Ahem.
I would like to do a little bragging about Sam for a minute. He has been playing flute for a couple of years now and today at his school’s spring concert, he had his first solo. He has been practicing really hard. He was having a little trouble for a while, but after we figured out that his flute needed to be adjusted—not him—it all came together.
See Sam perform In Dreams from Lord of the Rings at his concert. (Also see my finger in front of the lens.)
I’m so proud.
It’s not too late to talk about Mother’s Day, is it? Because I’d really like to talk about Mother’s Day. See, Sunday wasn’t just Mother’s Day in Stimeyland, but also Jack’s birthday. We were only a silver anniversary away from the perfect storm of celebration.
Wait a minute! Maybe we can achieve this perfect storm of celebration if I show you this slightly blurry photo of Gerbil Mother’s Day:
Although it probably doesn’t count if I took the photo a month ago, does it?
Mother’s Day was pretty much overshadowed by Jack’s birthday, which was totally fine with me, especially because I got the best handmade cards and gifts I could have possibly gotten. Sam made me a paper Minecraft cake and sang a song to go along with it, complete with an illustrated companion book.
Jack made me a bead necklace and a paper flower, along with a note that I had to hide from my other kids because it mentioned the secret iPad time he gets in the morning if he has good behavior at school the day before.
Quinn typed up a little note that said, “I love you and you are good. So I think you should get to sleep in 5 more minutes than you usually do. Then get dressed, come downstairs and fix us breakfast.” Then, he poked at me, said, “I regret putting my thumb in your armpit,” and ran to the bathroom to frantically wash his hands. Because I have cooties, evidently.
Also, Alex got me the best Mother’s Day card that he could possibly have given to a non-hugger autistic person like me.
I laughed and laughed. Alex gets me.
We then moved on to Jack’s big day. He opened presents and then all the males in my house played Minecraft together until I threatened to walk out of the house and go on Jack’s Big Birthday Outing all by myself because we were going to a petting farm and I wanted to pet some farm animals, thank you very much.
Also, Minecraft is stupid.
I finally bent my entire family to my will and we headed out to the farm. Where did we go, you ask? Why don’t we let Sam tell us?
He asked me to take this photo. It was the best Mother’s Day gift I could have asked for.
Wait. Where did you say you were again?
This would only be better if spoilsport Quinn had shown his face. God, I love my family.
There were all kinds of animals to pet and feed at this farm. Unfortunately, Jack was unexcited about all of them.
Wait. I mean he was SUPER excited about all of them.
We started with the fowl. My kids think chickens are really funny. Except Sam. Sam was a little bit afraid of the chickens. That’s probably a smart move seeing as how chickens are exceptionally pointy. In reality, however, chickens are probably more scared of us than we are of them.
This chicken in particular.
He was trapped in a Team Stimey-chicken sandwich—otherwise known as a chicken sandwich.
We saw every animal at the farm. We were allowed to pet all of them except for the zebras. I assume this is because every time I have seen zebras in captivity, there is a sign that warns people that fingers look like carrots* and you shouldn’t stick said fingers in zebra pens because zebras are assholes and will eat your hand.
Naturally, I asked Alex to put his finger in the zebra pen.
He’s really half assing feeding his finger to the zebra though. You can tell from the photo.
We also saw the pig race.
I felt that the race was a little demeaning, but the pigs didn’t seem to mind.
One of those pigs was galloping. The other one sort of ambled at a fast trot. Once they raced, they ate out of their little piggy bowl and the first one snorted angrily and shoved the second one every time the second one tried to eat some food. I was all, “Hey! That first one is like me!”
There were a lot of baby animals at the petting farm. There were baby birds, pigs, llamas, bison, goats, a cow, and sheep.
This baby sheep made a whiny, complainy bleat that sound EXACTLY like Quinn.
Happily, this farm made Quinn, who is often quite grumpy, happier than I have seen him in a while. It was great to see his delighted, happy face. Baby animals are kind of his thing.
The sheer awesomeness of feeding sheep knocked him on his ass.
