg. Madness!”

Well, I tried to warn her, didn’t I?

I asked Kai if he’d hidden an egg at Miss Jen’s.

“Yes. Egg is beautiful.”

“Where did you put it?” I asked him.

“On the table.”

I thought that an unlikely hiding place.*

But then, I wouldn’t have expected to find an egg in the bathroom vanity, either. 

 

*As of this writing, the egg is still missing, but I did find one today in Ryan's Ikea kitchen set. 

 

In which a bluff is called, and a threat is carried out

My mom and I took the kids to the pool on Saturday.

Ryan spent a solid two hours in the water, playing on the slide, blowing bubbles, pretending to swim by walking on her hands and kicking her legs behind her.

Kai spent most of that time eating popcorn on a bench. Each bag was a dollar, and the dollars were supplied by my mother. He could take the dollar to the window and exchange it for more popcorn, which he did again and again. And thus, he passed most of an afternoon, until everyone was ready to go and he suddenly wanted to go in the water.

Five more minutes became ten became fifteen. Ryan’s lips were blue. My mother was out of dollars. I finally managed to wrap my fingers around a slippery limb to haul him out of the pool and into the locker room where he refused to get dressed.

“Come on,” I encouraged, “don’t you want to go home and watch Team Umizoomi?”

“No.”

“Play with the iPad?”

“No.”

“Eat pizza?”

“No.”

“Play Legos?”

“No.”

Right.

I got myself dressed. I got Ryan dressed. We gathered up towels and shoes and purses and car keys. Kai hid in one of the showers, stark naked, refusing to come out.

I thought about forcing his clothes on him, of pulling his Tom and Jerry shirt over his head, while he fought me, of putting on a socks and shoes only to have him kick them off again, and I was suddenly over it.

“Kai,” I said, “if you don’t put on your clothes, I’m going to carry you out of here and take you home without them.”

:::

Don’t ever let it be said that I’m not a woman of my word.

 

In which it will grow back

A few weeks ago, Kai gave himself the following haircut:

 

Now, I’m not one to freak out about hair. Or, should I say, I’m not one to freak out about someone else’s hair. I recently went dark and chopped a few inches off of my own hair, and spent a week freaking out about it. I kept insisting it looked like a wig, like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

Don't you hate that? Uncomfortable silences?

 

Really? You think Scott's going to kill you over a little foot massage?

Anyhoo, I didn’t take Kai to get a haircut right away for a number of reasons. Laziness tops the list, but we’ve also had stuff to do, birthday parties and whatnot, and then, like the crayon drawings on the wall or the hole in the screen door that you’ve patched with duct tape, eventually you just stop seeing it until finally, you get a bee in your bonnet and make an appointment at the kiddie salon.

Ryan was easy. She got her little bob re-shaped and that was the end of it.

Kai, though, that was a tough conversation.

They stylist suggested that we go really short, get it even again, and then regrow it.

“It will be a partial buzz cut,” she said. “The good thing is that it’s hair, and it will grow.”

I considered the boy for a moment. He looked so handsome to me just then. He had a kind of nonchalant hairdo that some guys would spend hours in the mirror trying to recreate. But his bangs looked like something out of a Jim Carrey movie.

“Have you ever considered that he cuts his hair for a reason?” she asked me.

This is the same stylist we went to that didn’t like Kai’s fidgeting, that always makes me hold his head. She doesn't really get Kai. And yet, she kind of had something there.

Kai always cuts his hair in the exact same spot.

Observe this evidence from 2010. Also that cut on the bridge of his nose.

After this latest chopjob, he told his teacher that he wanted a shorter haircut.

And then suddenly, I internalized that thought. He told his teacher that he wanted a shorter haircut. OMG.

“Do it,” I said.

I took pictures and sent them to his teacher. I thought she’d be thrilled.

I sent her the following text:

"FYI. Scott’s going to kill me; all buzzed off."

She sent me one back:

"I am going to kill u forget Scott."

She wanted to know if he had lice, and if not, what was I doing?

"My baby!!!" She said.

I was totally surprised at her reaction, and wondered if I'd made a mistake.

I sent a picture to Scott.

This is the text he sent me:

"OMG—are you making our son get a Forrest Gump haircut?"

Well, God damn, I thought, sitting there, listening to the buzz from the clippers and starting to freak out. The stylist kept going over and over his skull, shorter and shorter.

“At least he’s got a good head,” she said. “Sometimes you get in there and their head’s all jacked up.”

I told her that I knew what she meant.

Chicago, you know what I'm talking about.

I was worried that I’d made a huge mistake, that the kids would make fun of him tomorrow, that Scott would get on my case about his hair, that my beautiful boy would look like a jerk all summer.

When the stylist was done, Kai ran his hand over his head.

