Car Hop

Olivia let her wishes be known early and often. When you get a new car, she said, I want the silver one.

This, she explains, is because she does not prefer stick-shifting, despite the fact that she's been doing so almost from the advent of her driving career 4 years ago. I still stall out, she says. I'm bad at it.

If, on the other hand, one compiles the sum total of Becca's utterings on the matter (few though they've been,) one comes away with the impression that she likes manual transmissions, prefers the green '99 Forester over the blue '02 Outback, and otherwise has no particularly assertive horse in the race.

What can be said of the blue '02 Outback is that ever since it went to live in St. Mary's County with Rachel a few years ago, it has come into contact with so much mud, guinea pig stuff, and organic farm effluvia that no one apart from Rachel (who is perfectly content) makes any claim on it whatsoever.* (Though I must say I got it nice and clean in April. You may ask why. I will tell you. It was left in my custody during Rachel's 5 weeks in Costa Rica, and I was too embarrassed to take it in for service without cleaning it first. Her room, I will not touch. Well, not at least as long as there's a chance she'll still be inhabiting it.)

So, when it became indisputably obvious that I had 3 girls with 3 jobs going in 3 directions, 2/3 of a vehicle/girl failed to compute as a mathematical result.

Here again, I invite you to wonder why I don't kick my fledglings out of the nest without the padding of a parent-provided car. (Because I knew you were going to wonder that anyway.) I have no doubts that dealing early with the reality of economics is good for humans. If the girls in question showed signs of feeling entitled, or hadn't--from early on--demonstrated a capacity for recognizing what life requires and taking it on, then I would probably see being an auto-enabler as not a good thing. As it is, they understand that--while I help where I can--my future economic capacity is a big question mark covered with scribblings like nursing care, life expectancy, and if/when/what paying job could Emily possibly do?

So, after a bit of foot-dragging, coupled with some online research, I returned to Annapolis Subaru and the pleasantly un-slick salesman Ed Rucker, and came home with another blue Outback. It is mine, and I don't plan to upgrade for years to come.

It was at this point that Becca realized that her baby sister was about to assume main-drivership of a car 7 years newer than the green Forester. And that the green Forester was full of cds, dirt, empty juice bottes, and stuck-on gummy sharks only some of which were her doing.

Olivia took on the cleaning job as gamely as you'd hope for, and--except for one gummy shark which will require overnight cool weather and a chisel--it's now a clean green Soobie. A clean green Soobie which will go in for service on Wednesday, at which point vehical longevity is going to be largely a function of how meticulous each driver cares to be.

I would like to say that, at this point, I'm swearing off parental oversight and intervention in the area of personal cars. But as Rachel drove off on Saturday, after a couple days home, and I heard a car noise (the sort you don't want to hear--a clunk, chink, or squeee,) I looked at our next door neighbor, out mulching his shrub, and made a how 'bout that noise? face. He replied that he cannot count the number of similar noises he's heard emanating from the cars of his 3 adult children as they've driven off over the years. But there's only so much you can do, isn't there?

*I need to append that organic farming, animal rescue, and the development of abandoned and muddy ex-farms into environmental education centers are all goals I deeply appreciate. Not to mention that Rachel has been on the move between living situations and the car has, therefore, been more overstuffed than usual. I'm not knocking, just explaining.

I mean gaps

Today, Carlos the Do-Everything guy is out back bulldozing sticks, stumps, and bamboo roots out of the way in preparation for the fence people to re-enclose us with the 15 extra feet of backyard which was formerly under the scruffy shadow of a row of no longer extant Leyland Cypresses. One of which, in fact, had a dispute with the existing fence, during the January snow inundation, over whether horizontal is an appropriate attitude for an evergreen. I ruled in favor of the fence, which I patched, and against the cypress, which was carted off, along with its few remaining scraggly cohorts.

Here is what's curious about the approaching Fall: I thought, for at least a little while there, that I was going to find out what empty nest felt like. Here's what's not apt to happen: Empty nest. I suppose I should have named all my children Skippy, because it looks like we're segueing from the college years to the boomerang years right about now. With a healthy smudge as Gabe's collegiate tour of duty begins in August and stretches toward a horizon 5+ years distant.

I am not complaining. Boomerangability is a quality of this house that the smaller, lower maintenance dwelling of which I daydream would be hard-pressed to fill. Hence, the next time I ask myself just why do I live here again? I'll need only to glance at the pile of slides, flipflops, running shoes, sandals, and cowboy boots in the front hall, to reply Oh yes, that's why.

Plus, Jeff has been missing chairs a bit lately. By that I mean aiming poorly. So I won't object to an extra pair of hands or two to help get him back on track as he closes himself on the wrong side of the door, looks for orange juice in the freezer, or topples over the dog. And yes, I do still fully intend to take him on a train trip in October. But don't worry. We will mind the gap.

there is still fun to have

I already know what will happen at the end of the book The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian. It's a story that's referenced now and then on The Alzheimer Spouse, an online forum for spouses of AD people, and it's easy to infer, both from AlzSpouse and the Amazon review, that the narrator--an elderly woman with multiple health issues of her own caring for a spouse with dementia--is going to take things into her own hands, in a manner endorsed only by certain brave independent souls and the Hemlock Society.

This might be a risky admission, but I recall an exchange I had with Rachel, on the topic of Jeff's and my upcoming Fall trip to the Grand Canyon. I made mention of how we'd be among the less adventurous visitors. Jeff may have backpacked a northern chunk of the Appalachian Trail in the 70s, but these days vision and balance are not among the features we can rely upon, and we'll be sticking with relatively short, level, and well guard-railed ways to access the view. Then Rachel said something like this: "Yes, well...but if you've got to kick it..."

What she meant, of course, and frankly, was to pose the following rhetorical question: Would you, at stage 5 out of 7 in the game of Alzheimer's, rather see the thing to its inevitable conclusion, or would you rather fall into the Grand Canyon?

