Look Me in the Eye

John Elder Robison's memoir of his life with Asperger's examines his struggle and confusion about why he was like he was in a time time when no one was aware that such a syndrome existed. His inability to make friends, pick up on social nuances, or simply as the title suggests "look [someone] in the eye" troubled him greatly. Funny in parts, poignant in others, Look Me In the Eye is a front row seat to what it is like to grow up "different."

Robison spends a great deal of time in his childhood years telling numerous stories, where his fascination with machines and things that "blow up," made him quite the prankster. Alienated by his "strangeness," he grew inward; his interest in other things turn him into a creative genius, a young boy who read intently on anything he was interested in and absorbed it like a sponge.

One of his interest was electronic circuits, and his "savant like ability" led him eventually to a job with KISS, a premier band of the late 1970s and 1980s [for those blog readers who have no clue -- ]. For their lead guitarist, he designed guitars that would do special effects including shooting off smoke bombs or having running lights.

He also landed engineering jobs without a degree and could repair and work on any kind of car. Robison is brilliant, and his memoir, told with perspective and wit, a fun read.

Thanks to my friend and fellow blogger, Lori, for recommending this book to me after she read my review on House of Prayer No. 2.

:)

Lunch with the Formers

I love May and June. The optimism of summer's arrival which brings longer days, evenings that linger, and reasons to sit on the deck, but also for the many notices of graduations, not only of my friends’ children but also of former students.

When I was a teacher, June made me so happy for all of the reasons you can imagine; I loved the end of school -- time off from grading essays, preparing lessons, and herding students.

June. Awesome June. [I didn't like July as much -- too close to the month of August which meant back to school.]

God gave us June because He loves school teachers. :)

Since I am retired, June is just June, another month of the year --- and no one asks me anymore about how I will spend all my time off, since, well, since all my time is off.

*twirls*

In the last two years, the end of May and first of June is the time that former students get in contact with me. When I was still teaching, they would lurk and peer around my classroom door, stop by after the bell has rung [and sometimes during the school day -- ack!] telling me of their college experience [a time that I used to take the opportunity to ask them if they were well-prepared] or stop by to talk about their job, their travel, or what they had been doing.

Their coming back to see me, their high school teacher, seemed odd since I never entered the doors of my high school again after graduation. I guess I lived in a different time; it never occurred to me to go back to see Coach Hunter, Miss McKensive, Coach Rice, or Mrs. Perkins, some of my favorite teachers; just because they were my favorite teacher does not mean I was their favorite student.

Just sayin'.

In the past two weeks, I have seen four former students. All of them in interesting places in their young lives and making me proud that they will be contributors to society. All of them smart, focused, responsible, and motivated.

I remember where I was at their age, totally unlike them in most ways. Freshly graduated from college, I tried to avoid finding a job;in fact, what little attempt I did make then at job searching was not in the teaching field. I looked at every other kind of job but that -- banks, restaurants, newspapers, and I even interviewed to be an executive assistant at a garbage disposal company -- when I looked at all. I wanted to hang out with my friends, live off the folks, and eek out what I saw as my summer vacation for as long as possible.

God and my daddy had other plans for me, btw, but that is a blog for a different day.

Here are blurbs about the formers I saw recently:

Kristin and I met at Gabriel’s for lunch where she told me about her four years at the University of Oklahoma and her study abroad in Turkey. Brave girl – Oklahoma and Turkey are really far from home.

She landed a job at a company that has headquarters in Farmington, New Mexico, where she will be doing something with something. I say that because even though I know she will be a petroleum physicist, her job, in reality, seems pretty cerebral . I asked her about her favorite class in college, and she said that she really enjoyed Rock Properties [is that capitalized?]

I "Googled" Farmington to see where she would be living --- the city itself is only a little over a hundred years old but sits near some serious mines. Must be why the company she’ll work for picked that particular place to house its employees and staff.

Kristin: Ya think, Mrs. G.?

:)

The next weekend, I met Mary and Emily at Chick-Fil- A. They don’t come in a pair, but we seem to try to get together when the three of us can. Mary’s looking for a teaching job –

bless her—

*swings amulets around*

and Emily’s working an internship. Interning? Working?

Since Emily’s majoring in business and journalism, her internship is some kind of combo of that. She's working for an author whose writing thrust is, for me, and apparently Mary and Emily, a new fiction genre. Have you ever heard of Urban Fiction?

Later when I was telling my husband about it, I called it Gritty City Romance. Then I said, no it might be Gangsta Chick Lit.

I finally emailed Emily to get the right name. Emily also told me that her writer she is interning with wishes to write Intellectual Romance.

Intellectual Romance? Is that possible?

*scratches head*

*shrugs*

This past weekend I saw Shelley, who lives in the city [I guess Emily can recommend some books for her to read], and I headed to see her urban roost, a fabulous renovated apartment in Atlanta’s old Girls’ High School.

