LIFE/MIKEY: Laid Up and Layed Off

One of the wonderful things about Mikey, about children, is their ability to make you forget your troubles and to smile when all else is making you want to frown or cry.

I've been experiencing one of those times in life when everything seems aligned against me. Bad things coming all at once.

It started with finding out I had two kidney stones (one huge). I've now had two surgeries and I'm still not feeling great but I have a high pain tolerance so I get through each day the best I can. {Update: For those of you who don't live on the Eastern seaboard and didn't hear the screams coming from my bathroom...I passed a couple stones this weekend...OUCH!!!}

Then came my car problems. But, those can easily be explained. You see, I just made the last payment on my car. And, by law, it is required to begin breaking down and falling apart. I've spent almost $2,000 in the past couple months and keeping getting told that it is "fixed." Yeah, the only thing fixed is the mechanic's income from getting all my money!

And, the final blow {Update: I'll write another post soon about how this was not the final blow}, I was layed off two weeks ago from work. Of course, I was told that they'd like me to stay on until July (if I want to get my severance package). And that's all I can say about that at the moment. You see, speech is not always free and unlimited in this country.

So, with all that going on, life has not been full of blue skies, birds singing, and all that good stuff lately. But, Mikey is an inspiration. He inspires me to get past my pain. He inspires me to find a better job and to be able to use my skills and experience for even better things. I watch the way he is learning to communicate through the efforts of his wonderful teachers and I'm so amazed and impressed.

One of the things I want to teach him is that persistence pays off in life. Life can hammer at you at times and knock you down so low you don't think you'll ever get up. But with a strong will and positive attitude you can rise above any challenges and be happy and successful.

SPORTS: Take Me Out to the Ballgame...Zzzzzz

In honor of Father's Day I'll take this time to write about a recent experience that is one of my favorite moments as a father.

Hot dogs, apple pie, Chevrolet, and baseball. Baseball...is there anything more American, more father-son bonding, more memorable than this wonderful game of ours? That is, unless, you're a two-year-old who hasn't had his nap yet.

We recently attended the Long Island Ducks baseball game (it was part of an Autism Speaks fundraising). I'm a life-long baseball fan so going to a ballgame is second nature to me. But this game was the first I attended as a father and the first with my son. My own father never took me to a baseball game so I was happy that I was able to take Mikey to his first game at such a young age. His next game, if I can get his mommy to say okay, will be a New York Yankees game at Yankee Stadium. Go Yanks!

It was a beautiful day for a baseball game (but most days, in my opinion, are) and we had decent seats (Mikey wasn't required to have one so he took turns sitting on mommy and daddy's laps). We were concerned for a bit how Mikey would react to the noise and crowd and everything because autistic children can get overwhelmed by those things and Mikey had shown signs in other situations of being upset by loud noises (but, curiously enough, at an air show we went to he was loving it and totally not phased by the noise of jet planes screaming overhead). But Mikey made me proud and was fine with the whole environment. He was looking around the stadium as he sat on my lap and I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his head.

I was feeling so happy and proud that I was at a baseball game with my son. My son. That was incredible! I used to sit and watch other fathers at games with their sons and be secretly jealous. But, now, here I was with my little buddy Mikey sitting on my lap and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been at that time.

At one point I took Mikey for a walk around the stadium so he could see things from different angles and take in the whole experience. I know that when I go to a game I still love to see it from as many viewpoints as I can and just let the whole atmosphere engulf me. At age 40, when I walk into Yankee Stadium, I still get this rapid heartbeat and feeling of awe.

By the sixth inning Mikey was asleep on my shoulder. Now I know that some think baseball is sleep-inducing but I'm chalking Mikey's stadium snooze to him missing nap time. I hoped he was dreaming of baseball because, although I was awake, my dreams were flashing in front of me and coming true.

MIKEY: Gookies and Gilk

As most parents of a child know, a child’s language development and ability to communicate can be a frustrating experience but a wonderful one to witness. My wife and I still use words and phrases that my nieces used to use when they were toddlers trying to learn to communicate. In those cases it was cute and as they developed their skills we kind of almost missed them using those old words and phrases.

With autistic children, communicating is the hardest part. My son, Mikey, has been learning to use various ways of communication from his wonderful teachers. The first thing they taught him was how to point to indicate when he wanted something. When he first started doing this my wife and I were incredibly amazed and thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world. It then got to the point where he pointed so well and so appropriately that we kind of took it for granted and sometimes forgot to acknowledge it.

Verbally, Mikey seems to go back and forth with his ability to use language. He sometimes can say a word perfectly, sometimes he can say most of a word (such as gookies and gilk for cookies and milk), and sometimes he can just say sounds. But he also loses the ability to say a word from time to time, which is saddening for us and frustrating for him.

There are so many useless things in this world that people get excited about. But, for me, every sound that comes out of my son’s mouth is priceless. My favorite song in the world now is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when Mikey fills in the words "star" and "are." So, for now, I’m totally happy to break out the gookies and raise a glass of gilk to Mikey.