The Sorority

THE SORORITY



I AM IN A SORORITY NOT OF MY CHOOSING. We all are, my sisters and me, watching our not-children children, and wanting likewise to bang our own heads against the walls, bite our own arms until we bleed, and pull our own hair out at the roots, if only it would make them stop, and pull them from their twilight husks.

Most of us never knew about the sorority until we were chosen, blindly and randomly. The membership is lifelong and irrevocable. All races, creeds and colors are accepted. Once you are in, you are in, forever. There is never any danger of being thrown out or losing privileges, and you are not prohibited from joining any other clubs, societies, or professional associations, although joining a play-group, pre-school or church will be impossible.

It’s free to join, if you don’t mind the sacrifice of your child, and once you do join it should be noted that if you are fortunate every hour and every penny that you can afford will be spent obtaining appropriate treatment for your child. You will go without, and your other children will get almost nothing. There will not be many birthday party invitations, save those extended by the brave or guilt- ridden.

The words that chose one are these: “Your child has P.D.D. - Pervasive Developmental Disorder. Your child is Austistic.” The words are spoken matter- of -factly by a person with proof of their education strung out in capital letters at the end of their name, who goes home at the end of the day and washes you and your problem off, business as usual.

The newly minted member stares at nothing, numbly, behind tears she doesn’t notice, chokes back the taste of bile and a primal howl that only a mother knows, and looks for her breath beneath whatever has died on her chest.


She puts her child on her hip, pays the bill, says “thank you”, and goes to the market with her new Autistic child, business as usual. She is no wiser for the information, simply destroyed from the inside out, her heart broken once and for all, something she thought would be done by a husband or lover or parent or sibling, but never by this child.

2 YEARS BEFORE

I went to the market with two beautiful and perfect babies in tow on the outside and my youngest still aboard inside. We shopped wantonly, as was out habit, filling our buggy with what whet our appetites and tickled our fancies; balloons, as usual, festooning our booty.

And then I saw one of those things that none of us want to see, ever. The things which give us selective vision and hearing, letting us avoid the knowledge that they exist. The things that, were they actually present in our lives, would crumble us, we believe.


In an otherwise unremarkable checkout line in the nice supermarket in the good part of suburbia was a fifty- year- old woman, no wedding tack on board, with her adolescent son who was flailing his arms and grunting and howling and drooling and being stared at. She held him until he was calm - it was of no moment to her. She had done it before and would do it again, forever, until she is no more. She spoke to him quietly, and with love. I did not understand how.

Involuntarily I made the sign of the cross and stepped back, trying not to stare, but with the same success usually reserved for car wrecks. What was the difference, after all? My clan was safe and still moving at a good clip, while hers was bloodied, injured, and interrupted. I, of course, knew nothing.

I felt bad for them, but worse for myself. While they had surely done something to deserve this, and were probably used to it, I was now petrified that I might also receive some kind of cosmic payback, without first being given the chance to repent and escape injury. Surely the Piper gives you a chance to pay before dancing away with your child?

All that I had ever done up to that point was live my life exactly as I wanted, and someone always showed up to trap the rats and take them away, as needed. It was merely a reward for my spontaneity, creativity, fashion sense, unerring ability to blindly choose the most expensive item in any retail establishment, sense of humor, profound intellect, and last but surely not least, my savage tongue, which has always spit the necessary words to reduce someone else to rubble, as needed. Surely these marvelous qualities would continue to act as protection from things unpredictable, unpleasant, and bad.

We walked fast and stiff legged out of the grocery store and hopped in the giant Suburban, a vehicle large enough to keep a family safe from anything, and retreated from fearful things, to home and the security of a full larder. I was happy to be left untouched by the larger iniquities of life, knowing they couldn’t get me if I didn’t look them in the eye. And besides, no Piper, Pied or otherwise, had ever knocked at my door. At least not when I was home.


NOTE: May 2002 At three-and-a half my child, who up until that point had never said "Mommy", or anything else, other then NOOOOOOOOO!!! began an intensive 40 hour a week Autism intervention program in our home. Within 6 weeks there were remarkable changes, most noteworthy that he would call "MAMA" when he wanted me. At four-and-a-half he was enrolled in a Montessori pre-school and accompanied by his Therapist. He turned six three months into Kindergarten at our neighborhood public school, in a regular classroom, and just finished out the year. Because we were able to get the appropriate treatment he was indistinguishable from his classmates, with the exception that he helped the teacher teach the unit on Dinosaurs and Nature, because he can read and say words like "Struthiomimus, Barionyx, and of course Eustreptospondylus. His reading skills are at least a year more advanced than his age, and he is a warm, witty, caring, humorous, and engaging, all the things we are told by the media, doctors and special education professionals not to expect from our Children with Autism.

For some reason, in the past ten years the occurrance of Autism has risen from 1/10,000 births to 1/500. There are viable theories that include genetic prdisposition and vaccine damage, notably the MMR vaccine, which is 3 live viruses at once, a big hit for the immune system, and also the thimerisol (mercury) used to preserve the vaccines. There is no definitive, universally accepted cause, but there is a universally accepted therapy, which is behavior modification based on the works of Ivar Lovaas of U.C.L.A., and of course B.F. Skinner. Most public school systems do not offer appropriate therapy for their Special Education Children with Autism, regardless of the federal mandte to "Provide a Free and Appropriate Public Education..."

A diagnosis of Autism, and many other disorders on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is not necessarily a guarantee that the affected child is lost, and does not have to be a sorrowful event for the parents and other family members of that child.

I got my child back, and studies show that if APPROPRIATE intervention is launched at the right time (the earlier the better) 75% of these lost kids can be retrieved and become indistinguishable from their peers.

If you have a child on the Autism Spectrum, suspect you might, or know somebody who does, it is urgent that that child gets proper diagnosis and treatment, which should not be left in the hands of the special education department of the school system.

If you know someone who is in this situation and is not getting the information or support they need please feel free to give them my e-mail address: [e-mail]

THE END

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