Autism Vox

Charlie on the Hackensack

by Kristina Chew, PhD on October 7th, 2007

I had a big project to finish for my job and Jim took Charlie on a Riverkeepers tour in the New Jersey Meadowlands: At 12 noon, they boarded a pontoon boat and, with the Captain providing a steady narration about evil developers and looming landfills, went up and down the Hackensack River. Jim interjected with a few questions and agreed with the Captain that no one in Hudson County takes an interest in nature, not that there isn’t plenty of it, from the phragmites reeds the boat pushed past to the many birds, as varied as the ethnicities of Jersey City’s population: People do tend to think more of the garbage and car part dumpyards and the smokestacks that I pass everyday on my way into Jersey City via the Pulaski Skyway (”one of the most notorious and dangerous roads in New Jersey“).

Charlie gladly took his seat, dozed off a bit (but not so long as the older woman who slept for most of the trip—-something about being in a boat on a warm October afternoon), and enjoyed being on the water (and asked for the car at the halfway point). He insisted on getting McDonald’s when he and Jim got back on the Garden State Parkway. (You can bring the boy to the Hackensack but you can’t take need to get his Golden Arches fix out of him.) They came home triumphant, or maybe they both just had that glow from being in the sun……..and went out soon for a bike ride, Charlie calling out “glasses! helmet on! this way!”

Just over two years ago, the three of us took the same Riverkeepers tour—I wrote about it on one of my first posts on my original blog, My Son Has Autism. Those were different days: Charlie needed a chew tube to keep him occupied on the trip, Charlie’s and all of our lives were in an unsettled state because Charlie was not faring well in his public school classroom in the town we used to live: He had just started summer school, and I was soon to receive an angry call from the principal telling me “You need to come and pick him up right now.” Jim was not even thinking about the autism and advocacy conference that he put together and presided over last October of 2006; the black car was still new and shiney. It was two addresses ago and I had yet to start my job as an Assistant Professor of Classics in Jersey City.

I didn’t need to be on the boat today.

I got the project done.

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POSTED IN: Environment, New Jersey