Life in the Slow Lane

Like me, Annie Lubliner Lehmann is the mother of a son on the autism spectrum, Jonah, who---from what she writes in the April 7th New York Times---reminds me much of my own son. Charlie, like Jonah, is a boy, a young man, of few words and seems to "[care] most about food"; Charlie, too, has had years of instruction in reading; he is no reader. And Jim and I, like Jonah's mother, have been parents who've tried a great many things to help our child. Like her, it's too often seemed that "each hope was followed by disappointment" and that "[w]e might as well have been chasing butterflies with a torn net."

By the time Jonah was a teenager, Lehmann writes that "we were worn out and frustrated, not very far from where we’d started." And so they "decided to back off and began taking cues from him." Rather than always correcting Jonah so that he was being "appropriate," Lehman writes about doing the same activities as they had always done but "without a checklist of goals," so that Jonah was finally free to enjoy things for their own sake." She recounts how, while reading an old book with the story of "Cinderella," she paused at the word "glass," waiting for her son to fill in the word "slipper"----and he said "of milk." Lehmann continues:

I smiled, and I’m smiling still. For Jonah had made a student of his teacher. I would never again be able to read or think of “Cinderella” without seeing a tumbler of milk on the palace steps.

Jonah turned 25 last fall, and when I look at him I can’t help wondering if the past years weren’t some heaven-directed scheme meant to humble us and teach us the value of acceptance. Understanding that we couldn’t change him had changed us.

Charlie's not even half Jonah's age yet. It was starting when he was 5 and didn't go to kindergarten that we saw that Charlie's education was indeed not going to be "typical." As he was 7, 8, 9, and up, challenges came and went and reappeared. Some faded into memories, reviewed with relief; others have endured, as have everyone's efforts to help Charlie.

Along the way, we've been learning to live life in the slow lane and so I'm joining journalist and author Carl Honoré in speaking in praise of slowness.

As Honoré says in The Power of Slow on yesterday's Etsy blog:

The Slow philosophy is not about doing everything at a snail’s pace. It’s about seeking to do everything at the right speed. Savoring the hours and minutes rather than just counting them. Doing everything as well as possible, instead of as fast as possible. It’s about quality over quantity in everything from work to food to parenting. It is about forging deep and meaningful connections with the self, with others and with the world around us. You don’t have to quit your job, move to the country and grow organic carrots to join the Slow movment. You can be Slow anywhere, because Slow is a state of mind.

Life with Charlie means that we've had to slow down. Taking care of Charlie has meant having to refocus all of our attention and energies to his needs; taking care of Charlie has determined job choices, real estate choices, and many more. Further, taking of Charlie means slowing down (and, occasionally, revving it up) to his pace: When Charlie didn't walk or talk "on time," and when he didn't go to kindergarten, we realized that we had to let go of milestones that we rush to judge "childhood development" and to assess normality by.

With Charlie, you learn that you can spend a half-hour walking back and forth across a playground bridge, or just standing and looking at unknown vistas. Thanks to Charlie, who so often just likes to stand in the shallows of the ocean or kneel and press his whole body into the sand, you get to spend a lot of time on the beach and contemplate the waves. Beside Charlie, you get to observe every type of sushi in the case, and read the labels a couple of times over.

And when you're with Charlie, everything is real. Charlie, as I've noted, has minimal interest in the computer and in watching TV and DVDs---he's not a child who's got a good percentage of his mind in a virtual reality. Charlie's main activities (and, accordingly, Jim's and mine) all involve actually doing things---bike rides, walks, eating (what could be realer.......), checking out piers on the west side of New York, shooting baskets, playing piano.

I used to be the sort of person who always had book in her bag, to squeeze in a paragraph here or there when I had an "idle moment" or "free time." I've had many moments with Charlie (can't exactly call them "free time") when I've been standing around in a grassy field or on a suburban sidewalk while he's off exploring a puddle or a snowy hill, and I've had "nothing" do but think, work over the latest worries; daydream. And even, not think about anything at all, but just savor the blue sky and the breeze, and the time together with my boy, each moment by slow moment.