When I was in high school, we played competition sports against this school, but by then, the school was coed and called Roosevelt High School.

Shelley just completed her first year as a “grown up” in the bio-medical field, and I am sure that what she does is interesting. I only recognized a few words from her work vocabulary: office politics, engineer, lunch, and crying all the way home. Otherwise, she slid into some serious geek jargon, the kind heard around the dinner table with my own nieces and nephews at Christmas.

Shelley and I went to eat at The Matador Cantina in Glenwood.

Our waitress sported a few piercings and some body art, not that there is anything wrong with that, but from the beginning, she seemed a little revved as she slung chips on the table, ably poured ice out of a pitcher that rung Shelley’s straw like a hoop, and didn’t use one correct verb tense the whole time she waited on us.

I tried to calm her down by asking her what she thought about Shelley’s having lunch with her high school English teacher, me.

Wrong Verbs Waitress eyeballed us: [after a pretty long pause as if she were looking for the Candid Camera] Uh, I think that’s really weird. Like totally weird.

Shelley and I both laughed and agreed that it was not typical, while I secretly thought that Wrong Verbs Waitress could have benefited from a relationship with a good English teacher.

So, that's what I've been doing here lately. I've been out to lunch with the formers. Eh, it's better than hanging with reformers, transformers, or ex-cons.

Slightly better. :)

Enjoy the pictures I took at Shelley's place. :)

Snow Flower and The Secret Fan

After reading Snow Flower and The Secret Fan by Lisa See, I am just happy to be an American woman living in this century.

:)

Set in nineteenth century China, the novel begins with the main character reminiscing about her past. Lily, now eighty plus years old and having outlived almost all her children and some grand-children, recounts the early years of her life and marriage and her relationship with Snow Flower, a girl her age whom she was paired with to be her laotong [a kind of emotional relationship that lasted lifetimes].

Wives and daughters lived almost in total seclusion, where they painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, told stories, waited for their arranged marriages, and generally suffered together. When it comes to suffering, these Chinese women have an edge --- the graphic description of the process of foot binding had me skimming pages. Brutal. Agonizing.

What were they thinking?

The story was an interesting one -- and one of the most interesting facets of this culture highlighted by See was the fact that most of the women were illiterate, and to counter that, they invented their own language -- nu shu [women's writing] to communicate with one another ... a language that they passed between them [and under the noses of men] through their embroidered items.

See's power is in her storytelling and language. She brings an age, long past, alive and the women characters she created seem real.

I Thought I Saw A Movie Star! I did! I did!

As David and I sat in Grapes and Beans [our favorite restaurant near our mountain house], two fit young men came in and placed an order at the counter.

David: You know who that is?

I had my back to the counter.

I turned around and glanced. He looked familiar.

Me: No.

David: It's that actor.

Me: What actor?

David: Turn around again and look closely. You'll know.

And sure enough, I turned around, and there was that actor.

Me: Yeah, he was on that show we used to watch and his name was....

David: Private Practice.

Me: Yes, he played that character...

David: He was the receptionist. His wife got killed in the meth lab...

Me: And, he was in that movie we watched last night.

David: He was?

Me: Yes. He was in that short scene when George Clooney called to get his messages.

David: I don't remember that.

Me: That's because there was no car chase, nobody getting shot, or anything blowing up.

David: I still don't remember it.

Me: Up in the Air. That's the movie.

David: We watched it?

Me: Yes.

These are the kinds of conversations we have ... it's called a good marriage.

*snicker*

How weird was it that we [I] just watched that movie on DVD the night before -- and the next day we run into an actor who had a role?

Wait.

How often do I run into a movie actor at all?

*counts on fingers*

Does it count if I went on purpose to see Steve Burton? Paid money?

One? Two? Does Joe Namath count?

I mean, how random is it to run in to one in a little restaurant in a little town in the north Georgia mountains?

*scratches head*

As David and I were leaving Grapes and Beans, we stopped by his table and told him that we recognized him from Private Practice.

He stood up and introduced himself: "Hi, I'm Chris."

{We totally didn't know his real name or his character name in either thing we had seen him in. We are such losers, that way. LOL }

We told him that we had enjoyed his role on Private Practice when we watched, but that frankly we hadn't watched the show since Violet rejected her baby and Addison had made too many rounds at her own practice, so to speak.

He laughed.

I said, "I heard your character was killed off." {read it on the Internet somewhere}

He said, "I asked to be killed off. I want to go to New York and do theater."

Me: Don't blame you. Hollywood is so..

Chris: Yeah. It ain't all that.

I then told him that we had watched Up in the Air the night before.

He said, "How did you like it?"

Me: I liked it, but it was so slow starting. I thought it was an interesting commentary on relationships, but by the end, I felt like I had a PHD in airport.

