The Fires of Autism

  * * *

  Laura was drained. Every moment in the past three weeks that she wasn't busy with her job or with taking care of Jerome and Todd had been spent researching autism. She had read websites until her eyes glazed over, placed phone calls to schools, therapists, insurance companies, government agencies, and a wide range of businesses claiming to help children with autism. Although she had learned a lot, she was left with more questions than she had had to begin with.

  There was so much still unknown about autism. What caused it. Whether it could develop after birth or whether it was always congenital even in cases where the more obvious symptoms didn't appear until the child was older. Whether there even was one single cause. Whether it was possible to recover from it. What the prognosis for a given child might be. Whether it was becoming more common, or even what the prevalence of it currently was. Seemingly simple questions that often resulted in highly charged debates with no definitive answers.

  She wished she could talk to Calvin about it, but he had been spending almost all of his free time at the firehouse.

  She heard the front door open and Calvin walk in. A minute later, he came into the bedroom and started to strip off his sooty clothing.

  Laura fought the growing resentment she felt toward him. Once again, he had returned only after Todd and Jerome were in bed. He hadn't seen his sons awake for more than three hours in as many weeks. For that matter, he hadn't even seen Laura awake much more than that.

  Calvin commented, "That fire was nasty, but at least I managed to rescue a little girl before she was hurt."

  Laura snapped, "Jerome and Todd had a good evening. I did, too. Thanks for asking."

  Calvin's shoulders stiffened and he bit out, "What's your problem?"

  "You are. You're never here."

  "You knew I was a firefighter when you married me. I thought you understood that I'd have to leave you alone when I was needed."

  "I do. I do understand that. Really. But I thought you understood that being a father means juggling your responsibilities. And you *did* understand that right up until Todd was diagnosed. But in the past three weeks, you've been hiding at the fire station. You're trying to escape the reality of Todd's autism by rescuing other people. Try helping rescue your own son!"

  Calvin's voice became low in both pitch and volume. "You think I don't want to? You think I wouldn't help Todd if I could? If I could give up my life in exchange for making him normal, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I can't. Don't you see that? There's *nothing* I can do to help him. And that hurts. So, yes. I am helping the people I can help. I'd rather help Todd, but I can't dowse the fires of autism. And it's hard. It hurts more than anything else ever has."

  Laura wanted to rail at him that Todd needed him. That *she* needed him. Jerome, too, for that matter. And he had abandoned all of them. She wanted to scream that she was hurting, too, and not only could she not head out at the drop of a hat, she had to pick up the slack he left every time he flew out the door to the fire station.

  A part of her wanted to say all that. But she knew that wouldn't help. One thing she had learned in her years of marriage and motherhood was that one needed to pick one's battles very carefully, and to consider the long-term effects of one's actions. Although yelling at Calvin right now would certainly be satisfying, it wouldn't solve any of their problems; it would only add to them.

  So she just stood still, breathing deeply until she could master her emotions a bit. She then put her hand on one of Calvin's folded arms and looked him in the eyes. She forced herself to speak in a gentle voice. "I know you're hurting. I am, too. But you're wrong. Dr. Connolly was wrong, too. There *are* things we can do to help Todd. They won't be as easy or as fast as rescuing someone from a burning building, and they won't all work, but we can help Todd get the most out of life. He may never fully recover, but he can improve."

  Laura thought she caught a glimmer of hope in Calvin's eye, but his voice remained skeptical. "What can we do?"

  "There are all sorts of therapies out there. Applied Behavioral Analysis. Sensory Integration Therapy. Special diets. Biomedical interventions. Patterning. Massage therapy. Secretin. Some of the stuff being hyped looks like snake oil to me, but there is scientific evidence for Applied Behavioral Analysis. And some of the other therapies seem to have a lot of anecdotal support.

  "But I could really use your help. There's so much information and misinformation out there that it would take me months to read it and sort it all out. And one of the few things that pretty much everyone agrees on is that the earlier positive interventions are started, the better.