But don't worry. I will not push Jeff in, and I will, furthermore, strive to keep him away from any close encounters with gravity. Nor are his children angling for any other approach. Rachel is just one of those unusual kinds of people who, at 23, already grasp that life is tragic, absurd, possibly pointless, and most likely worthwhile anyway. And as for me, though I have no beef with Dr. Kevorkian, my philosophical position regarding hastening anybody's death, mine included, can best be summed up by a line from Joe Versus the Volcano. Joe, asked by Angelica whether he'd ever contemplated suicide, replies: Some things take care of themselves...they're not your job.

So, yes...that'll take care of itself. For all of us. Might as well stick around and watch things play out in the meantime. It could be interesting.

The Leisure Seeker meanwhile, awaits on my Kindle, and it is next up when I climb aboard the elliptical. (Tomorrow? Maybe...gotta go car shopping...) I've just finished Super Freakonomics, and I highly recommend--especially--the last chapter which deals with the potential for geo-engineering solutions to the global warming-related climate quandary. But now onto something that is apt to make me cry. It will. I will ellipt and cry, but really, I'm fine with that.

I can see but I cannot plumb.

If you've ever been tested for color blindness, you've seen Ishihara color plates. They look like they belong on the wall in the Museum of Modern Art as curated by Count von Count. They are round blotches comprised of smaller dots of related colors--let's say orange and red--in which can be seen (if your color perception is standard-issue) another set of dots--green maybe--forming a number. 7, 16, 5, 42...similar background dot colors surrounding blotchy numbers formed from dots of a contrasting color. The problem, if you are what they call color-blind, is that there is no contrast in depth, or relative saturation of the colors, between the digits and their surroundings, so if you cannot differentiate green from orange, you are out of luck.

You are also out of luck if your parietal lobe has degenerated sufficiently to leave you with a symptom called simultanagnosia, but the mechanical failure at play is different. Well, I was clearly not going to prove anything I haven't already observed in real-life anecdotal form, but when one's partner's brain is faltering, it seems natural to me to put it to the test and discern precisely how. To this end, I performed the following experiment:

First, I asked Jeff to identify a few numbers, as typed, in size 144 Corsiva Hebrew font. No trouble at all. Then I ran the Ishihara test, in which he was utterly unable to distinguish a numeral. But, if I pointed to the various areas on the plate, naming the colors involved, whether they were the ones comprising the number or those of the background, was no problem. Results: color-blind: negative. Simultanagnosia: positive.

This was not all I did today. I also broke the downstairs shower. It's been drippy for years. Ever since Jeff took this Speakman cartridge apart several years ago (for reasons that are now obscure in my recollection,) and was unable to reassemble it, the shower head has dripped. Most likely because when it was reassembled, it was done by me. And, as I do recall, I played with it quite a bit, and took a good many uneducated guesses regarding the direction of the various bits. Still, I got it functioning, and it's only been in the past year or so that the dripping has become really annoying.

So today I took it apart again, thinking I could perhaps stick in an extra washer or gasket or something. Frank at the hardware store suggested that merely cleaning the parts off well, so that they'd seal snugly might help. And indeed, it might have. Had I not dropped the little ceramic hot/cold dispersal ring (or whatever you'd call it) right smack onto the tile shower floor, where it cracked neatly in two. Following my next impulse, I called Yank the plumber who reminded me that Clement Hardware doesn't seem to have a Speakman parts source at the moment, but a part is what I'd need, short of cutting a hole in the wall.

Remarkably, I found it online. From somewhere called DoPlumb.com. I do not know whether I trust myself to install the thing when it comes, so I'd better keep Yank on standby.

naughty

I might have had a more interesting childhood had I not come equipped with a slightly overly-constraining sense of propriety. Or maybe it was just timidity. On thought, I'm going to blame it on a congenital disinclination to be caught rocking the boat. I seem to recall that, among the notes recorded by my mother in my baby book, one says "You're a little bit 'sneaky.' We have to work at keeping you honest." Well, I guess the work paid off, but there are moments. In fact, I'm sure the only difference between me and an impulsive kid is that, while we'd get into the very same trouble, I'd wait 'til no one was looking, then put it all back the way it was.

Do you remember sitting in the dentist's chair, just after the hygienist left the room but before the dentist came in, wishing you were brave enough to pull out the water sprayer or the air blower and give them a try? I think I was in college before I was uninhibited enough to do it. (I also wanted to test the chair controls and open all the drawers, but there's only so much you can accomplish in a minute and a half. To an extent, I satisfied this urge later, by looking in all the cabinets at the pediatrician's office when my kids were babies.)

This kind of inborn behavior regulatory device never entirely goes away, which I guess is a good thing, and it certainly whirred into action as I considered taking one of Gabe's Concerta pills this morning. But I told it to shut up and switch off. I've been giving the kid the stuff on school mornings for years now. I'm probably the only person in the world who would hesitate to try it once in roughly a decade. Gabe says it helps him a bit with focus, and the wholistic approach is that judicious use of such things can help a brain wire itself for learning.

There was nothing special about today. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I'm going to have to blame my mental fogginess on too many squares of organic milk chocolate. I'm also fairly certain that there's no direct relationship between brain cloud and performance, but when--after removing about 5 clean glasses from a recently run dishwasher--I turned around and began loading the same dw with dirties (I mean, while it was still 3/4 of the way full of cleans,) it occurred to me. That I'm an absent-minded ditz whose frontal lobe might benefit from a wake up call.

So I took a Concerta. It's 27mg of extended-release ritalin. That was 6 hours ago. Report: I feel no better. No worse. No less foggy. No sharper. I am still performing adequately through the shroud of chocolate-induced mental vagueness, and I'm as certain as I need to be that I'll have no further use for that controlled substance. I may still look in cabinets at doctors' offices, but it will not be for neurostimulants, it will simply be because I like to look.

Brain cloud?

There's little worse than disembodied statistical data of exactly the sort you wouldn't want. As various sources disperse recent findings that spousal caregivers of Alzheimer's patients seem to have an enhanced probability (6x normal) of developing dementia themselves, I find myself not rushing to draw a clock face and insert the numbers and hands into their appropriate spots. (I'll probably do it later. I confess though--I just counted backwards from 100 by 7s. I think I got it. I was supposed to end with 4, right? Just kidding.)