He laughed again and thanked us for noticing him.

David: Good luck in New York.

It wasn't until we were half way down the road before we remembered his name on Private Practice.

And yes, he's better looking in person. His name is Chris Lowell, and in addition to his "pretty-ness," he has a lovely voice. Really lovely.

*wink, wink*

:)

Sweet Dreams, Keats.

Dear Keats,

You know how much we loved you, and we thank you for the joy and the love that you brought us.

When we "rescued" you, you were eight months old, and a kind person, who already had too many cats, had brought you to Dr. Best in hopes of finding you a home. It was Christmas time, and my family was in town. My niece Nora and I went to see you, and we both approved of you and noted that you were such a "sweet kitty." You were sleek and long and feisty. When our hands came near you to pet you, you were already pre-purring. :)

We decided to adopt you.

When David brought you home, you lay on the dash of his car, purring and happy to be out of the cage at the vet. We were amazed at the immediate happiness you brought us. Kitty Moose, who was 14 years old, had died two weeks before, and we had a hole in our hearts; we needed you to love - and you gave us that love and more.


You came to us and you called us home. The first night here -- we showed you around -- you looked, but then you purred a greeting, raised your tail with its crooked little tip, and went back and forth between us till you were worn out. You chased a feather duster, your favorite toy, and then you sought out a lap. Later that night, you curled at the foot of the bed, as if you had always laid there, and then during the night, you moved up between us and snuggled in tight.

We named you Miss Keats [shortened to Keats and made other folks think you were a boy], and then you answered to every variation: Baby Keats, Keater, Keats Keats, Keatee, the Keaster.

You held our heart in your paws and then trained us to be perfect for you. You knew you had us --- and you did.

You liked to be fed at 4 in the morning. You liked that time, so you sat on the floor by our bed and let out your signature meow.

Feed me. Now. Purr.

You liked to drink from of our drinking glasses, your head, ears squeezed down in them before we could catch you.

But, you liked your water best from the bathroom tap. If we went in the bathroom, you had to have water -- and you used the sink, the shower, or the tub to get it. You would sit by the sink and wait, and when we turned the corner to the bathroom, you would cock your head and meow.

You hated thunderstorms. Loud noises. Motorcycles.

You hated most other cats.
[Tallulah was okay, but not a favorite as you hissed and swattered at her when she was little, then you began to tolerate her better.]

You loathed the ones who dared to come on the deck or the porch. Loathed. You hissed at them, howled at them through the window or door, and puffed up like a blow fish over their trespassing.

You hated Stumpy and Lumpy, the cats across the street who taunted you with their outside freedom.

You loved an open window. An open front or back door. You loved a full view.


You loved the deck. The screen porch at the mountains. The basement with its nooks and cranies. You would return from the basement with cobwebs on your nose, whiskers, and tail.

*sigh*

You rode back and forth to the mountain house in the car with us like a dog, sitting on the console like a princess and watching the road.

Then after you tired of that, you napped.

I'll never forget the first ride to the mountains with us; you curled up in my lap and slept, your warmth and heat so comforting -- you had been adopted by us less than a week.



You like to get under the covers. You loved an afghan A fire. A good brush. The ottoman. The heated laundry from the dryer.



You loved food, especially canned, and the sound of one opening would raise you from your reverie and bring you flying into the kitchen with your tail up.

You loved a warm lap. You loved your ears and neck rubbed. You loved watching birds or chipmunks. You loved chewing on the plants on the porch.

You loved to curl up and sleep next to us, your back or your paws against us in trust. You wished to be near us, against us, and with us.

You didn't like strangers.

You hated to see our friends come over to visit, but you loved to see our friends leave. When we had company, you hid or eyeballed them suspiciously and let them know that they were "sitting on [your] sofa."

You didn't like for me to grade papers. When I sat at the table to do it, you swatted at my red pen or lay full length across them. I didn't like to grade them either. :)

You didn't like my nephew, Andrew or Sarah, my former student, who took care of you when we went on vacations. You would meet him or her at the stairs, see who it was, and then take off and hide under the bed. You hissed at Dr. Jim.

But one time, you let Sarah [pictured below] see that you were the best cat, but only if you know, we weren't out of town.


But you loved us. We loved you.

We thank you for that unconditional love [based on tap water and food, but, you know, we were at your service]. You never failed to greet us when we came home. You never failed us as a pet.

You, my precious Keats, blessed us. We will miss you so.

Thank you for giving us all that... thank you for being our cat. Our baby Keats.

Sweet Dreams, Keats. We hope you have the sweetest of dreams.

Keats
December 2004 - May 26, 2011

ETA: I wrote this yesterday when I knew her death was imminent. Thank you to all of my friends who have been so kind and understanding.