My favorite animal there was the kangaroo. Have you ever petted a kangaroo? OMG, they are so soft. And they have little hands that they use to scratch themselves in all kinds of fun places while you watch. Plus, if you get really close to them, they will try to eat your hair. I want a kangaroo.
Specifically, this kangaroo. I will name him Bartholomew.
I also have a thing for emus, even though they are kinda dicks. Have you ever petted an emu? Of course not, because they will peck you to death before you get close enough.
Aaaaaiiiiiggghhhhh!!!!!!
Baby chickens were nicer than the emus, although I’m sure if they could have gotten away with pecking my eyes out, they would have.
I would name this lil’ guy “Nugget.”
The unruliest animals were the ones in this cage though:
I would like to state for the record, that it was not ME who locked the children in there.
Revenge for the illegal jailing was pursued.
Sam will also peck you to death.
I have to say, Alex was skeptical about our trip to the petting farm. It was, however, one of our best outings in a long time. It was outside, so we could be loud and run; there was sufficient interaction to keep everyone’s interest; and we were able to see the entire farm and touch every single animal on it in two hours, meaning no one got overwhelmed.
See? Look? Most of them look not not unhappy!
Add some focus and take away one stranglehold and this photo is super close to being almost frame-able.
And that was Jean and Jack Day in Stimeyland. Pretty good, huh? The only thing I neglected to show you is Jack’s cake. I always get my cakes from the grocery store, but this time I was nervous because my instructions to the bakery, which they wrote verbatim on the order form, were “Make it look grassy. Kind of like it’s a field.”
They actually did a great job. Although it barely mattered considering that one of Jack’s gifts was a set of some awesome Minecraft figures and some plant foam cut into cubes. Jack’s face—hell, my whole family’s faces—were priceless when they saw this cake.
I came to dig.
I hope that all of you had Mother’s Day/Jack’s Birthdays that were as good as ours was. Even though I didn’t get the traditional Mother’s Day gift of getting to avoid my family all day, it was one of the better days that I’ve had in a long, long time.
* Fingers also evidently look like rodent pellets. I say this based on the fact that I poked my finger in front of Jetpack the other day and she latched on, leaving me to yank my hand up, GERBIL STILL DANGLING FROM MY FINGER BY HER TEETH, until she finally fell off. It was quite traumatic, I tell you. The trauma was made even worse because no one was as concerned by the blood oozing out of the tiny puncture wound on the tip of my finger as I was. Fair warning: Jetpack has developed a taste for human blood. Remain vigilant.
Warning: Lots of egg puns ahead. Sorry.
This year, like every year, I had come to terms with the fact that Team Stimey was doomed to another year of celebrating Easter only with our regular family backyard Easter egg hunt on Sunday. (Jack found a 19th egg on Tuesday; where do you think that came from?) Then, on Friday, I got great news from my friend MCM Mama*, who introduced me to the lovely folks from Honest Tea, who had all-day passes to the White House Easter Egg Roll for my whole family.
I was so excited. I love big DC events. I mean, I knew it was likely to be a Team Stimey freakout fest, but with us, what isn’t?
Sure enough, on the way there, Jack was all, “I think I’m going to be sick,” and so we opened a lot of windows and then Quinn was all, “I am freezing!” so we rolled up most of the windows and then I suggested that we pull over, and Alex, who was driving us in the morning rush hour traffic, was all, “SERENITY NOW!”
Naturally, we walked almost entirely around the perimeter of the White House grounds in an effort to find the right entrance. During this long walk, both Alex and Quinn became increasingly disgruntled.
This was at the beginning of said walk before that smile disappeared from Quinn’s face entirely. I, however, kept that giddy grin the whole stupid time.
By the time we actually got past security, Quinn was not happy…until he met the most fun squirrel in the history of fun squirrels.
Quinn got within a couple of inches of this guy. Me: “Oh good. It’s rabid.”
He chattered happily about that squirrel right until we walked into the crowds and the chaos and the many characters wandering around. Me on the other hand? I was delighted. Especially when Smokey the Bear AND Woodsy Owl walked by together—it was like the holy grail of good samaritan animal costume characters.
I forced Jack to stand with me because it seemed more legitimate to pose with them if I had a kid with me.