One thing I can tell you for sure: socializing is good brain tonic, and sometimes--when I'm feeling like my clarity of thought is about on par with the clarity of tomato juice--I wish I could just drink tomato juice. Or something akin to tomato juice. If you can drink your vitamin C (to ward off scurvy,) what elixir can I drink to ward off the fog, when good conversation is in short supply?

It is something of a comfort that I have always been a fog brain. I'm pretty sure that my brain worked as well as it was ever going to work 20 or 30 or so years ago, and then--as now--I could be as murky as Turkish coffee. Hence, fog-brain cannot, I surmise, be considered a harbinger of brain death. Nor does it apparently stop me from counting backwards.

categories.

I'm not sure why no one has ever described Jeff's particular condition as Posterior Cortical Atrophy. Probably because virtually all of the scrutiny he's received, post-diagnosis, has been under the auspices of the Georgetown University Hospital clinical study, and the requirement for participation was Alzheimer's, but whether a variant under the AD umbrella could be identified was irrelevant.

I'm not sure why I care. But I seem to. I suppose it's that since I live with this syndrome, I am apt (as I am with anything else in my purview,) to turn it upside down and inside out, and just see how much sense I can make of it. (Not much sense, as it turns out, but I can name and categorize, and that gives me a useful tool for holding everything at arm's length.)

Here are a few of my discoveries:
Patients with PCA (as opposed to classic AD) tend to be younger. (check.) Marked impairment in visuospatial tasks, reading, and writing. (check.) Relative preservation of memory compared to typical Alzheimer's. (check.)

But that's not all you get when you know not only the beast's first name, but its second name as well. Suddenly I have a whole quiver full of nameables. Can't open the car door? Apraxia. (ping!) Can't look where I'm pointing? Oculomotor apraxia. (ping!) Can't see that you just poured yourself two glasses of oj? Simultanagnosia. (ping!) Completely unable to grasp what I'm telling you? Transcortical Sensory Aphasia. (ping, ping, ping.)

I think I'll help out the neurologist (or Nurse Practitioner, as the case may be,) next time we head to G-town for a status update, by pointing out that according to my research (cue voice of Dorothy Ann from The Magic Schoolbus,) Jeff's AD pattern seems to most closely resemble that of Posterior Cortical Atrophy syndrome. I'm sure he or she will thank me very much.

robots aren't fuzzy

Jeff decided to go stand next to Ritchie Highway today, on the strip of curb-bordered grass between there and the Panera parking lot. This was because I behaved offensively in Panera while we were in line to order. Actually, I think it was a cumulative series of offensive acts, starting with the one where I decided, just after we walked in, to back up 5 steps and hold the door for the lady who was juggling a baby carrier and a drink tray. To Jeff, what I did was this: I returned, pointlessly and perplexingly to the Panera entryway and he followed (because what else is he supposed to do?), at which point I did the bowling alley pin-clearing thing with my arm, and cleared him out of the path after a couple verbal attempts failed. He did not see the lady with too much stuff, he just perceived being pushed around.

Then I did it again. Twice. Because the Panera man was trying to carry a 25 pound vat of coffee from the kitchen to the coffee island, and Jeff was, as usual, fully blocking the aisle. Knowing where to stand is very difficult for him. He simply cannot assess traffic patterns, and grasp layout. But, the emotional impact of being ushered here and there, "like a little kid," is something he entirely grasps, but external to context. In other words, the attempt I made to explain why I chose expediency over a gentler more time-consuming approach was met with disbelief. He was not in anyone's way, he can see what's going on, and I'm the only one who seems to think there's something wrong with him.

Sometimes these funks fade in a jiffy, which is good. And sometimes they don't, which was today. I understand that when someone is feeling very blue, and tells you that you'll "never see him as a whole person again," that the personality you should be able to put on is a "there there" sort of nurturing grandmother, or at least a very therapeutic counselor. But I am Dōmo arigatō, Ms Roboto, and--while I try to be kind in my actions and words programming--I am hardly the warm fuzzy the situation calls for. All I could think of was this: If Chessie the cat tells me that "I'll never see her as anything but a cat," what can I say other than, "but you are a cat?"

So, when Jeff said "So, what can we do?" as if this is a crisis, and there's a solution, I could only respond like this: "Well, I can keep trying to improve my skill at gauging situations and their potential pitfalls." Of course he didn't know what I was talking about, but it didn't hurt his feelings. In practice it means that the next time we go in Panera or similar, I'll suggest he sit down and "hold our table" while I wait in line. Sitting at the table is a pretty good idea. Standing on the strip between the parking lot and Ritchie Highway is not a pretty good idea.

Goodnight Jim-Bob...

I just sent Gabe off with the driving instructor I’m paying for extra on-road lessons (above and beyond the three 2-hour shifts that come with Driver’s Ed.) There is always a flutter of trepidation in my chest which half anticipates that the guy will turn the SUV around 10 minutes into the session, and storm down our brick walk bellowing “ARE YOU KIDDING? Just NEVER put this kid behind the wheel of a motor vehicle! OKAY?”

That hasn’t happened so far and, all in all, the guy seems pretty laid back, fueling my hope that the school will release his Driver’s Ed completion certificate very soon. It occurred to me that if I don’t encourage Gabe to refresh his deodorant on the way out the door, it might go even faster, but that seems unkind.

Meanwhile, Gabe has all sorts of end of year activities going on related to graduation. On Friday, he and his class of 12th graders (plus the requisite staff) will take a bus to New York City for the day...a trip on which they will, among other things, dine at a restaurant called “Jekyll and Hyde’s” which claims to be the “only haunted restaurant in Manhattan.” The only one? That seems implausible, unless they mean the only one where the haunting is staged purposefully.

At school, Gabe is preparing a video to be shown at graduation, summarizing...I don’t know exactly what...somehow summarizing Gabe. They can do this when the graduating class is roughly 20 students in number. Gabe decided, since his sister Olivia is home for the week, that she must appear in a clip. First we made this practice run, in which I play Gabe (and Gabe himself appears at the very end, looking typically scruffy: )

This reminds me exactly of why, when my siblings and I used to make tape recorded radio shows spoofing episodes of The Waltons, I always played youngest sister Elizabeth. All I had to do was make my voice just slightly more nasal. Like this. (Here I am also speaking John-Boy’s line: )

Can you tell that this blog post is really little more than an experiment in embedding video? Yes, that’s what it is. As such, we’ll enter one more--this being the actual “interview” with Olivia.