Zeitoun

Zeitoun is the last name of the main character in Dave Eggers' non-fiction novel [?] about one man's journey and survival during the days after Katrina ravaged New Orleans in September of 2005. Eggers notes that "this book does not attempt to be an all-encompassing book about New Orleans or Hurricane Katrina. It is only an account of one family's experiences before and after the storm."

Kathy and Abdulrahman Zeitoun [pronounced "zay-toon"] own their own painting and contractor business in New Orleans. When word came to evacuate with the approaching storm, much to Kathy's dismay, her husband Abdulrahman decided to stay in the city to wait out the storm and see to their business as well as to protect their home and rental property.

Kathy packed up their van and their four children and fled to Baton Rouge and later to Phoenix, Arizona, all the while concerned about her separation from her husband. The trauma and stress that both of them suffered during this separation has had lasting effects on their health and sense of security.

Abdulrahman's story is an ugly one, and in his story, no one looks worse than the military of the United States and the local law enforcement.

There were moments when I hesitated as to whether I would finish this book. I reminded myself that this was "Zeitoun's story" and not the only story of those chaos filled days of lawlessness and bad human behavior in a town torn apart by a natural disaster.

ETA: Thank you, my friends and readers, for all of your kind comments about Keats. :(

A Prayer for Keats

As many of my close friends and blog readers know, my cat Keats is gravely ill.

The infection that set into her system in February has forty syllables, and even when the vet explains it to me, I don't get it.

David has taken her several times for check ups, and both the vet and he believe that any day now, any day now, Keats will turn that corner and head back to health.

It's been four months, and she has made little progress if any. Mostly, she seems to have faded.

David has been the best caretaker. He wets soft rags and bathes her fur, which she thanks him with a gravely purr. He gives her antibiotics three times a day; she thanks him by choking 'em down but sometimes throwing them back up. After all, she is a cat -- and they no likey medicine.

David gives her treats, opens cans of tuna or small, glass jars of chicken flavored baby food and tries to tempt her to eat. Sometimes she eats, but it is never much, and we're afraid, it will not sustain her.

Keats is ill. Gravely ill, and David and I each night say prayers for her.

"Lord, you know our heart and how we love our cat. If it be Your will, heal her."

*sigh*

Keats loves to eat -- she used to beg by her bowl, beg any time a can of any kind was opened in the kitchen, and beg at all hours of the night -- where she'd stand by our bed and let out this wail of hunger and lead us to her bowl.

She used to love to sit at the door and look outside.

Now, she lies prostrate and weak on old towels laid on beds and chairs for her and takes every opportunity to hide in closets, under beds, or behind the television where she licks and licks and licks her open wounds.

Our cat, we used to know is gone, and in her place is very sick Keats.

"Lord, you know...."

Both of our cats are indoor cats. We made a commitment to them when we adopted them that we would love and care for them as long as they live. If something happens to David and me before Tallulah and Keats have gone to Kitty Heaven, I know that someone who loved us would take "our girls."

"...our hearts love this cat..."

In the evenings, we take the cats to our back deck, which sits up two stories, and if we keep our eyes on them, they sort of know the rules of the space -- well, the way in which all cats know rules -- when you ain't looking and sometimes when you are, they break them.

If they start for the steps, we stand up, and they skedaddle back to the side that is allowed. We have them trained; well, we have them sort of trained. If they break the rules, they know it's back inside.

"..if it be YOUR will"

They love the brief respite outside where the many feeders attract birds to flutter around. Sometimes the birds land too close to the cats, but so far, the birds are winners as neither cat has gotten her paws on one of the feathered ones, but they love to try.

They mostly watch the birds, but they also sip from the bird bath [must taste like birds], perk their ears this way and that to the outside noises [especially the sound of stirring in the grass and bushes -- chipmunks, stupid squirrels, or Stumpy and Lumpy from across the street], and sit or lie placidly on the railing.

I like for Keats to sit in the sun, her wounds exposed to its hopefully healing heat.

"...heal her."

But on Wednesday as I sat on the deck, my sweet Keats moved on the railing and fell sideways, awkwardly, and horribly to the ground.

Thud.

I heard her hit the ground below the ducia, and my heart fell. I rushed to get her, and when I found her, she sat there, stunned, with bird seed and leaves sticking to her fur and wounds.

From the porch behind us, our neighbors asked, "What happened? Is she okay?"
I replied shakily, "I don't know. I don't know."

I picked her up, ran up the deck stairs, and hurried Tallulah inside as I brought Keats to where I could see her. She looked at me with wide pupils. We were both shaken.

I cried.

and I thought: That's it. I let her fall, and now in her weakened condition, she'll die. It's my fault.

Today, she's still weak, fragile --- and alive. She ate a little tuna, offered to her on a teaspoon.

The fall didn't kill her, and if the infection does, it is yet to be known.

Only God knows that and He knows our heart.

That's one of my many prayers these days -- a prayer for Keats.