I Am in Here (11 page)

With Gale and Charles near Yellowstone

  
Currents
  

Oh mighty ocean!

Always in motion.

Nothing can compare

To something so rare.

Maybe I will find a shell.

What stories it could tell.

(age 8)

To me the ocean is a mysterious place. The ocean is calming and exciting all in one. As I look into the horizon, I feel like I am looking into the future which is limitless. The ocean is a place to relax, think, and reflect
.

E
ver since I was a little girl, I have been amazed by—or, perhaps more accurately, obsessed with—the story of Helen Keller. So when I was a junior at Harvard, a one-sentence advertisement in the student newspaper seemed to be calling out to me: “Volunteer readers for the blind.” I dialed the number.

“Hi! I understand that you are looking for volunteer readers?”

“Yes, we are. Do you happen to know Greek?”

“No, sorry, I only know a little Spanish,” I replied, a bit disappointed that my calling was so short-lived.

“Oh, no. I didn't mean
Greek
, Greek. I meant all those letters in physics equations. We have a freshman physics major who needs a reader.”

“Hey, that's a different story! I've taken enough physics to read equations.”

And that began my love affair with Peter, a brilliant blind student. It wasn't an affair in the modern sense of the word but a passionate, innocent attachment which, unfortunately, was only brief.

As a freshman, Peter lived in “The Yard,” the bucolic central green on campus, and I, as an upperclassman, lived in a “House” near the Charles River. Soon after meeting Peter, I started bumping into him fairly frequently, often sneaking up behind him and taking his arm in mine. Peter would say, “Boy, it's funny how we run into each other so much.” He didn't know that I always looked for the movement of his walking stick tap, tap, tapping
back and forth as he was coming and going to classes. In my daily grind studying computer science and working three jobs, Peter's sunny countenance was a refuge.

Several times each week we would get together so that I could read whatever the university was not able to get in Braille. There were a lot of Greek symbols in his physics assignments, and he would often catch my mistake in the midst of some lengthy problem where I got lost. “Didn't you mean gamma, not alpha?” he would query, and we would both laugh. He could hear better than I could see.

In many ways, Elizabeth reminds me of Peter—each is smarter than I am, and each senses the world differently, almost with a sixth sense. And even more, each of them love music, walks in the rain, and flying down a path on the back of a tandem bike or a horse.

  
Running Free
  

Halt, trot, run, to name a few

Of all the things I like to do

Riding has to top the list

Sitting up high I can't resist

Enjoying the outside world

Seeing things from atop a beautiful creature.

I like riding horses. They are very sensitive animals. They seem to know how you feel. I was very lucky to have a nice horse because I jumped off it and it didn't kick me
.

As the months rolled on, Peter told me how he lost his eyesight to a rare cancer when he was a toddler. He told me the story with no self-pity or anger. He had developed his other senses to make up for it. He had perfect pitch and was a member of the highly selective Harvard Glee Club. Peter reminded me of Helen Keller, who was known to “listen” to trees.

Helen Keller's story means more to me now than ever. Her mother, Kate Adams Keller, is a model of relentless parenting. Family members urged her to put Helen in an asylum, but she refused. This was in the 1880s, so she had no internet support groups to lean on. Mrs. Keller traveled around the country searching for a way into her daughter's world. From her home in Tuscumbia, Alabama, she managed to get the attention of the esteemed Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and a former teacher of the deaf.

After warmly receiving Helen, Dr. Bell suggested that Mrs. Keller write to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Massachusetts. It was at Perkins that Helen met Anne Sullivan, who became her teacher for life. Helen later wrote, “The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my Teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”

Now, some say that these kinds of connections are just luck. I don't believe that. I believe that when we are relentless parents, with open hearts, providential connections happen for our children. Elizabeth's longtime aide, Terri, is to Elizabeth what Anne was to Helen.

To get back to Helen and listening to trees: Dr. Bell also became Helen's lifelong friend. They would go for walks in the woods, and Helen would listen to the trees with her senses of smell and touch. Dr. Bell was adept at finger spelling, so he and Helen could chat during their long walks.

Both Helen and my friend Peter were How People, and they both loved nature. In her book
The World I Live In
, Helen wrote, “The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. Nor yet does mere knowledge create beauty. Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those who love her.”
[1]

  
Whales
  

Listen to the whale song

Because it doesn't last long.

Beautiful but sad too,

Your emotions know what to do.

Should I cry? Should I smile?

I'll just have to think on that awhile.

Animals are amazing to watch. A favorite of mine are dolphins. I find that they and whales are very intelligent. The noises they make to communicate are fascinating and a little sad at the same time
.

In the middle of my friend Peter's sophomore year, the cancer that took his eyesight returned. After numerous surgeries and treatments, Peter said that he'd had enough and that he was at peace with letting nature take its course. Peter was supposed to play the organ at my wedding but died three days before the event. As I held his corsage in my hand, I knew he was there in spirit.