I am hoping that Gabe’s actual finished project is somehow more coherent than this clip might lead you to expect. His playwriting teacher is very impressed with his skills, particularly as expressed in an absurdist drama he’s written. I am not surprised that the absurdist style is a stand-out area for Gabe.

It was fortunate that Olivia was home today when I found myself on the phone with Delta Airlines, attempting to secure a reservation change for Rachel who will now be flying back from Costa Rica in two days instead of in four. Because Gabe called to be picked up exactly in the middle, while I was listening to the Delta rep make all sorts of noises like "oops," and "uh-oh," and other utterances that caused me to worry. So Olivia picked up Gabe, and the Delta transaction got completed. I am glad. It’s been a bit of a dicey experience for her and her fellow Masters in Teaching students, but assuredly a learning one.

(I never talk about Becca, because Becca never tells me anything. She is both the lowest maintenance and most independent of my children. But sometimes a little maintenance required at least keeps you in touch.)

Here there be monsters. But not really scary ones.

I tend to overcompensate for my tendency to fumble the balls I'm meant to be juggling. Sticky notes are essential to my arsenal, as are the timer and alarm features on my iPhone. But, as my Japanese teacher said when she typoed her hiragana: Even monkeys fall from trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru さるも木から落ちる,) and I'm about 200 times clumsier than any monkey.

What I did this morning (or last night, rather,) was fail to set my alarms. Normally I must adjust my bedside clock from its weekend setting of 6:15 am, to its weekday time: 5:15. But that is not enough. Sometimes we have a power outage which reduces all the digital clocks in the house to helpless blinking, so I also set my iPhone to go off at 5:30 as a backup plan. Last night, due to some unwarranted state of relaxation, I did neither, and the bedside alarm began to chime forcefully an hour later than I planned to arise.

There's nothing quite like awaking with a tizzy all laid out for you, and I am completely unable--at such a time of rushedness--to maintain the carefully groomed composure with which I normally try to direct both Jeff and Gabe. Hence, Gabe had to be hustled out of bed and into the shower, as he issued loud protests of this sort: "I KNOW!" and "I'M NOT YELLING! CAN'T YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXPLAINING AND YELLING?" (Gabe explains loudly, you see.)

Jeff meanwhile, rattled into the day clueless as to what might be different from any other day and innocently asked whether I intended to use the elliptical first or second. "I don't have TIME to spider!" I not-quite-snapped, as if my self-induced state of dither should have anything to do with him anyway. (Note: spider=elliptical trainer around here. I know it's weird. You'll just have to accept it.)

Fortunately he did not sulk, or feel too ill-used, as can be the result of my composure falling off the edge of the map, and I got some coffee brewed before throwing a handful of random foods into a brown paper lunch bag and herding Gabe out the door. Through all this Olivia, home for the week, did not wake up, and the dog accepted that she'd have to wait 25 minutes for her breakfast in generous spirits.

As for the rest of the day, Jeff--very fortunately--was invited to lunch by Bill, and Olivia and I accomplished our slate of errands with little ado.

BLab

I am pretty good at answering this question by now, because Jeff and I have this conversation approximately once a week. "Which is easier to learn," he asks, "English or Japanese?" This question presumes, of course, that I could supply an answer from the standpoint of one who is not already fluent in English, and that is a tricky bit of objectivity to achieve for one who is. But I try.

"I am sure that English would be easier," I say, "for a speaker of most European languages, but perhaps for a speaker of Chinese, Japanese would be easier. At least one would have a starting familiarity with many of the characters used." Then I always add that for a Martian, previously unschooled in any human system of communication, I would have to recommend Japanese over English on the grounds that once you learn the grammatical rules of Nihongo, you can count on a reasonable degree of consistency, unlike modern English which incorporates such a hodgepodge of influences that almost all bets are off from one word to the next. Jeff thinks it's funny every time I mention the Martian, which is nice. I am not such a comedienne that I can come up with new material very often, and he's a brand new audience every time I say it.

I decided we would walk along Baltimore's Harbor Heritage Walk today. It's a mostly brick promenade which follows the contours of the various piers and commercial or residential frontages along several miles of harbor running through Federal Hill, Harbor East, Fells Point, and Canton. I almost said "we decided," but then I stopped myself and wrote "I decided" instead. Because I decided. I always decide, then I tell Jeff what we're going to do and he is pleased. Sometimes, just on principle, I ask him what he would like to do and he thinks earnestly, brow wrinkled for a few moments, before saying "I don't know...what would you like to do?" So I decide. The shape of today was partly determined by the fact that at Gabe's pre-college physical 2 weeks ago they did not give him a tb test. Then, his college health forms turned out to require one, so now we must squeeze in 2 quick trips to the doctor's office this week--one for the test and one for the nurse to decree it officially negative--and it can be tough to make it within doctor's office time parameters unless I pick him up myself, rather than leave it to carpool. Hence, driving into the city early made sense. But, despite the sunny outlook promised by my iPhone weather app, clouds and an aggravatingly insistent wind kept it brisker than would be ideal, and we were happy to take refuge for half an hour in a grittily bohemian Fell's Point coffee joint prior to heading north to the Baltimore Lab School.

And now we're parked at 23rd and North Lovegrove St (an alley, actually,) in a metered space which is too narrow for a real car. I don't know who painted the lines on this block of 23rd, and I don't suppose it really matters. The meters are painted blue, and are so old that they take nickels and dimes. No meters installed within the last 20 years take nickels and dimes. In fact, meters of any sort are largely obsolete. Earlier, for our harbor walk, we parked on Caroline Street, along a curb where parking coupon dispensers are situated at regular intervals. They take credit cards, and dispense small slips of paper showing an expiration time, which you place on your dashboard. I like this system, as I can't count on having enough quarters for a meter, and I no longer expect to be able to scrounge Chuck E Cheese tokens from under a car seat. Once, Jeff and I did that in Frederick Maryland when we were desperate and it was raining. It worked. I wonder now, how many parking meters contain Chuck E Cheese tokens?

in the morning

Bird feeders, hanging within viewing distance of my kitchen counter stool, are ridiculously pleasing. Better than fish, because you don’t have to clean the tank. Not better than fish, because the fish don’t exit stage right when you approach to pour another cup of coffee. Perhaps they’ll get used to our morning bustle. Whether they learn to accept Hazel the cat wiggling her hunting haunches at them from the countertop window is another thing.