  "Think you could help with some of the reading and let me know what you find out? There's no way we could afford all of the therapies, even if we did want to try them all. Most aren't covered by insurance, and a lot cost thousands of dollars each."

  Calvin's eyes regained a spark she hadn't seen in them for a very long time.

  Firefighting

  That discussion was a turning point for the whole family. With Calvin's speed-reading ability, he quickly surpassed Laura in terms of autism-related knowledge. He also read a few books by Temple Grandin, and encouraged Laura to read them, as well. Dr. Grandin started life as affected by autism as Todd, but she grew up to earn a doctorate in animal science and became a successful entrepreneuse. The more-humane cattle chutes she had designed were used in slaughterhouses throughout the country. She also was a nationally-renowned speaker who gave presentations at both animal husbandry and autism conferences. She invented a "squeeze machine" that many people on the spectrum found calming. And although her personal life seemed pretty barren to Calvin (she seemed to prefer the company of animals to that of other people), she herself felt that she had a satisfying life. And really, Calvin realized, it was her own opinion of her quality of life that mattered, not his. Calvin knew that Dr. Grandin's successes were not at all typical of people on the spectrum -- or of neurotypical people, for that matter -- but she had demonstrated that it was possible for someone with autism to accomplish a tremendous amount and to have a fulfilling life. There was hope for Todd, after all.

  Laura and Calvin explored the myriad interventions for autism and chose several to pursue. Some didn't seem to yield any results, others yielded such minimal results that they were set aside to free up their temporal and monetary resources for more effective treatments. Progress was painfully slow, but it was real.

  Several months had passed since they had started trying various interventions; they tried a new one every three weeks or so; they had just started their most recent intervention a few days earlier. Calvin had just finished spending an hour or so engaging in floortime with Todd. ("Floortime" had been one of their earlier interventions which had been proving successful enough for them to continue indefinitely.) When Todd settled down to play a solitary dump-and-fill game, Calvin asked Jerome to join him for a game of Chutes and Ladders. (Calvin knew that siblings of kids on the spectrum often got short shrift in terms of their parents' time, and he was determined not to let that happen with Jerome.) While they were playing, they talked about everything from Jerome's opinion of his preschool to the latest antics of his friend Joe. Their conversation was accompanied by the plop, plop, plop of plastic shapes being dropped into Todd's shape sorter, followed by the sound of the pieces being dumped from the shape sorter back onto the floor so that Todd could begin putting them back in again.

  After about 15 minutes, Calvin was alerted by the quiet that Todd had stopped playing. Calvin immediately looked up to see Todd standing. Calvin watched to make sure that his younger son wasn't going to get into any mischief; he certainly didn't want a repeat of the previous week's spice-dumping incident. But instead of heading toward the kitchen, Todd approached Jerome's chair and reached his little arms around his brother to give him a quick hug. He scampered off almost before Calvin realized what had happened, let alone before Jerome could turn around to reciprocate the hug.

  Calvin was stunned; a part of him d
idn't dare believe what he had seen. That had been the first hug that Todd had given anyone in months. It made Calvin realize how much Todd was once again interacting with his environment and even with people. Calvin couldn't wait until Laura got home to share the news with her.

  Calvin saw that the hug had affected Jerome as much as it had himself. His older son was smiling, but his eyes were moist. After a minute, Jerome managed to say, "He hugged me, Dad."

  "Yes, son, he did."

  Calvin knew that their whole family had many years of challenges and hard work ahead of them. He didn't know how much progress Todd would make, or whether he would ever be able to live independently. But he now knew that it was possible that the sky was the limit; their affectionate son was starting to come back to them.

  The satisfaction Calvin found in rescuing strangers was nothing compared to the joy he felt in being able to help his own son. He mentally paraphrased an old commercial: Parenting was the toughest job he'd ever love.