My Fair Logan

I love this picture of Logan: Flushed cheeks from running on the beach, new permanent teeth, wind tossed hair = perfection!
San Diego, CA June 2010

Not too long ago, I took my two youngest boys, Spencer and Logan to the high school production of “My Fair Lady.” I know my boys like a little drama in their lives, and I was proactively seeking drama that did not involve someone ducking from a flying shoe. Sadly, however, I was misinformed as to the start time of the play (it being 7:00 pm not 7:30 pm as I had been told) and there was backed up traffic from an accident we got caught in. So by the time we arrived (me thinking we were just about ten minutes late, not forty) the play was well into the first act. We dashed through the rain to the high school auditorium, and racing up the steps –me, I confess, breathing hard- made our way awkwardly to our seats (the spot farthest away from any other spectators). We sat down just in time for Eliza to yell “Move your bloomin’ @$#%...” at the horse race. Logan looked at me in alarm and hissed, “What kind of play did you bring me to mom?” As we settled into our seats, (me pulling Logan’s damp hoodie down so he could regain his peripheral vision), I realized that in order for the boys to have any idea about what was happening in the play, they would need a little background information on the plot. “So,” I whispered quickly, “Eliza---that girl you see there—is really very poor” “She doesn’t look poor” Logan interrupted, “Whisper” I said, ignoring the stares of the people around me, “She was poor,” I continued, “But she went to a professor and told him she wanted to learn how to speak better.” “How can speaking better make you not poor?” Logan asked in his best attempt at a whisper. “Well, see,” I started, but stopped abruptly, realizing this would be a long explanation, so changing course I said , ”she wanted to be a better person so she could have a better life, but in order to do that she needed to change who she was.” “Why would anyone want to change who they are? I mean unless they had leprosy or something, but she doesn’t look like she has leprosy, but then again our seats are pretty far away.” At this point a woman turned 120 degrees in her seat to say, “Do you mind?? Some of us are here to watch a play.” I attempted a smile at her but was glared into submission. “I’ll explain later” I mouthed. “What?” Logan wondered. “Shhhh” Spencer said.

And so the play continued. Freddy sang about feeling the pavement moving beneath his feet, Logan interrupting the score to say, “This song makes no sense, pavement can’t move no matter how much you love someone!” Professor Higgins wondered why a woman couldn’t be like a man. And Colonel Pickering was dashed. We finished the play, congratulated our friends on their performance, spent twenty minutes finding Spencer (he on occasion gives in to his wandering nomad soul) and walked out of the high school and into the soft, cool drizzle of a springtime rain storm. In the car, Logan announced, in his best English accent, “Well, the cast gave it a good effort, but it’s no Beauty and the Beast.” And Spencer, with eleven year old authority declared, “So, the play is really about class right? Eliza wanted to change her station…” “What’s a station?” Logan interrupted. “It’s what you are born into,” Spencer explained, “and it use to dictate what you would become.” I threw in. “So Eliza wanted to change who she was by transforming into something better with the professor’s help.” Spencer finished “Like a disguise?” Logan wondered. Spencer rolled his eyes with an air of fifth grade authority over Logan’s immature understanding of the world’s socio-economic history. “I still don’t get it” Logan continued in his distinguished accent, “Why did Eliza want to change what she was born to be? And why did the professor think he could change her?” Before I could respond, Alex’s name flashed, glowing on my vibrating phone, so I answered to tell him we were on our way home, and while I was talking to him the conversation segwayed in a different direction, and was dropped entirely by bedtime.  But weeks later I was still contemplating Logan’s question, “Why did Eliza want to change what she was born to be, and why did the Professor think he could do it?”