I made Gabe drive to Quizno’s and back last night. It is easy to see that his confidence with vehicle operation is increasing as he willingly zips into turns and maintains a lively monologue on the Absurdist drama he penned in school while exceeding the speed limit at erratic intervals. It’s a little disconcerting actually, as his other mode is a style I’d call “Grandpappy’s monthly outing,” wherein he adheres stubbornly to exact speed limit, even when there’s not another car in view, and spends 5 stopped minutes preparing to consider possibly turning. I sincerely hope that the time he spends away at college, car-less, will be sufficient for his brain wiring to ripen such that his two modes can synthesize into placid but confident good judgment.

Last night Rachel videochatted me from Costa Rica. Her six weeks will have been a striking juxtaposition of beach-combing relaxation and an immersion in some of human society’s harsher realities--how a corrupt administrator in a poorly regulated school system robs children, how means of redress can be vastly less accessible than in this U.S. system about which we love to complain, and how the horror of opportunistic murder (in this case, a son-in-law of her host family,) can strike with jarring randomness. I will be glad to have her home, but will absolutely be unable to keep up with her Spanish.

a dash of pepper

Why, with cars, is there always something amiss with a solenoid valve? I think it's become one of those words like "consultant." If you don't know what you do for a living, but sometimes people give you money, you say "I'm a consultant." If you want to add an extra charge to a routine automobile service tab, you blame it on a solenoid valve. Jeff and I have once again braved the ped-unfriendly hoof-paths of West Annapolis while we await consultation on a Subaru's solenoid valve. And, by the way, drive belts.

Meanwhile...I've been having an interesting time exploring the topic of neurotypicality. As far as I know "neurotypical" is a term which exists only as a way to designate the counterpoint to brains with wiring that places them anywhere on the Asperger's/autism spectrum. This is a slowly developing interest of mine, which has accelerated recently in a quest to gain understanding of my kid and, by extension, myself.

I have only recently stumbled across the term BAP, or "broader autism phenotype," which is a term to describe people who may not be clinically on the autism spectrum (who may not, in other words, meet diagnostic criteria for even a nameable syndrome at the milder end of the spectrum, such as Asperger's,) but who have traits of behavior and personality that resemble, even if in a minor way, those of autism or Asperger's.

The thing is, I have exactly such a kid. So much so that every neuropsychological evaluator we've seen in the context of pursuing his alternative education--and there've been quite a few--has hastened, upon hearing of and witnessing his personality, to hand me an Asperger's parent questionnaire. He never scores in the diagnosible range. The tests are always fishing for an underfunctioning grasp of humor, which he does not have, and he loses quite a few points on the basis of having been a very tactile small child. But the fact remains that they always suspect it, and--to people who know Asperger's--his style of social interaction often seems suspiciously familiar.

I understand that the whole concept of the Broader Autistic Phenotype is controversial in some quarters. But logic and intuition lead me to believe that the extreme end of any neurological variation (especially one which is already established to exist on a spectrum--a continuum,) will be balanced by a minor end, where behaviors and characteristics may establish an individual as odd or quirky without imposing the functional handicap of autism, or the social handicap of Asperger's.

On that note, I recently took a quiz designed to score me relative to the BAP scale. Let me disclaim right up front that I am as wary as a person should be of granting too much credence to any "quiz" hosted by Helloquizzy or Cupid.com or whatever it was, but I still found the results striking. Here is what the summary of my results said: "You scored 102 aloof, 90 rigid and 82 pragmatic. You scored above the cutoff on all three scales. Clearly you are either autistic or on the broader autistic phenotype. You probably are not very social, and when you do interact with others, you come off as strange or rude without meaning to." Oops.

Oh, so now what is it Emily? Without a socially legitimized career label you're resorting to assigning yourself a social dysfunction label? No, no, I may be silly, but I'm not that silly. I don't require a label. But what I might appreciate is a means to cut myself some slack for having grown up feeling like such a weirdo-cum-alien who still doesn't seem to have the normal wiring where connecting with people on a social level is concerned. (A few people though. Jeff was extraordinary in his ability to grasp my wavelength which is why I miss that aspect so much.)

Here is another quote from the BAP analysis: "Given the low concordance of autism in siblings and fraternal twins compared to the concordance in identical twins, it is likely that autism results from the combination of a number of alleles, 3 to 15 or even more according to researchers." This makes sense. If you throw a handful of pepper in the soup, you get peppery soup. If you throw a pinch in it may be more palatable but it won't be unpeppered. My son Gabe is a little peppery. So is my brother Jim for that matter. Two people, each one degree of genetic separation from me, who would, I daresay, score higher than 102, 90, and 82.

So what does all this mean? Nothing. Well...something. It helps me look at my kid (as well as myself and my brother) in a kinder, more curious light. (not that the light was unkind before.) What is the significance of a differently-wired brain? What might be the advantages? Surely it's not a bad thing as long as one doesn't get too hung up on trying to grasp why one seems such an awkward fit with the "normal" coffee klatsch crowd. (Which I did. Get hung up, that is.) It's easier, though, to lose the hang-up if you realize it's not a character flaw, it's your wiring. The thing about Gabe is, he has no such hang-up. There's enough pepper in his soup that he doesn't even think about it. The thing about me is, I apparently live close enough to the cut-off point...I am, in other words, close enough to "normal" that I see across the fence and wonder if I oughtn't to be on the other side.

all aboard!

Trip planning is an area where I leave little to chance. Even when I don’t have reservations chiseled in, I will almost certainly have Googlemapped the locations of several Paneras and Chipotles along the route, allowing for some flexibility as to which address I’ll later tap into the GPS, depending on timing and traffic.