I called, “Give a hoot!” after them as they departed. I don’t think anyone heard me. That’s probably for the best.
We decided to start with the egg roll, because, well the name of the event is the Easter Egg Roll and also because all of my kids were too old for the Easter Egg Hunt. There were dozens of reporters there with their cameras trained on the egg roll course. I was already imagining the local evening news with its footage of cute toddlers in Easter dresses rolling their eggs along with wooden spoons, followed by a shot of Quinn rolling on the grass and screaming as the anchor fake sympathized, “Aw, this little boy didn’t have much fun!”
I haven’t seen any such footage. Please don’t tell me if it exists.
Sam, however, rocked his egg roll race against all those toddlers in their cute Easter clothes.
From there, it was over to the Eggtivity Zone where there were several different obstacle courses. Quinn had entirely checked out by this point and was playing Angry Birds on my iPhone, but Sam and Jack went through the obstacle courses several times.
Some properly and according to the rules…
…and some not.
Mid-obstacle race, the president and his family and the Easter Bunny showed up to greet Team Stimey…and the other folks in attendance. I guess.
Someday I am actually going to get a close up photo of that man.
Team Obama headed down to the egg roll area and Team Stimey headed off on an ultimately unsuccessful trek to find the people from Honest Tea to find some juice and say thank you. In a happy cowinkidink, we ended up penned in by hastily erected fences as the Obamas were headed off to various places on the lawn—the president to the tennis and basketball courts and the first lady to the healthy food section.
We might have gotten all up in Michelle’s face. Algernon took this opportunity to get reacquainted with Mrs. Obama.
Take note of the concerned looking lady in the mirrored sunglasses.
There is nothing I won’t do for you people.
That was pretty cool, right? Well. It got even cooler just after that. The people right next to us had some sort of photos from their school that they were forcing on Mrs. Obama and they told her where they went to school. She started to move on when Jack piped up with, “I go to ****** Elementary School!”
She stopped, turned around and came back asking, “Are you doing good there? Are you getting good grades?” Jack told her yes and then she told him, “Keep up the good work, babe,” and then she touched both Sam and Jack on their heads and I may or may not have started jumping up and down.
Jack and Sam, pre-conversation.
I don’t know why it is so exciting that she talked to my kids, but it was. Also, I love that Jack totally dragged her attention back. That kid has some sort of magnetic charisma. It is close to impossible to walk away from his awesome little face when he is is telling you something. Even the FLOTUS wasn’t immune.
Jack and the FLOTUS’ magic touch.
After that, it was just a matter of killing time and making jokes about unjust imprisonment as we waited for the president to finish playing sports so security could remove the fence between us and the exit.
Sam killed time by being his normal charming self. Algernon is going to need a bath.
Quinn killed time by collapsing to the ground again. I’m making a collection of these photos. (Luray Caverns? Check! The White House? Check!)
Jack killed time by learning—and then by using that magnifying glass and the sun to try to set some lady on fire.
Soon enough though the president headed back to the White House and we were free from our egg-citing adventure.
This photo is a *little* closer.
We headed out and collected our souvenir Easter eggs, which were passed out along with Peeps, M&Ms, and goldfish crackers. This was Quinn’s favorite part of the egg-venture.
You can see Alex and Quinn up there on the left. I felt I should point out that they were there as they didn’t figure prominently in this post.
From there, Alex headed back to work (sad) and the rest of us headed home to collapse on the couch (happy). I know that we’ll probably never go back to the egg roll now that we’ve done it once, but I am so happy that we got to experience it. Thank you so much, Honest Tea!
* MCM Mama just ran five half marathons in five different states in five days. She is a rock star. You should totally read her series of posts about those races.
Disclosure: Honest Tea provided my family with tickets to the Easter egg roll, which, although free, we would not have been able to obtain otherwise. A super nice rep for the company also dropped off loads of egg-cellent tea and juice from their line on my porch last weekend.
*****
I wrote an egg-ceptional column at White Knuckle Parenting about why I wanted to go to the egg roll even though I knew it would most likely be a nightmare: Surviving the White House Easter Egg Roll. Check it out!