Peter's life was so brief, but it had such an impact on me. I wanted to make sure I honored his memory by continuing to read for the blind. After moving back to my hometown after graduation, I called our county office for social services. They told me a blind, single mother had been persistently calling them for a reader. Little did I know how much this young mother would teach me about being relentless.

With a name and address in hand, I drove a couple of towns over to meet Kathy and her two small children. Kathy's piledup mail was waiting for me. We quickly got into a rhythm of knowing what needed to be read and filled out or filed and what could be thrown away. I balanced her checkbook, and we agreed to meet the following week.

Week after week, month after month, we read mail and did paperwork, and our friendship grew. I learned that Kathy is a fighter in the best sense of the word. Despite her own health problems, she fought to get the right medical care for her children. She fought to keep her house when her divorce got ugly. She fought to earn a two-year college degree. She fought for special educational services for her kids. I helped as much as I could with each of these battles, learning from her determination with each step.

Kathy is a How Person.

Twenty-five years later, I still read for Kathy and still stay in touch with Peter's mother, Betty.

Kathy has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is fighting it with her usual grace and determination. She doesn't complain about the chemotherapy. She just wants to be there when her daughter graduates from college in the spring.

Over the years I have sent Elizabeth's poems to Betty, and I hope in some small way they have brought her some comfort
and joy. Betty is a gardener and has always enjoyed Elizabeth's nature poems. Peter was her only child, and she loved him in a way I can now only begin to understand. When Peter was with us, he soared, and today he has wings.

  
Wings
  

On a sunny day

The birds play

Kites fly

In the sky.

Why can't I?

I want to fly. I want wings. I want to soar high, go places.

In his book
Nature
, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.”
[2]
Such a child was Peter, and so too is Elizabeth.

  
Colorful World
  

If I were a flower which one would I be?

There are so many choices, you see.

Maybe a sunflower

As high as a tower.

I might be a rose

With a regal pose.

What about a daisy?

Is that too crazy?

I think I would be a lily

Pretty and frilly.

Nature reminds me of people. Mimi is a sunflower, tall and bright. Terri is a rose, small and special. My mom is a daisy, beautiful and fun. I am a lily, pretty, frilly, and silly
.

I've often wondered why nature is so important to Elizabeth, even more so than to most children. I've come to believe it's because nature provides an antidote to the sensory overload that is so prevalent in our culture and so difficult for children with autism. Under the best of circumstances, Elizabeth experiences the world in a way that can be simply overwhelming. Sights, sounds, smells, colors—she experiences all of these to an unusually intense degree. For those of us whose senses have become hardened to the blaring cacophony of the modern world, with its steady diet of car horns, neon lights, television commercials, and near-constant background music, it's difficult to
train ourselves to understand how overwhelming our world truly is for those with autism.

  
Chicago
  

The city is a crowded place

With things crammed into a small space.

Activity here and there.

Sometimes I think it's just not fair

To expect me to take it all in.

Chicago is a big city. It is full of things to see and hear. I often become overcome in this kind of place. It is exciting and exhausting at the same time
.

I believe Peter would have understood Elizabeth. As a result of his blindness, Peter's other senses were acute and highly attuned to the world around him. I know his love of nature was due at least in part to the respite it provided from the sensory overload of life in bustling Cambridge. Although nature is scarcely silent, its sounds and rhythms are much more closely aligned with the natural rhythms of our bodies. When Elizabeth is besieged by the noise of the world around her, we often retreat to the woods surrounding our home, where we take long walks that seem to calm her spirit.

Our favorite walks are in the rain. The rain's gentle footfall on the trees provides a steady patter while the birds and crickets serenade us with their glorious melodies. I believe this is God's design. It's a reminder that we haven't been haphazardly discarded in this world, left on our own to fend for ourselves. We
are not alone. We have not been forgotten. We are surrounded and sustained by a love incomprehensible in its magnitude yet so simple a child can glimpse its wonder in the tiniest raindrop. The poet William Wordsworth understood this well when he said the smallest flower could bring for him thoughts that lie too deep for tears. Elizabeth understands too.

  
Rain
  

Oh my, how the rain comes down.

Pounding, pounding to the ground.

Some of you might frown

But to me it is profound.

Weather-wise, rain is my favorite type. The flowers seem to sigh with relief. Everything sparkles and shines. The rain lightly touches and tickles my skin. I like nature. It makes me realize that the world is beautiful. I forget my autism
.

Of the many lessons I've learned from Elizabeth, this is one of the most powerful: the world is indeed beautiful. But it's more than beautiful. It's a love note from God. When conference calls, doctors' appointments, and meetings with school officials threaten to pull me under, I am drawn to the steady call of nature, which takes me back to the Source of all that sustains me and lets me know that the rain falling in my life now will bring forth flowers in this world and the world to come.

“Deep calls to deep,” as the psalmist once said.