I’ll admit, there is an aspect of adventure that is lost when multiple channels of information become available, but I’m not sure I’d go back to the old way...Hungry adults, cranky toddlers, tooling in a southerly direction down a Virginia interstate...must stop! Blue sign, up ahead says (not promisingly) “Colonial Family Restaurant.” But, having passed miles of exits of nothingness, we decide to take our chances. Well, this was not the WORST overcooked pasta a la runny ketchup dished out in an ambience replete with burned out bulbs, sticky tabletops, and the happy patter of a fly family reunion...actually, yes, it probably was the worst. We may never have topped the Colonial Family in terms of abject disgust factor, but we’ve come close.

My first impulse, while planning our upcoming Fall railroad adventure, was to leave some loose room. Get on at point A. Get off at...point B, C, or D, depending on what I felt like. Get on again, when we’ve seen enough. But then I learned that Amtrak bedroom compartments book up months in advance, and sleeper trains were an important feature of my travel notion.

Consequently we are, more or less, planned to a fare-thee-well. Not a bad thing either, considering all thinking on the fly must be performed by one brain for two bodies, one of which tends to balk when asked to move too quickly. In October we will board the Capitol Limited, and chug from Washington D.C. to Chicago, through the battlefields of Harper’s Ferry West Virginia, and along the south edge of Lake Erie. In Chicago, we’ll change to the Southwest Chief and nearly complete a cross-country odyssey, traveling across expanses of the plains I’ve only ever flown over. We’ll get off in Santa Fe, and spend 2 days and nights testing to see whether the town really is as touristy as they say, before we return to the Chief, and travel several hours farther to Flagstaff. I have only ever seen the Grand Canyon by air. (Once, while flying from Baltimore to Denver, I changed planes in Las Vegas. I realize this makes no geographical sense whatever, but the sky was clear and the view of the Canyon was unparalleled.) So now, I will visit in person, and I hope that our Fall timing will keep us out of the worst of the mass-of-humanity crunch.

So now I have reservations of the booking kind, and a few of the emotional kind. How will Jeff do walking the jostling aisles of a locomotive? Will disorientation cost us too much sleep during our 2 nights aboard? (This, I hope, will be simplified by the tiny size of the bedroom compartment, and the convenient location of the potty an armstretch away. At least I won't have to get far out of bed to provide guidance.) And I predict that the adventure will be, all in all, well suited to his needs and current life preferences. Jeff likes to watch the world go by, ask strangers where they're from, eat, and sleep. A train trip, with meals and bed included, might be ideal.

Now excuse me. In the spirit of overplanning, I have The Rough Guide to the Grand Canyon, and a Moon Handbook guide to Santa Fe, and they want me to read them, highlighter poised and ready.

watching birds helps

I had high hopes for 2010, and I am finding that, in a small way, it is turning out to be a year of peace-making as far as my life and I are concerned.

This actually is not a day on which I should, in particular, feel a sense of peaceful resolve. Patti, the teacher who usually drives Gabe and a couple others to school, is sick again and it appears that tomorrow will be consumed by bookends of teen-shuttling, from here to Baltimore and back. With a doctor appointment in between. Woo hoo for sudden schedule lock-ins. Yes, my ever-so-slightly Aspergery tendencies feel rebellious, but my philosophical aspect is able to keep them in check. (Newsflash: I’m off the hook for the morning run--thanks Sarah!)

Well, I suppose it’s no new revelation that what bravery I felt in the realm of property ownership was completely undone with the demise of my partner’s mechanical abilities and general situational perception. That is part of why I admire condos--low maintenance, no yard, little to clean. The building is not my problem. But I also know, without a doubt, that an itch to pick up and leave is really--at a root level--nothing but an impulse to run away from a situation which is not escapable. When this house was in the throes of growing pains, and the roof leaked, and drywall dust was a component of the air we breathed, I remember thinking how--if we could just achieve basic inhabitability--that I could happily live here forever, diddling away at the minor things remaining.

I am, with minor fits of kicking and screaming from my inner runner, finding my way back to that sentiment. Only change live here forever to live here for a while, anyway. I am growing slightly more confident that I can keep it from falling apart. (If you opened the boggart cupboard in front of me, here’s what I’d see: A house in derelict condition that I’m responsible for selling!)

I’m turning from a component of Em & Jeff back into Emily the single person--at least from the standpoint of self-identity--and perhaps, after (what’s it been?) 6-7 years, I don’t hate it anymore.

pc-aroma

Why do non-Macintosh computers...such as my Toshiba netbook...such as the Gateway desktop Gabe is glued to...have an interesting and distinctive smell while warm and in operation that I've never detected from a Mac? I don't know. In a tiny way, it reminds me of the way my brother's electric racetrack set used to smell when you'd get the little vehicles fired up and zooming. Just before they fell off on the banked curve, that is.

It wasn't the dawn's early light, but it was good.

Advantage: Oldness. At age 62 you become eligible for a $10 lifetime Senior Pass which will admit you (and the other ≤ 3 people in your car) to National Parks and Federal wildlife areas all over the country

Yesterday's goal was to obtain one. National Park Service information online made it clear that such a thing could be obtained in person only, and--being of the get-it-done-now school of thought--I wanted to, well, get it done now.

I had not visited Fort McHenry, right down the road in Baltimore, since one of my kids formed a star, or a fraction of a stripe, or--I don't know--maybe a grommet, in the annual "human flag" event where they try to convince a couple hundred third-graders to sit still long enough for a picture to be snapped from a helicopter. It isn't easy. I don't remember this as a particularly fun field trip as these things go!

Wednesday was jacket weather, but the sun was a trooper. And for once I actually appreciated the informative video which described exactly why Francis Scott Key was aboard a ship in the harbor and thus excellently positioned to see the bombs bursting in air. (he was supposed to talk the British into releasing a prisoner--his friend Dr. Beanes--who was not, as far as I can tell, Rowan Atkinson. If he had been, no negotiator would have been required. It would have been The Ransom of Red Chief--at sea edition.)

