Home Away From Home
Why my autistic children don't live with me.
by Kent Miller
January 15, 2009
I've left Austin with my parents and am running up to my favorite place in the world. No, it's not the Taj Mahal, nor the East Village, nor the Grand Canyon at sunrise, but a nondescript home in a beige exurb. I knock, and Fe, who runs the home, lets me in. Hellos/thank yous. I proffer a box of chocolates, a small token of esteem, when suddenly I hear the footsteps.
I can hear him even before I see him, the quick breaths, his bare feet slapping out a rapid beat as he dashes down the cream-carpeted hall, and now here comes Ethan! Ethan! Where are you running pell-mell?
He's a tall ten-year-old but still as cute as ever, with wide eyes and a mouth like an O. He's just shot out of the hall and into Chloe's room. He doesn't have time for me. He has important stuff to do. He's on a mission. In his tiny brown hand he clutches something as precious as any gem from King Solomon's mines.
Ethan doesn't have time for me. He's on a mission.
As he runs he syncopates up and down, up and down, with a rapid ska-like beat. I chase him into Chloe's room, where he's next to his big sister's bed, springing off the balls of his feet to heaven. He's so excited he's hyperventilating, so that when he says the only word he knows, it comes rushing out, short and quick but most of all, excited: "OohOohOoh!" Then he opens his palm and rests his treasure on Chloe's Disney Princesses bedspread. It's a small, smooth rock. The sort of decorative rock you seen in an aquarium. Moss green.
Then he turns and dashes off. He hasn't even noticed me. But that's okay, he's doing his thing, and anyway, now Chloe, thirteen, throws back her covers and, as she does on each visit, stares at me. She's uncomprehending at first, but then, by sure degrees, her expression changes from confusion to dawning awareness and then she suddenly remembers me.
Her face lights up like it's the first day of the world. She squeals and laughs — for she has no more words than her little brother — and throws her arms around me and holds me tight. As always, I think, This is the most amazing hug I've had in my entire life!
And all of a sudden it's all worth it — the therapies, the struggles, the ominous words from people in white coats, because Chloe is laughing in my ear. Not any ordinary laugh, but a laugh that's beautiful, melodic, like something you heard when you were a little kid and it was spring and the world was green and buzzing with life and . . .
Ethan and Chloe are both autistic. And now, because of this nondescript place, this palatial tract home, they're safe and clean and well cared for. Every time I visit and see Fe and Marcie and the others, the clean rooms, the gleaming kitchen, I feel so, so thankful.
It's sad leaving them, but I know the sight of Austin will lift my spirits. He's their big brother, an irrepressible bundle of teen angst and joy, and he needs me very much. He has autism too, only it's the high-functioning kind: Asperger's. He's as brilliant as they are delayed.
For the rest of their lives, Chloe and Ethan will need help each time they go to the bathroom and they will never be able to go out alone. Such is the peculiar nature of their disabilities that Ethan will run heedless into traffic and Chloe will take all her clothes off and dance on a roof thirty feet off the ground — all of which means that neither their mother nor I can assure their safety anymore. So three years ago, when Ethan was seven and Chloe was ten, we placed them in a home, where Ellen catches Ethan when he starts running at four a.m., and Fe carefully washes and braids Chloe's hair. The staff there feeds them, and puts them on their school buses, and makes sure they are safe and cared for twenty-four hours a day.
©2009 Kent Miller and Babble
About the Author
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Kent Miller is completing a memoir about having three autistic children. His articles have appeared in MSN.com, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The San Francisco Chronicle and The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. |
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