In The Cigar Box

In a few days the blue light will be extinguished until next April.  Autism will still be with us but more people will be aware of the challenges this disease lays upon families who love someone with autism.  This week has been delivering a dose of autism's ways to Wee and me as we look after Mason and Tom while their folks are away for R & R and an anniversary celebration. The rhythms of life are driven by circumstance and fate.  There are folks in Boston and West who had fate rearrange their lives in the length of time it takes an explosion to dissipate its energy.  Each conflagration visits destruction or injury on everyone and everything within the blast radius.   Autism is not akin to an explosive device.  Instead, autism drips its effects like a slow leaking spigot with the spout positioned right over the bridge of your nose.  Each droplet blurs your vision for a second or two, you blink, clear your eyes and move forward with one m...

Where is the darkest of dark places?  Spelunking through a deep cave with the only sound the scurry of furry creatures or the drip, drip, drip of unseen seepage from a stream that never knows sunlight doesn’t come close.   Swimming through undersea caverns where the water is cold and clear and the main sensation is when a Ray is startled and stirs the deep laid sand is not the place where darkness rests as comfortably as if in a corduroy reclining chair.  Walking in the small hours of a moonless, starless, slightly foggy night on a street where shuttered, abandoned buildings stand adjacent to cracked pavement where weeds have taken root and every street lamp forgot how to glow is not as chilling as the truly dark place. After months, really years, of training to test their minds and bodies against one of the highest standards of endurance, thousands came to Boston to run in the first among equals of marathon races.  Born in the lore of the ancient Greek so...

Three mornings in the past week have been filled with snippets of memories from a half century ago.  Memories are triggered by sights or sounds; sometimes one rises up to consciousness on the escalator of smells.  Last week all three were in play as the coincidence of timing tugged open a memory box from teenage times.   Approaching the stoplight on my normal route to the office, the morning was unfolding just like hundreds of others have done before.  I drive a Mini Cooper – like “jumbo shrimp” my Mini is a bit of an oxymoron because it is the Countryman, the largest of the Mini Cooper breed.  There at the stoplight sitting at idle was a vintage MG Midget – British racing green with a demountable hard top that had probably been installed for the winter.  It was half the size of my Mini. The driver’s window was down and he rested his arm on the door exactly the way I used to do in my first MG.  I pulled to a stop directly behind the Midget a...

An icy cold wind carried April fools’ greetings this morning.  With temperatures just over freezing, the brisk breeze relegates the mind to winter rather than providing the nudge into the renewal portended by April, Easter and the onset of spring.  While some draw parallels to the holy trinity when Passover, Easter and baseball’s opening day occur In close proximity, for us April is the annual reminder and time to heighten awareness about autism.  It is time to relight the blue bulbs, speak about progress made and pray for more breakthroughs from research. Mason has made strides during these last twelve months.  He connected with Coco, the mare at Midnight Farm, whose walk and trot brought smiles, laughter and genuine joy.  Mason House was brought into its full mission of providing therapies and safe experiences for kids and families along the autism spectrum.  But Mason, himself, graduated.  He left Mason House and moved to the public school s...