This time I paid the kind of attention you can't pay when your companions are under 14...i.e. I read the descriptive plaques and stood still long enough to listen to the recorded commentary in places such as enlisted men's bunk room or officer's poorly lit, but better appointed, chamber. The voice of the recorded commentary, btw, was Alan Walden--a longtime WBAL radio voice--and Jeff named that tune, I mean voice, rather quickly. I couldn't come up with it, though I did concur. I could however walk in a hunched posture up and down the cramped steps into the "bomb-safe" chamber without bumping my head 3 times on the way up, and I could take pictures without the photographic subject having to guide me in pointing the camera in the right direction.

Here's the thing about Jeff--even with an increasingly bewildered and slightly askew expression as a regular feature of his face, he manages to not look his age. It has always been thus, and his recent boyish haircut reduced the unruly sticking-out grey-haired factor, so when we walked into the Fort McHenry visitors' center and I declared that we'd like a $10 lifetime pass please, the reaction of the two rangers on duty was a rapid but kindly protestation that it was only for those age 62 and up. At which point I grinned knowingly, pointed at Jeff, and said "That's why we brought his i.d."

Fortunately I had thought to ask Jeff if he had his wallet just after we walked out our front door. He did not. He hadn't seen it for a couple of days, he said, which left me two options: Get his passport from where it's safely stowed in a filing cabinet, or look for the wallet. I started with the latter and--after patting down several pairs of pants, awkwardly hanging in the closet--it paid off. Wallet recovered. And i.d. ready to move into my wallet, next to the National Park Senior Pass which will, by the way, get us into the Grand Canyon next October without the usual $25 entrance fee.

Atomic Clock

Freddi the dog smiles at me with a big doggie grin as I come in from dumping the overflowing trashcan of recyclable plastics and bottles into the big yellow bin outside. She was hoping she could come, but not this time. Dogs are very forgiving.

Outside, I’d noticed that a box had tumbled out of the yellow bin. “Atomic Wall Clock,” it said. The clock itself is now suspended on a screw on the wall, just above the bulletin board in the dining area. Exactly where, 3 days ago, the big-faced analog clock with day and date readout had been hanging. I’m thinking of putting the analog back and finding a new home for the atomic wonder clock. It’s dark, unlit, and too hard to read.

Besides--despite my scientifically precise probe of a couple months ago, which ascertained that Jeff can read a digital but not an analog clock--the Atomic Wall Clock has failed to deliver. Or Jeff’s brain has taken a step away from clock reading of any sort.

”What’s it say?” I questioned, pointing helpfully at the 3 inch tall numbers 9, 4, and 4. “Right here, in the big window.” Jeff scrutinizes it, clearly uninspired. “Wednesday,” he says. Oops. No, today is Saturday and I’m pretty sure I’ve corrected my initial a.m./p.m. time-setting error, so the smaller, lower window is reading “SAT.”

”Here,” I say. “Nine, four, four...nine forty-four.” “Oh yes, of course,” Jeff replies, “nine forty-four.”

Here’s why the clock is atomic: It’s supposed to periodically check its time against atomically transmitted signals and adjust accordingly. Here’s why it doesn’t: Our house is apparently too fortress-like to let even atomic signals pass through. This used to mean cell phones barely worked inside, but current performance suggests that both Verizon and AT&T are broadcasting with a little more gusto these days. But I doubt there’s any monetary incentive for the atomic clock radio waves to get stronger.

It is later, evening. I’m sitting here at my computer where I should have an absolutely clear shot, visually speaking, at the atomic clock. I can’t read it. Not at all. I see nothing but the glare of the kitchen lights firing back from its glass readout windows. (But if I get closer, it will tell me the date, day, time, and temperature, both indoor and out.) I think atomic clock esquire is moving to the front hall. Or somewhere. Here’s why I don’t care: We just had dinner--with Gordon, Tracy, and Helen--at the Stoney River Steakhouse. I don’t eat steak, but the mahi mahi was tasty, and I drank 1.5 glasses of a rather delicious and overpriced chardonnay. Also, I both purchased and mounted a lovely bird feeder today. It is hanging from the soffit of the back roof overhang, just outside a kitchen window. Perhaps, by tomorrow, the birds will have found it.

Pedestrian Crossing...please?

There is Annapolis, and then there is Annapolis. The first is a 350 or so year old town whose narrow streets and cozy harbor are frequently pictured in promotional material designed to highlight the colonial allure of Maryland’s “sailing capitol.” And a charming town it is, with housing prices reflecting the fact that the historic district is as big as it’s ever going to get, so folks pay dearly to live within walking distance of brick-paved streets, with easy access to boat shows, holiday fireworks, and exciting Spring flyovers by the Blue Angels stunt planes during Naval Academy graduation week. What they don’t get is a guarantee that they can park the car within blocks of the house, or a serviceable grocer, since downtown--with the exception of a wine merchant, a pharmacy, and a mini-mart--is devoid of merchants that actually serve the needs of residents as opposed to visitors.

But make no mistake--it's a great place to visit, eat, and walk. (Please though, don't forget to check the ground now and then while walking, as 200 year old trees do a number on what might at one time have been dependably level brickwork!)

As for the other Annapolis--the greater surrounding parts still within Annapolis postal code range--you can about flipflop the list of convenient and inconvenient features. Can you park? Yes. Can you walk? Well...

Rachel, daughter #1, is on a 6 week internship (which looks an awful lot like a vacation) in Costa Rica. Which meant it was time for the battery in her car (which isn't yet technically hers) to take its own sabbatical. And also die. Well, almost die. The AAA guy got it fired up just long enough for me to get the car to Annapolis Subaru for service. (and a new battery.)

Annapolis Subaru even shares downtown's 21401 zipcode. But it's on the west edge, separated from historic by a mile or so of industry, gas pumps, junk food, and "Walking Lester," a local guy who ambles with an unmistakable trebuchet-style gait up and down West St, sometimes picking up trash. Between Annapolis Subaru and a couple of decent shopping centers runs Maryland Route 2, a main conduit connecting southern Maryland to Baltimore. What does not run between Annapolis Subaru and those shopping centers are any officially planned means to travel on foot.