“Hair is shorter,” he said.

He looked at it in the mirror.

“Do you like it, buddy?” I asked him.

He examined it from both sides and broke into a grin.

“Yes,” he said. “Need to have a lollipop.”

:::

His teacher will come around. And Scott ultimately supports my decision, knowing that Kai's former hairdo was untenable, and knowing also that if he objects too strenuously he will be charged with the task of maintaining the boy's hair.

And so, you guys, his hair is shorter, just like he wanted it. 

He's been telling me for so long.

I just hadn't been listening.

 

 

In which we sign up for summer camp and take a leap of faith

Last year at this time, I was freaking out.

School was about to let out for the year, and the plans I’d made for Kai had fallen through. I was feeling an overwhelming sense of dread that can only mean that you are about to spend vast swaths of unstructured time with your own child.

I’d tried to place him in summer camp, but the minute the directors found out he was on the Spectrum, they would spend five minutes unselling me on the camp they’d just spent five minutes talking up.

“We really just play with broken glass near a pedophile recovery center,” one said.

She didn’t really say that. But her message was the same: we don’t want to deal with your kid.

“Don’t tell them next time,” my friend Julie said.

And it is true that mostly don’t tell people about Kai’s autism. I’ve never told the girls in the gym daycare, for example, and that seems to work out just fine. I don’t alert staff at birthday parties, or sitters, or even really tell other parents.

So I decided that I would sign Kai up for park district camp this year, and let them know about Kai only after they’d cashed the check.

:::

We registered for something called “Play Camp.” The age range is four and five-year-olds. It meets three times a week, for three hours at a local park.

Last night, I went to the parent information meeting.

Specifically, I went so I could pull the director aside and have The Talk about Kai’s challenges—his speech delay, his sensory stuff, his reliance on picture schedules.

The director, Mr. Costa, already had a crowd of anxious parents around him when I got there, no doubt asking him about the camp counselors’ experience with epi-pens and CPR, whether they have Master’s degrees, if they’d passed background checks.

So I decided to have a seat and just get the lay of the land.

The first thing I noticed about Mr. Costa was that it looked like somebody recently beat the shit out of him. He had a black eye. A large bruise across his cheek was mellowing into soft green and yellow hues. I wondered if someone had hit him in the face with a shovel.

And I wondered why.

He spoke with a heavy Chicago accent, like Drew Peterson. Like Steve Dahl doing Drew Peterson. Over by dere. He pronounced “library” with only one “r.”

The other parents seemed nervous—suspicious even—and their questions confirmed it. Would the kids go to the bathroom with appropriate gender supervision? Do each of the kids get a seatbelt on the bus? Can parents chaperone? No seriously, can the parents chaperone?

I recognized their questions for what they were—parents unsure about leaving their four- and five-year-olds with strangers for a few hours, maybe for the first time. These are the same questions parents ask at pre-school orientation, the same questions I asked back then, too.

I could feel a murmur of fear ripple through the room when he told us that the kids were responsible for putting on their own sunscreen. OMG! They’re just babies!

“It’s classified as medicine,” he said in his accent. “We can only remind them to reapply.”

Frankly, none of this scared me. Kai’s sunscreen could last the three hours while he was at camp. He’ll manage to use the restroom and behave himself on a school bus, he will successfully eat a snack. Not even Mr. Costa’s face bothered me. He might have been in a bicycle accident, for all I knew, or gotten hurt rescuing a kitten from a tree. My concerns were larger than that, like would they manage to hold his attention? Will he get bored and wander off?

And then one of the parents asked Mr. Costa to describe a typical day.

“Well,” he said, “they’ll start out in the sand box, maybe move to the other field for a little duck, duck, goose. Then they’ll come in here for story time, then run through the sprinklers.”

He pronounced it “run troo da sprinklers.”

I broke into a grin. Kai was going to love it.

:::

After the meeting broke up, I stood in line to talk to the director.

A little girl came up to him, a wide smile lighting up her pretty face.

“Hi, Mr. Costa,” she said.

“Hi, Eve,” he said. “You comin’ back ta camp dis year?”

“Yeah!”

Mr. Costa pointed at me.

“Yes?”

I contemplated what I wanted to say about Kai as I watched Eve skip away. And for some reason, I didn’t really want to say anything, to color this man's opinion of my son, or to assume that Kai couldn't do this.

“He might have a babysitter pick him up on the first day.”

“Sure,” Mr. Costa replied, agreeably. “Update your account on the Web site and add that person’s name.”

I examined the bruise on Mr. Costa’s cheek, and wondered briefly what the other guy looked like.

I smiled at him.

“See you in a few weeks, Mr. Costa,” I said.

“See you,” he said.

Kai is going to love summer camp.

 

In which we wonder how good you have to be to land in the top 11