Autism Vox

On the PATH Train

by Kristina Chew, PhD on January 1st, 2008

After an extremely lazy New Year’s Eve Day in which Charlie awoke at 6.45am and spent the morning rearranging a number of items (blankets, CDs, DVDs, laptop cases, Jim’s coats, the CD player, various toys) in the room where Jim has his desk and also the bathroom—–I noted that Charlie’s idea of order was at work as he had matched a mini-fan in the shape of a giraffe with a stuffed giraffe, both neatly arrayed in a corner on top of my winter coat—-Charlie and I took the PATH train into lower Manhattan to meet Jim for a New Year’s Eve dinner. We took a New Jersey transit train to Newark and saw a PATH train departing just as we got through the turnstile, and another one right behind it.

We boarded with two young women with gold hoop earrings and McDonalds bags; a smiling couple who spoke Spanish; a woman in a gray wool skirt, stylish boots, and with a big black leather tote and a Blackberry; an Indian man with a Blackberry-like device. Charlie smiled and tried to sit with his knees curled under, and assented to putting his feet on the floor, so another passenger could sit. He loves to ride the PATH as it’s above ground for much of the way and offers a fine view of the Pulaski Skyway, old factories, and the landscape of the Meadowlands. A stocky man in oversized cargo pants walked through and handed out colored cards about Deaf Education; Charlie took two and the man took them back.

To our left, a child cried intermittently, loud and piercing. I looked to see a baby and, when many people got out at Journal Square in Jersey City, craned my neck, but could not see past the passengers beside Charlie. The screaming started up and a blonde preschool-aged girl ran and tripped to the other row of seats. Her mother was right beside her. “Why are you yelling like that today?” said the mother.

The little girl yelled and said somethings I could not hear with more passengers boarding, but I could make out “Mommy.” Charlie took out a picture of the Wiggles from his blue case and stomped his feet. The train left the station.

For the next few stops, the little girl sprawled across several seats and got up, or fell to her knees on the sticky floor. Her mother admonished her gently and pulled her up. At one moment the little girl curled her legs under her at the knees and would have fallen down, had her mother not been holding her arms. The little girl sang the ABC song perfectly and the mother opened her bag and fished around. She took out a diaper and a small pouch and then a lavender string of beads, which the little girl took, strung out on the plastic armrest, and looked at intently. Occasionally she screamed and I hope her mother caught my look which was (I hope; one never, ever knows) was sympathetic with a smile. I do think she saw Charlie, eyes on the Wiggles picture, hood drawn far over his head.

“I like the beads,” said the little girl, and I thought I heard the ABC song again. The man with the Deaf Education cards walked through without stopping. The little girl screamed.

She was almost lying in the seat when the train pulled into Exchange Place and her mother picked her up and put the beads into her purse and out they went. Charlie put away the Wiggles picture and zipped up his case and stationed his feet on the floor and looked out the window and called for his dad.

And I remembered how Charlie, a skinny frowning 2-year-old swung between Jim’s and my arms as we tried to walk down the street. We did not know why he was crying so loud simply because we had gone left instead of right.

That hot day in St. Paul, we held onto his hands, we tried to keep on walking.

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POSTED IN: New Jersey, Parenting