But, did we want to spend 3 hours in the dealer’s waiting room listening to Judge Stern-Lady on tv, giving the litigants in a petty lawsuit a good talking to, or did we want to take our chances with Route 2 and its environs? Plan B, of course, as daytime tv turns my brain into rice pudding, and across the highway at Whole Foods Market were blueberry muffins and coffee.

So right about here I want to thank the less-rich residents of the surrounding neighborhoods who are more likely to work in the stores than shop there, because they have trod footpaths through a man-made landscape which was designed on the assumption that humans cannot move 20 yards without a motor vehicle.

Wending our way along a slightly quieter backroad, Jeff and I maneuvered along the edges of yards and businesses before getting to a genuine, fully-functioning pedestrian crosswalk with lights, from which we finally achieved access to the grocery store and our reward. The trip from that shopping center--Annapolis Towne Center--to its nearest competitor, the Harbor Center (nowhere near the harbor, note,) was trickier. My opening thought was that we could travel via the “inside passage” of Home Depot, Outback Steakhouse, and Chevy’s Tex-Mex Grill parking lots, thus avoiding too much intimacy with Route 2. No dice. Each individual enterprise--be it a solitary restaurant or a U-shaped shopping plaza--appears to exist on its own bluff, with the space in between carved into impassible, impossibly steep county-owned trenches, often peppered along the edges with fences and/or no-trespassing signs. Hence, we were left with little choice but to follow the, fortunately, well-worn path of the local foot-commuters, right alongside the highway.

There was a stretch that made me uncomfortable, where the the curb gave way for drainage and we had to wait for a truck or two to rumble by so we could step momentarily into the road. Not comfy when your companion is inclined to trail by 10 feet, and has been known to lose his footing and stumble off a path now and then.

Nevertheless, we made it to Barnes & Noble, where I bought one book called America by Rail and another on Japanese grammar.

I have no argument with Dwight D. Eisenhower and his interstate highway system, but when did humans forget that they had legs, and consider only the needs of wheels? It was a silly decades-long habit ranking right up there with forgetting we come equipped with the means to feed infants, or thinking that we should synthesize food and color it bright orange and blue.




I can explain

Jeff’s family lived across the street. When I was 7, he was a 21 year old college student. When I was in high school, he was an adventurous but unrooted young man, hopscotching between driving a VW Beetle up the Alaska-Canadian Highway to see what he could see, stinting as a handyman on a Seattle college campus, and visiting folks in the most derelict of Baltimore subsidized housing venues as a social services caseworker. None of which had anything to do with his college major--Medieval History--but most people can say the same thing. As the parent of five kids--all with a very relaxed attitude toward the whole marriage and babies gestalt--Jeff’s mother was, shall we say, pleased when her oldest took an interest, at a Christmas Eve party, in the girl from across the street.

I, on the other hand--for all my lack of focus on the points of college major, or career goal--carried with me a certainty that the right partnership was a big missing piece in the bewildering puzzle of life, and it did not take me long, following our first date to a boring film followed by coffee and a donut, to recognize a kindred spirit who’d exactly fill the empty niche.

It is not difficult to recall why I wanted to marry Jeff. He became, in short order, the most extraordinary kind of best friend I’d ever had. We had fun from the get-go. I was hooked, like with coffee. Not because he possessed any glamorous traits which would earn him a slot on “The Bachelor,” but because my brain had found a nutrient of which it had heretofore been deprived, and there wasn’t any deciding...there was just knowing.

A Pavlovian serotonin spike in my brain preceded every dinner out with Jeff. Because we could talk. I could talk about whatever philosophical, religious or creative nonsense was tap-dancing through my cranium, and he'd fully engage, fully grasp, and return in kind. Once, following a physiology exam, I gave him a tediously detailed description of the metabolic processes cascading through a dog as it escaped in panic from a burning house. I don't know how many people would relish such an exposition...but Jeff did. I admired his woodwork, his architectural vision, his curiosity about the world, and he cared for me in all my unfocused randomness. You might say that neither one of us exactly knew what we wanted to do with our lives, so we both pretty much did whatever we wanted until we turned whatever we wanted into a team project.

Conversation could be silly, if you'd even call it conversing. Sometimes it was nothing but rhyming words we vollied like pingpong balls. I was young, awkward, and resolutely stubborn. He was patient, goofy, and open. For some reason, I was what he'd been waiting for, and he was a window of privilege that life granted me for 20 excellent years.

A student of architecture--especially that of F.L.Wright, H.H. Richardson, Stanford White and others with a taste for robust design--Jeff built shelving into any free nook, the better to fill with his growing library of books entitled The Old House, The Not So Big House, The Shingle House, The Small Smashing Shingle House. While I was too scattered to achieve purposefully, we both nonetheless pursued education for its own sake, though with rather different foci. Jeff explored drafting, business, and accounting. I forayed into art, language, creative writing (with a brief traipse through nursing.) And we bred a tribe of creative, fun and pleasant people. (Sadly without a mathematician or auto mechanic in the bunch.)

Not the most efficient yeoman on the job, Jeff trudged nonetheless with dedication toward his extra-career goals...a point of some frustration for me. He habitually underestimated the complexity of any remodeling endeavor, leaving me to raise children in a neglected, leaking house, while he spent half his work days steadfastly turning South Baltimore squalor into sturdy, attactive, rentable row-houses. In the final analysis, and despite his persistent vexation that he'd yet to achieve financial independence, this stood us in good stead when retirement became an unbidden necessity, as I was able to sell the houses for investable funds prior to real-estate crashing in value. (And hire a crew to put his unfinished project--the transformation of our own home from a small Cape Cod into a handsome bungalow--in order.)

The goodwill that family and community extend toward Jeff in his present state of impairment is a testament to the kind of person he's spent his life being. People like him. He's never been anything but honest, earnest, and ready to help, and people are inclined to nurture him in return.

As for me, I have nothing to say in summary. To even attempt to summarize the significance of what has been lost means to--at least momentarily--disengage the robotic force-field I have erected as an emotional buffer. I care for Jeff now with a sort of cantilevered love. He deserves the best attention only, and I provide it insofar as I am able without exposing that now empty niche where, for 20 years, a puzzle piece used to fit.