Loggy: Spy hopping like a killer whale, 2010

I think long before conception happens; parents are planning the lives they think their children will have. I know I certainly did. Even before I was married I savored soft, smokey images of me rocking a sleeping baby, and everything about that image evoked in my very soul feelings of peace and calmness. Now, I confess, I’ve had breathtaking moments of connection with all my boys, time spent spooning on the couch while we watched “Bob the Builder” cuddling in bed with a book, or holding that just bathed baby in footy pajamas, and feeling the moment they surrendered to sleep, the softening of the frame, the relaxed head bobbing onto my shoulder, their sweet lips still sucking air, and me, as still as snow while I breathed in their baby scent, content. But the truth is, pre-motherhood; I never conjured up the image of Logan, who thanks to the gift of what his doctor called “one of the worst cases of reflux I’ve ever seen” would repeatedly projectile vomit –like a scene out of the poltergeist- every last ounce of the contents of his stomach across the 14 foot living room floor. (We had hourly exorcisms. We should have offered tours). I never envisioned homework or the wretchedness of “family projects” (together you and your child can enjoy the magic of building a land form) magic and landform projects, to me, should never be used in the same sentence. (What the project heading should read is, “Together, you and your child will make six batches of salt dough until you finally find a batch that will solidify enough to not look like a ‘water form.’ Your attempts to find objects small enough to glue to your landform will be futile. All human forms on the landform will take the shape of army solders. And be forewarned, that while your child will require the attention of an emergency room physician for the hot glue gun burns to eighty percent of his body, we are confident your child will recover quickly at home, because we know you won’t have time to take him to the doctor since he has procrastinated this project until 8 pm the night before it’s due, when your child hands you this wadded handout from the crummy crease of his backpack and wails, “oh no! This is due tomorrow!”) I never envisioned ear infections, strep throat or chicken pox. Never thought about teaching a child what “turn taking” in a game means, or the need –at least in our house- to duck from flying checker boards while indulging in family game night. I didn’t once think of parent teacher conferences, the cost of braces or how difficult it would be to show a kid how to ride a bike. I never, not even fleetingly, envisioned autism. And so I came –like so many other glazy eyed, dimple cheeked parents- into parenthood brimming with hope. I studied behavioral science in college, knew all about the whole nature verses nurture thing. I understood boundaries, and SIDS and nipple confusion. I came with wide, open arms, determined that I would be the BEST (or at the very least competent) mother ever. And holding my new baby (content, oh so content) I’d breathed, “You are going to be magnificent!” --And they are, these boys of mine, they are magnificent.-- Babies, of course are false advertising. They pull you in with their complete dependence on you, their intoxicating scent, their gummy grins, their need for affection and attention. I of course, was a goner from day one, and by the time I realized the ploy I was caught, hook line and sinker.

Logan chasing the birds with Alex, Summer 2010

And so, when the reality of parenthood didn’t match up with the vision of what I thought it would be, I think I froze a bit, struggled to regroup, figure out the next step, because I loved my boys with such ferocious intensity, I didn’t want to –in my ill prepared inadequacy-- blow it for them. So, for example, when the doctor had stuttered the words autism, I had, in my mother’s heart, determined I would fix it. I think I saw autism as a threat to my vision of what I thought and knew my son was and could be. I wonder if in my panic I had worried it would blot out his existence, turn him into something other than a proper English gentleman. So, like any good mother, I leapt into action! I would be Professor Higgins to my child –who had quite suddenly become Eliza Doolittle—I would work, tirelessly, I vowed! I would help him “master” life! I would console him in his hard work (just as Henry Higgins did) saying, “I know your head aches; I know you’re tired, I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher’s window. But think what you’re trying to accomplish. Think what you’re dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language, it’s the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that’s what you’ve set yourself out to conquer Eliza, and conquer it you will.” But here is my fear, (and it’s not just limited to my parenting of my autistic children, but on a larger scale my treatment of everyone I associate with) I worry, that in my efforts to help my boys be all they can be, (Go Go!!! Race Race!! Run Run), that I may have inadvertently left seeds of doubt in their little inflexible minds that who they were wasn’t what I wanted them to be. (I pray, hope that it’s just my guilt speaking and not actually reality).

In truth I know now, Logan was right…The irony of My Fair Lady is that while Eliza seemed to be the one to undergo a complete transformation, in reality, the Professor didn’t really change her at all, at least not her fiery, spirited core. But Eliza certainly changed the professor, she altered the way he perceived her, she softened him somehow, perhaps in the same way my boys have transformed and softened me. I don’t know the origin of autism. It’s as mysterious to me as the Ocean. And I’m not saying my desire to help my sons be all they can be is wrong. I’m just saying, as I’ve grown into parenthood, as I’ve taken time to catch a breath and relax the tired, fettered muscles, (accept the things I cannot change) I’ve realize our children are born with their own distinct talents, abilities, and personalities, and my attempts to drum into them, what I or society thinks they should be, could be at times, damaging to their sense of self worth. I have learned the importance of measuring a child solely against himself. (Logan measured against the little girl who could read chapter books in first grade made me feel miserable, Logan measured against Logan, and seeing how far he had come since Kindergarten, made me feel triumphant, and that sense of joy is transmitted to him, superimposed upon his soul). I can see now, the wisdom in Colonel Pinkerings approach: Towards the end of the play Eliza explained to Mrs. Higgins, “I should never have known how ladies and gentlemen really behaved if it hadn’t have been for Colonel Pickering. He always showed what he thought and felt about me as if I were something better than a common flower girl. You see…the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a common flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treated me like a common flower girl, and always will. But I know that I shall always be a lady to Colonel Pinkering, because he always treats me like a lady and always will.” And so, I am learning to embrace my boys exactly the way they are—and oh, how I enjoy the way they are. I am hoping the way I treat them indicates I know they are gentlemen of the rarest breed. And I wish you could know how much I have savored the way Logan spoke with an English accent for two weeks after we saw the play, he rearranged his favorite line from the play (“Eliza, where the devil are my slippers.”) to accommodate his every need. In the pre-dawn dark, I’d lay in my bed, and listen to Logan call in his proper English accent, “Mother?! Where the devil is my breakfast?!”

Logan trying to "Unstick himself" from the sand.