Going Up?

Elliot always seems to have one main interest that becomes his singular focus (or obsession!). In recent months it has been pretending to be Mel the dog from Jack's Big Music Show peeking out on the credits (which became every mirror and doorway), then it was acting out episodes of Blue's Clues. Currently it's pretending that everything is an elevator. We can't change floors in the house or move from room to room without pretending to push a button and waiting for the elevator to ding and open its doors for us. This obsession is equal parts charming and annoying. Here's the charming part - Elliot posing next to his masking tape, pretend elevator buttons in our basement stairwell.


About a year ago, Elliot's obsession was road signs. This interest corresponded with my time at Soapstone writer's retreat for women. One of the projects I worked on while there was a series of poems about raising a child on the autism spectrum. Today, in honor of national autism awareness month, I'd like to highlight some of my favorite creative writing on the subject of autism. Of course, I'll need to start with myself. Here is one of the poems I wrote at Soapstone, which used Elliot's interest in road signs (this poem also appears in Ellen Notbohm's book, as mentioned in a post earlier this month).


Signs

My three-year old can name
any sign on the road. He knows
the letters, shapes, colors.
If we are walking, he likes to touch
the weathered faces, wrap his fingers
around the posts, name and rename.

STOP
Some days, I feel sunk in cement.
I can't move my feet, can't see
past the rain in my eyes. The world
approaches, stares, leaves us behind.
We perseverate together - he recites
the letters again and again.
S.T.O.P. No instructions
for which way to turn.

YIELD
The road moves in to meet us. Hands
on the wheel, I resist taking my turn.
I'm afraid if we merge, we'll be stuck
in this traffic forever. We'll never
get home. Someone honks. I inch forward,
check the blind spots, shift gears.

NO U-TURN
We wouldn't go back even if we could.
We have navigated dodgy side streets,
gotten lost, asked for directions. Used
up a profusion of fuel. We've sat in
noisy intersections, wound down quiet
roads. He points ahead. This way.

ONE WAY
Forget about the map. We memorized
its lines, then left it at the rest stop
three states back. This is only one direction,
one arrow, and he wants to see
them all. Left turn, right turn, two-way
traffic, curve. We might go around the block.
We might drive for miles and miles.

BUMPS
We spend a lot of time with this sign.
It's one of his favorites - we see
it on our daily walk. We know
its shape, its angles, its warning face. But
the road between us and the playground
in in constant flux. Broken glass, a new
flower, bees. And always, he must
touch this sign before we can go home.

CONSTRUCTION AHEAD
We might be here awhile. Expect delays.
Or maybe it's Sunday and the workers
have the day off, the road signs are pushed
to the side. But we're curious. What
are they buliding? Does it have scaffolding,
are they tearing up the street? When
we round the next corner, will there be
a road block, a detour, a flagger waving
us through? I look back at him.
Green light. Go.

Brittney Corrigan, copyright 2007, all rights reserved


And one more for you (there are more in the works, so hopefully you'll see them in print someday!).

Ecolalia

My late-talking son is talking
all the time now, a nonstop flow of syllables
and phrases that come out the same every time.
Broken record doesn't even begin to tell the story.
My life with him is a soundtrack of repetition.

The word itself is lovely, ecolalia,
and reminds me of bats. How they find insects
in the dark. And each other. Instinctual,
utterly important. Echolocation.
This is how I see my son's language.
He's finding us in the dark, he's showing us
where he is.

He offers phrases from his favorite books
as greeting, conversation.
On Thursday he ate through four strawberries.
A comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush.
And when he woke up, he found it was true.
And they went out together into the deep, deep snow.

And what if we all listened this intently?
What if we remembered what was said?
Repeated ourselves until we got a response?
Until we heard our own words
echoed back to us?

To fight discouragement, to tell myself that someday
he will say he loves me, to imagine the conversations
we will have, I try to think of his words as heartbeats.
A rhythm that is essential, utterly important.
The sound he is using to find his way out.
The sound that keeps us alive. The sound that ties me
to him, beat for beat, and word for word.

Brittney Corrigan, copyright 2007, all rights reserved

(Italicized lines are from The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, George Shrinks by William Joyce, and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, respectively.)


I'd also like to recommend a few other pieces of writing to you. The first is a wonderful essay by my friend Kerry Cohen, whose son is just a few months older than Elliot. "What's Wrong With This Picture?" is one of the best essays I've read by a mom on the subject of what it's like to be raising a child on the spectrum.

In the world of blogging, I'd like to point you to my favorite autism-related blog, MOM-Not Otherwise Specified. (Yes, I consider blogs creative writing!).

Finally, here is a poem by a poet named Barbara Crooker about her son with autism, called "Autism Poem: The Grid".

In other news, Imogen is now sitting unassisted. Here she is in all her big-girlness.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. Now I'm off to get more things done around the house while Thomas and Elliot are off riding elevators downtown!