I am so excited to tell you about Team Stimey’s Super Awesome Fun Spring Break Adventure! We packed a lot of fun into our two-day vacation. Alex had a business trip on Monday so I decided that instead of sitting around and being surly that he was gone again, I would bail as well. Only I had to take the kids.
We based our trip around Luray Caverns in Virginia, adding on other roadside attractions until we had the best 48 hours ever. Alex went to Cincinnati and had a meeting in a conference room overlooking a freeway.
You can guess who had more fun.
I have to admit that I was annoyed when I woke up and saw my spring break adventure looking more like spring broken adventure.
Clearly I was delighted by spring snow.
Although the snow did teach me something interesting.
Quinn makes his snow angels face down.
That kid is his own person, that is for sure.
Regardless of snow (I had prepaid for our hotel room so we were going—even if a tornado showed up), we headed out and arrived at Luray at about noon. Now, Team Stimey had been to Luray Caverns before, but it was a long time ago (click that link to see my tiny babies) and we didn’t go on a cold, snowy spring day. It was practically deserted when we went this time. There were no lines and no sweltering heat and there was plenty of snow to threaten your brothers with.
This photo cracks me up over and over. It is so them.
We grabbed some lunch and then jumped onto a tour. Our guide was great except that she didn’t have answers for any of the Minecraft-related questions my kids had. It’s almost like they didn’t train her at all.
The tour started off really well. All three kiddos were happy. Sam was learning, Jack was musing about types of rock, and Quinn kept finding dark little recesses and saying, “Look! A cave system!”
Back at the beginning of the tour when they were still willing to stand together for me to take a photo of them.
So, let’s talk about my kids and the way they handle tours for a minute. Last time we went to Luray, we did a self-guided tour. This time they didn’t offer that option, so we were with a group of 25ish that traveled together. This isn’t optimal for my kids, but I’m lucky in that they can mostly handle it. Mostly.
Sam is my kid that is best suited for tours, exhibits, and other learning stuff. We were hanging in the back of the group so I could take some photos without people in them and also so that we weren’t distracting the guide with infinite questions about bedrock and mining. Every time the guide started talking, Sam would gasp and run up to be in ear shot.
In fact, my cell phone is full of videos of the guide telling us things about the cavern. I had to threaten him to make him stop taking video that we will never watch.
Also on the phone? At least one photo of me and my camera.
Jack tends to get overwhelmed and spinny in tour situations. The cavern, however, was spacious enough and involved enough walking that he was okay. The best way to help him regulate himself is to take him on a long walk, so considering the tour was about a mile long, this was just his thing. Near the end of the tour, he was up at the front chatting with the guide. Maybe he was giving her that sorely needed Minecraft information.
I’m imagining that he was thinking about different kinds of Minecraft blocks in this photo.
Then there is Quinn. The thing I’m coming to realize about Quinn is that he has a time limit. He started off the tour completely happy, but his attention span is not…expansive. Also, when he is unhappy, tired, or bored, he gets loud. God forbid he is all three. Because when he is all three, he also falls to the ground.
Oh, Quinn.
Quinn and I are working on finding a happy medium together.
We emerged from the caverns into the greatest unblemished field of snow that ever was. That snow quickly became the greatest blemished battlefield of snow that ever was after my kids’ epic snowball fight broke out. It was one of those rare, unplanned, no-one-got-mad-or-hurt bouts of awesomeness that very occasionally happens. It was the absolute greatest.
Even Quinn came right back to happy. Also soaking wet. That too.
Quinn is a fan of the “snowball as big as your head” tactical approach.
After snowball fighting, terrorizing some geese, and exploring around, Jack found his sensory happy place lying in the snow.
Sam’s happy place, on the other hand, involved throwing snowballs at me. See that particularly well-aimed one hurtling toward my camera?
The hedge maze we had planned to go through was closed because of the snow, which I thought was absurd, but my thoughts had very little effect on the open vs. closed status of said hedge maze, so we departed to our hotel.
