Divide Conquered?
Or, 'How the Hidden Hamilton Stepped Toward the Light.'
Last spring I gave our family a public challenge, that we would bring Leah to support her sisters during their marching band season. She's been largely invisible around their high school, as they have at hers, which isn't surprising, since their schools are more than 40 miles apart.
Five months before the season opener, taking Leah to a high school football game seemed like low-hanging fruit. Expectations of stillness or silence (both enemies of autism, at least in our house) are zero. An active, noisy crowd is decent camouflage for a struggle. She could watch the halftime show, listen to a couple of renditions of the fight song, and leave when she was ready. But by the time September came, Mike and I still had mental hangovers from a summer vacation spent tag-teaming between twins who were eager to try everything and an older sister whose need to cocoon in the condo was far greater than we'd expected. After that, finding an activity for the whole family in one place at one time seemed like a very tall, very unattainable order.
Nevertheless, we persisted
The first home game also happened to be homecoming, and most of me wanted to procrastinate until October (it was a powerful hangover). It was hard to argue with Mike's assessment that the omens were about as good as they were going to be: No rain and no crazy heat meant we really were out of excuses. There are probably freshman starters all over the country who experienced fewer game day nerves than we did.Outings to non-preferred places – basically anywhere we go that isn't Leah's idea – require a plan for entrance and exit, and a few extras to increase chances of success:
Separate cars to minimize any pre-event waiting and provide a fast getaway if needed
Hot dogs
French fries
Lil and Phil, Leah's Rugrat pals whose rhyming names vaulted them to the top of the preferred stuffed toy list
An iPhone with an extensive photo archive (bonus: looking at 10-year-old pictures of certain band members while we're about 10 feet from them and 100 or so of their closest friends)
More French fries
Unimpaired reflexes to catch any objects that could be tossed in frustration (flip flops are excellent projectiles)
A really desirable reward for a successful evening (which very often will involve still more French fries, but not this time, because Leah really wants to see The Addams Family)
I was the designated on-time parent, arriving before kickoff, while Mike operated on Leah Standard Time, which involves mental math and deep breathing, as you build in time for computer shutdown and exit rituals and you try to minimize waiting.
In short, we had a plan. And as any autism parent will tell you, when you plan for six possibilities, the seventh thing is the one that goes wrong. It looked like our Waterloo would be traffic: The route to the school was peppered with fender benders and made worse by poorly planned bridge maintenance, more than doubling the ride time.
Since we weren't sure whether Leah would willingly leave for the game until she actually buckled herself into her seat, excitement was my first reaction when Mike told me they were en route. That switched to tension as their ride lengthened, and I wondered whether the drive to the game would consume all of Leah's goodwill. Arriving somewhere, turning around, and leaving is part of her repertoire.
When I saw her, finally, she moved willingly toward the stands, head slightly tilted, with a slight smile she gets either when she's pleased or when she knows she's just delivered a zinger. When she wears that look, all is right in her world, and I am allowed to feel that all might be right in mine as well.
I thought Leah wouldn't last much past her hot dog and fries, but her craving for schedule and structure won out: She wouldn't leave the game until the fourth quarter clock wound down to zero. She responded to greetings, sometimes with prompting, amused herself with old pictures, and happily accepted high fives from her sisters, who had been quietly advised to make a slight fuss over her presence. She walked out quietly, insisting only that she leave the same way she arrived, driven by her father.
Did I underestimate Leah's desire to move from her world into ours? Maybe. Or maybe high school concession stand French fries are really, really good. Either way, when I asked her if she wants to catch a game in October, Leah said yes. She might mean it. Stay tuned.