7 month mystery

Let me tell you what I most love about sharing these Picture Talks. They help us understand how much of the world someone with autism takes in, even if they don’t have the language skills to tell you. All experiences are imported like a computer, scanned and perfectly preserved. But once that information arrives in the mind, portions get twisted and turned and routed to the wrong file folder. Experiences that should be stored under “Inconvenient,” get filed in the emergency category. I’m sure there have been times when Max, unable to communicate the urgency of his situation, wondered why the rest of us were acting so callously. And we wondered about his behavior.

It happened when Max was 10. Max had been agitated for months, crying hysterically before each visit with his dad. Sometimes his tears would begin a week before a visit. My initial response was to provide comfort. But after a few hours of anguished cries, comfort turned to questions – “Did something bad happen at dad’s house?” “Was someone mean to you?” “Tell me what happened, Max?” I would demand.

Max tried to give me the answer. On several occasions he pulled me outside to the driveway and asked me to say, “Oh Bulls Eye,” and, “I’ll see you in a couple of days.” I’d cooperate, and stand there scratching my brain.

The crying started at Christmas and went on for 7 months. I brought in specialists. Nothing helped.

Finally one afternoon as we stood in the front yard, Max said, “I need pictures of the pizza crust.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. I certainly didn’t think it had anything to do with his struggle to visit his dad. But my son is a very smart boy. I grabbed paper and a pen and we sat on the couch together.

Max began telling me about riding in the car with his dad, to our house, to pick up pizza crust. As I was writing and drawing pictures of everything Max was saying, I suddenly got it. I knew what he was talking about! I remembered too.

Max is on a special diet so he brings all his own food on visits with his dad. But on this occasion, I didn’t have all of his food ready. So Max and his dad came back in the middle of their Christmas visit to pick up the pizza crusts. When they drove in the driveway I could see Max sobbing and screaming in the back seat. I opened his car door and tried to give him a hug, but it only upset him more. So I pointed to his new toy, “Bulls Eye.” I reassured him that I’d see him in a couple of days. And then the two of them drove back to his father’s house. I didn’t think much about it, except that I couldn’t understand why Max was crying so hard – he always lit up when he saw me.

Now, here we were 7 months later sitting on the couch as Max dictated his memory and I recorded it on paper. When we finished our Picture Talk, Max grabbed the page and studied it as if he’d just uncovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was smiling. His eyes were wide and darting across the page. “It’s the pizza crust! It’s the pizza crust!” he kept repeating. “Max,” I asked cautiously. “Is this why you’ve been upset about going to dad’s house?” “Yes,” he gasped.

Max’s dad came a few days later to pick up Max for a visit. Max held this Picture Talk in his hand and waved it to his dad. Max ran with full throttle excitement and jumped into his car. No tears. Not even a whimper. Max showed the Picture Talk to his father as if to say, “Look! This has been in my emergency folder!”

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