Now, my kids were happily watching a movie in the backseat, so they were unaware of what happened next. I should preface this by telling you that my GPS, which is probably the same one you have, reminds me very much of a Dalek from Doctor Who—its “RECALCULATING” sounds exactly as evil as “EXTERMINATE” and makes me laugh every time I take a wrong turn. I also may or may not repeat “RECALCULATING” in a Dalek voice every time it happens.
Now, my GPS always gets me where I’m going, but it often chooses the weirdest damn way in the world. In this case, instead of choosing a2 + b2 on two-lane and larger roads, the GPS sent me straight across c2—the hypotenuse, which in this case turned out to be a series of increasingly windy and snowy roads over a mountain on which there were NO other cars. If I’d had slinky college coeds in my car instead of damp tweens, it would have been EXACTLY like the beginning of a horror movie.
Perhaps the best part, however, was when I made a wrong turn and the GPS recalculated and I assumed it was sending me on a new route, but it was in fact sending me on the longest, most dangerous 11.2-mile u-turn I’d ever been on. I knew that Dalek GPS has been trying to kill me.
(start at the bottom) Fuck you, mean GPS. Fuck you.
That done, we finally got to the hotel, which was the best hotel in the history of hotels, but notable mostly for the fact that it had an indoor swimming pool in which my kids spent HOURS.
LOOK OUT BELOW!!!
Also making this hotel notable was that they offered free hot chocolate in the lobby and a microwave in the room, which made an excellent combination for Quinn, who warmed up his one cup of hot chocolate many times over the course of the evening.
It’s even more delicious if you get to operate machinery to prepare it.
I tell you, we got our money’s worth out of that hotel. We swam evening and morning, ate sooooo much breakfast, and checked out a half hour before we were kicked out. It was an excellent choice to stay overnight.
The other thing that made it an excellent choice to stay overnight was that Luray’s hedge maze was open the next day. I think that my kids were more excited about the hedge maze than the caverns, so I was glad that we were able to head back. It was substantially more crowded that day, which lends more credibility to my new “go to busy attractions on terrible weather days” theory.
The hedge maze at Luray is huge and awesome and has four goals and a center fountain for you to find so you’re not just wandering around aimlessly. Once everyone got yelled at once (by me) for running off in separate directions, Team Stimey stuck together and eventually we made our way through.
What could possibly go wrong?
The maze was actually really hard. Especially considering said maze was kind of an asshole.
This totally outraged Quinn.
Luray also has this new thing called Ropeland or some such where they harness you up and send you into a…well, a ropeland. It was really cool. There were three levels, one of which was crazy high. That is the one Quinn got tangled up in and had to be rescued from. Naturally.
Quinn looked so extremely put out by this situation.
Sam went up and came down almost immediately because it hadn’t occurred to him beforehand that he is afraid of heights. Jack, per usual, was fearless.
This is on the middle section.
After Ropeland, we headed back toward Maryland. I had planned a stop at Dinosaurland and was considering one more stop, children permitting, but we only made it to the first stop. Did I mention that Quinn had a time limit? Yeah. It expired almost immediately after arriving at Dinosaurland.
Regardless, I did get this most excellent new Facebook profile photo.
You’ll never go…um, on the concrete again!
Also, it turns out that my kids are surprisingly resistant to standing in front of giant fake dinosaurs and pretending to be scared of/running from/being eaten by said dinosaurs.
This was SO halfhearted on his part.
THIS is how you do it. (Also, I don’t know why a praying mantis is at Dinosaurland. Also, also, I don’t think this is a “life-size replica” as advertised.)
When all was said and done, though, the way I knew that we were really done with Team Stimey’s Fantabulous Spring Break Adventure is when I started to feel like this:
When you’re standing in front of a pile of trash and a mini-bulldozer with this expression on your face while watching your kid sit in a giant King Kong hand, you know you’re done with your day-o-fun.
(I just realized that I can’t NOT show you the King Kong photo. Here it is. You are welcome.)
I call them Surly and Surlier.
The End. Come on back next year for Team Stimey’s Incredible Adorable Allegorical Spring Break Adventure II.
I am so sorry to do this to you all, but I have to take a sharp left turn off of gerbil babies (whom I am henceforth referring to as Gerblets—like giblets, but alive).
