These Things Happen to All of Us (AKA The time I got trapped in the backseat)

I hear this quite a bit. When I share a challenging story on my blog, on Facebook, or in person, parents of neurotypical children always console me by saying “That’s normal, those kind of things happen to us all the time, too.” I’m about to share “one of those” stories, but I wanted to take a minute to talk about that comment.

First, I know that it is absolutely meant to make me feel better. I appreciate it. I really do. You want me to know that “normal kids” line stuff up, write on the walls, pee all over the floor, climb the pantry, lose their minds in the grocery store checkout, and create general destruction around the house. I get it, I hear you, and again, I appreciate your compassion and camaraderie so very much.

But, I’m going to tell you something that you maybe don’t realize. You’re not only saying it to make me feel better…you’re saying it to make yourself feel better. Because you are a good person and a good friend, you want to convince yourself that what we’re facing isn’t really as tough as it is. It’s self-preservation in your subconscious, and if I were in your shoes, I’d be saying the same things.

Lots of the crazy things that happen in our family have happened to other families, but when you throw autism in the mix, you add another layer of complexity that it indescribable. We can’t communicate, we can’t just change the routine on the fly, we can’t recover as quickly...him or me. But we get better at it every day…I think…I hope.

So let me set the stage. Patrick just started a new job. We are SO happy and so proud of him. He started Monday…flew out Tuesday…oh crap. No problem though right, I can do this with my eyes closed…turns out it probably would have been great if I’d just kept my eyes closed through the entire morning.

I have a plan. I’m working from home because we have a huge progress report for our grant due next week, so bonus, I don’t have to get dressed! Throw on some running clothes, get everyone dressed, backpacks packed, dogs fed, we are completely killing it! So then there’s the timing issue this morning. Normally, when I’m flying solo, I drop off Larkin at school first, which is a dropoff line where they just open the car door and out she goes. But it’s freaking summer…and she had a field trip today and HAD to be there before Kellen’s clinic opened. No problem…I can do this.

Off we go to drop off Larkin, sign her in, walk Kellen back to the car, and then…yep…thermonuclear meltdown. Lays down in the middle of the parking lot between the cars, parents going every which direction, and a super busy road yards away. We struggle for a while, but I’m a safety-at-all-costs kind of person, so I know I need to get him contained in the car. I managed to pour him into the backseat somehow, but he’s still trying to escape. I then get in after him and shut the door so we’re both in the backseat. He them proceeds to wedge himself into the floorboard in such a way that I can’t even begin to pick him up and get him in a carseat. Not to mention, I’m now basically sitting in HIS carseat (you know because we got in on that side), so I’m going to have to get him into Larkin’s carseat. I’m pretty sure 15 or so minutes go by, along with at least 2 different cars per side parked next to us, so yes, if you’re keeping count at home, that was at least 4 moms/dads staring at the crazy lady in the backseat of her car with her clearly poor behaved son. I did not give anyone the finger…I’m putting that in the win column.

I finally physically get him to sit in Larkin’s carseat, but then he starts the inevitable backbend to keep from being buckled. Yes, this is exactly where everyone says, “my kid does that all the time, it’s terrible”. I challenge you to try to do this with a SIX year old who is at the 90^th percentile in growth for his age and is ridiculously strong and fit. However, in a battle of wills, I still win (for now), so I got him buckled. He’s crying, I’m about to start bawling, and then I realize the ridiculousness of my situation.

I’m in the back seat of the car…with the doors closed…and the child locks on…I can’t get the eff out. I closed my eyes for a second, mustered as much dignity as I could, and crawled over the console of my car into the driver’s seat…at this point, I had even more people staring. I smiled this time, put on my sunglasses, and took a really deep breath. I can only imagine the various retellings of my morning “Oh my God, at daycare this morning, this mom was totally crazy sucky at parenting, she couldn’t even get her kid in the car seat.”

I got myself together and drove off. Kellen cried a good bit of the way to his clinic while I tried to tell him soothing and calming things. As soon as I drove away from dropping him off, I fell into the ugly cry. I get home…Larkin forgot to close the upstairs gate…so Raven (the newest Great Dane) had gotten hold of Kellen’s overnight diaper and torn the thing up all over my bedroom floor…

I’m fine now. I wanted to crawl back under the covers and just sulk, but there’s just too much to do. Half an hour and a caramel macchiato later, I was returning to normal. Mom texted me to see how the morning went and clearly I couldn’t possibly recount the events via text. As I began to retell it, I found myself laughing at the ridiculousness that was my morning. I was okay. I was recovering. And by the time I picked up Kellen, he was of course totally fine and actually ended up having a great evening.   

Forget the fact that the internet went out in the afternoon (spent the afternoon at Starbucks working), that one dog went crazy for some unknown reason and the other dog chewed up something and we STILL have no idea what it was in its former life.

This is our life. This is our life with autism. It’s not easy, it’s not normal (well it’s normal for us but obviously not for most of you guys), but it is worth it. At the end of the day, we all got what we needed: Larkin had her field trip to the Dynamo Stadium (she said the locker room smelled like stinky armpits), Kellen made it to therapy, I managed to get out all of the necessary emails and come up with a pretty good first draft of the progress report, Patrick seems to have had a super productive day in Chicago, and we’re all still (mostly) sane.

We live to play another day (say it with a Cajun garbled accent, you get bonus points if you know the movie). On the bright side, our lives will never ever be boring...also Patrick comes home tomorrow so that helps.