Under The Banana Moon: living, loving, loss and aspergers by Kimberly Gerry Tucker

Author:Kimberly Gerry Tucker [Gerry Tucker, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-21T05:00:00+00:00

“How come we don't go out to eat anymore on Fridays? We used to go out to eat every Friday. We want to go to Burger King on Friday.” They wanted it to be like before.

The kids had never known a time when I drove, because I'd

never driven. There were times I tried. Like the school parking lot when Jeff was in grade school. He sat in the back seat, frantic, pulling on his ears. “We're gonna die! Mommy's driving! We're gonna die!”

Howietold me to turn the corner. He said “Cut it sharp!” I directed us into a snow bank.What did “cut it sharp” mean, I’d asked blankly?

I knew of so many autistic persons who did drive cars, but I also knew of many who did not; and their reasons were also mine. There were a lot of things my children had not seen, nor heard me do. Swearing, for instance. Not often and not very well.

You could not miss the things that communication impairment

takes away if you have never had them, and such was my way. My children would not blink twice if I danced with the family cat Sweet Pea or snipped fringe from our sofa set (named Giddy Moonbeam) to sew onto an elf. I snipped fringe from small pillows, buttons from old clothing, and just about any old toy or cast-off thing was fair game when I got an urge to make an elf. Weren't all mothers elf-makers, dancers with cats, namers of couches, writers, poets, with eyes that were aptly hazel, you know, like the nuts? So we found ourselves, like we used to every Friday, just 'cause it was Friday, but some of us were a little taller now, crammed into the little Hyundai. He'd been getting worse.

We stopped going inside restaurants. He had this idea everyone was staring at him when I had to cut his sausage or if he couldn't tear open his sugar packet. Not going inside was fine with me! As my friend Colin liked to say, “Avoidance is not cowardly! It’s a form of self preservation!”

I'm not advocating avoidance, but for people like Colin and me, sometimes it sounded supreme. And if my husband wanted to eat in the car instead of going inside, that meant no fluor-escent lights to hit me in the eyes 'laser-like' when I walked

into restaurants. No waitresses I didn't understand. No eye contact.

No surprises.

Of course the drive-through window posed unique problems for Howie. His left arm was limpy. Some fingers were bent and stuck that way. The hand was weak. The muscle goes away and does not come back. There was a tremor. He had to over-reach with the right arm to grab the bag at the drive-through window, and then he had to keep his arms steady. Heck, lighting his cigarettes was a two-handed effort. He was especially miserable that Friday.

He was even snappy to the dog, who always meant well in his too friendly in-your-face-with-the-squeaky-toy-kind-of-way.

Pralphdog, the beagle he bought me for Valentine's

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