So, you know about Cassidy. (Also known as “The Doodle.”)
She is our awesome dog.
Cassidy is 13 years old and has been having health problems for a while. She has on and off liver and kidney issues and has chronic joint issues as well as incontinence and lots of itchiness. She seems confused a lot of the time. Sometimes I have to carry her up and down stairs. She takes a lot of medicine.
We’ve known for a while that she didn’t have a long time, but she has deteriorated a lot over the past couple of weeks. Just this evening, she took a nose dive. She is hunched and limping and breathing really hard.
Saturday (tomorrow) afternoon the vet is coming to put her to sleep.
I know it’s the right thing to do. I know it. But tomorrow is going to be horrible. We are going to miss her a lot.
The kids are ready—as ready as they can be. We’ve been talking about her being sick for a while. When we saw how quickly she was starting to not feel well, we started preparing them for this happening. And now we’ve told them that tomorrow afternoon they’re going to go over to a friend’s house and the vet is going to come to our house and help Cassidy die.
Quinn decided that he wanted to have a party for Cassidy today. So we had a party to celebrate her. We gave her a can of dog food (and we ate cake and bone-shaped graham crackers), took photos with her, and we made her a poster to show her how much we love her.
We’re going to miss her. I have spent 13 years with her following me around virtually all day, every day. The house is going to be very different without her.
You guys, I don’t even know what to say to you. You are some twisted people. Also, I am delighted that you are as wacky about gerbils as I am. First of all, if you’re new here, you may not understand the whole gerbils in hats thing.
For you, I will post this reminder:
Any excuse to re-post this photo makes me happy.
Yes, that is my pregnant gerbil, Mouse, just a few days ago. Or it is the gerbil daddy, Mouse. I still don’t know which of my gerbils is the mom and which is the dad. I think Mouse (above) is the girl, but I haven’t picked either of them up since the gerbil babies appeared to study their genitalia.
Don’t worry. I’ll do it soon though. There is going to be a whole lotta gerbil genital studying going on.
I bought a second gerbil tank today at PetSmart in preparation for the day when I segregate my piles of gerbils by gender. The clerk that rang me up was all, “Ooooh! Are you getting a new pet?” and I was like, “Kinda!”
So, here is my gerbil update for you so you know what is going on:
There are five baby gerbils. There were six, but one of them died today and I took his little corpse out so his mom and dad didn’t have to eat him. It was a little sad. I hope the other guys make it. I’m already starting to get attached to them.
Pile-o-gerballs, on a rare out-of-the-hut excursion.
They all seem to be doing all right. They were in this big pile today and there was this one on the bottom whose only visible body parts were his frantically pinwheeling back legs. He eventually made it out and was able to breathe. So yay for that one.
My kids are pretty excited about the whole thing. Sam took a look at one last night and has refused to come back for another look. Quinn’s first questions were, “Are they hairless? Are their eyes closed?” and then he refused to even look at a picture of them. Although by the time he got home from school, he was ready for an in-person encounter.
Jack, however, is way into them. I had to keep chasing him away from their tank so he wouldn’t harass them too much. Here, “harass” equals constantly pulling back the privacy blanket I put around them to stare at them and maybe tap on the tank a little bit.
Watcha doin’?
The result of this was a hyper-vigilant Jetpack starting to look a little nervous.
“Can I HELP you?”
This brings you up to date on the gerbils. The really amazing part of the day, however, was the passion with which Facebook embraced my gerbil babies and the fervor with which you all set about to mocking my panic.
I mean, really, it was almost instantaneous. The snark started immediately once I posted a photo of a baby gerbil, but it took a whole six minutes before Bec said, “Quick! Put tiny hats on them!”
Then it was all over.
Last night, you confined yourselves to words. Today, it was ON.
It all started with Lexi‘s image of the gerbil I will be naming Top Hat.
It went downhill from there.
Alicia got downright threatening. Well, she didn’t, but her terrifying as shit cat did.
Moses the Cat has his own Facebook page.
Then Mindy stopped by.
The force is strong with this one.
Then Jim got involved. We all knows what happens when Jim gets involved. This:
Aw! Delightful and innocent!
Weirder.
AAAAIIIIIIGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!
(I love me a good Jenny McCarthy joke.)
I’m pretty sure Jim is going to hell.
Also, this isn’t even all of his artwork from today. He is prolific.
Not to be outdone, Mir competed for the front seat on the train to hell.
Her caption: “And lo, unto them a son was born, and they called him Gerbilus, Prince of WTF.”
In case you don’t recognize them, these are the Duggars, or “Duggarils” if you prefer. Or, if you’re Mir, you’ll freak me out by telling me that this will be my house next week.
My Facebook pages are a horrorshow, y’all.
I could probably end every single one of my posts with this line: I have the best friends. Thanks for making me laugh all day long, every single damn one of you.
Friday was the Disability Day of Mourning to honor and remember disabled people killed by their parents or caregivers. Vigils were held around the country for people to gather for this purpose.
I had been to last year’s vigil and decided to go again this year, but this year I was going to bring my kids. At first, the idea of taking my kids, at least one of whom is autistic, to an event where people would be talking about parents killing their autistic children seemed wildly inappropriate.
But then I thought about Jack and how he is working to figure himself out and learning about self advocacy and the fact that he is excited to hear about autistic adults, and I decided that it was, in fact, a really good idea to take him.
I prepared all three of my kids for what would happen at the vigil and what they could expect. I told them what I expected from them in terms of behavior. Then I crossed my fingers, put us on the Metro, and headed downtown.
I had no idea it was going to go down the way it did.
We were late because of my kids’ bus drop-off times, so we got there after the vigil had started. Jack walked up to a friend of mine and said, “I’m autistic,” to which she happily replied, “I am too!” It was pretty cool.
Quinn immediately disregarded my “no whining” rule and five minutes later, he was wearing both his and my coats and I was shivering. Five minutes after that, he was playing on an iPad on a nearby bench.
Jack lasted a few minutes longer. It was a tough situation for him—outside, quiet speakers, lots of stuff going on around—so when he asked if he could play with Quinn, I of course let him.
Sam, however. Sam. Sam listened to every word.
That’s him on the left, listening to ASAN president, Ari Ne’eman.
I should tell you something about Sam. He is a very sensitive kid. He is very concerned with kindness and justice and he gets very emotional about death of any sort.
I watched him as he listened and I saw how serious he was. I could tell that he was really taking it all in. There was a portion of the vigil where we read the names of those who have been murdered by their parents or caregivers. It was extremely powerful and very emotional.
Sam sobbed. He wasn’t the only one.
After it was all done, Sam came in for a hug, tears streaming down his cheeks. I told him it was so sad and it was okay to be sad. I told him that he and his brothers were safe. I told him that this is why I write about autism and why I do things like talk to classrooms about autism, like I did for his class a couple of months ago. I told him that this is why we have to keep talking about this kind of thing—because there are still so many people in this world that don’t value people with disabilities.
Then I repeated to him a quote that has been used in relation to this event.
“Sam,” I said, “there is a quote that goes like this: ‘Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living.’ That is what we are doing here.” He totally got it.
Then I hugged him and hugged him and hugged him.
It’s funny, because I brought my kids to this event for Jack. I wanted Jack to see grown-up versions of himself and to see the power of autistic community. What I never expected, and was thrilled to watch, was Sam’s extremely visceral developing understanding of what it means to be an ally.
Sam has always been a natural ally to his brothers. He is kind and thoughtful and is able to communicate with and work with his brothers in ways that no one else can. I liked seeing that personal sphere of love and support start to grow larger.
Sam before the event.
The whole experience was very meaningful to me—and, I would say, to everyone present at the vigil who keeps those murdered children and adults in our hearts as we move forward to try to keep this from happening to others in the future.
As for Jack, I am not sure how much of the event sunk in for him. It’s okay with me if it didn’t. It’s okay if he just saw that he isn’t alone in this world and that there are people leading the way for him, as he learns to do it for himself.
Jack and Ari Ne’eman
As always, I am left profoundly grateful for all of my children, even if they do steal my coat, and I stand with those who work so very hard to make sure they are safe in this world.
