Autism Vox

Permanence in Change

by Kristina Chew, PhD on January 5th, 2008

The title of this post is an English translation of a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dauer im Wechsel……….yes, I do realize that it is sometime on Saturday, or sometime on the first weekend of 2008 for you, and so not the best moment to start talking about German Romanticism.

But yes, the photo is a photo of an actual object in our actual apartment: It’s Charlie’s “photo bucket” that he keeps his (just as you guessed) photos in. This bucket was found by me some years ago on a shelf with bags of Halloween candy no one wants (those tiny Charms lollipops) at Target. It was high time for Charlie and me to make a hasty exit. I had realized that I had forgotten to get him a plastic pumpkin for trick or treating and we were not going back to the part of the store that had been dubbed Halloween Central. And then I saw this bucket—a ghost bucket (see one eye and the mouth?)—for 99 cents.

We had, of course, to have it.

As it turned out, my mother sent a box containing a brightly colored treat bag with fanciful pumpkin designs, and Charlie ended up using that, and I concluded I should have saved the 99 cents. But then: Then one day Charlie discovered the box of photos in the basement (we were still living in our old house). I had kept them hidden away because, though Charlie loved photos, he kept ripping up any he found—especially his favorites of himself on the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel—into bits, or dropping them into a certain crack at the top of the stairs and so, with visions of every photo memory either disappearing or disintegrating, I hid the photos. That day, Charlie excitedly spread out the photos all over the living room floor and then became beyond upset when this order was disturbed (which happened as soon as I walked past). The photos needed to be cleaned up and put away, at least for a little while, and as I cast around the house for a suitably-sized container what did I chance upon but the ghost bucket, yet unused.

And so the ghost bucket became the photo bucket. I think Charlie also liked the fact that, being a bucket, it was open at the top and translucent, so he could still see the photos.

In the past few months, Charlie has started putting the whole bucket of photos into his blue backpack, after taking out his lunchbox and homework folder after school. Occasionally the backpack, with photos (and a few other things), ended up in the backseat of the car. One day I forgot to take the photos out of Charlie’s backpack before he went to school. It happened that I went to visit his classroom the next day. “Oh, those photos,” said his teacher. I apologized for sending them in—the immediate response was, “They’re wonderful, please send them in every day! We loved looking at them with Charlie!” And so I did and all was well until one day I took out the bucket (Charlie had brought home a Thanksgiving art project—colored corn and beans glued on a paper corn cob—and the corn and beans were all over the bottom of the backpack)—-and found a major fissure curving down and around its side, and half of the base cracked off.

Knowing that Charlie would miss the bucket, I taped up the crack with three pieces of tape and then had to get Charlie up to catch the bus, and back into his backpack went the bucket. But after a few days I found another bag and put the photos in its and sent that in, and the photo bucket stayed on the floor by Charlie’s bed, like the fragment of a Grecian urn.

Charlie’s teacher reported nothing amiss about the photos without the photo bucket and the afternoon proceeded as usual, with snack (sort of a second lunch, I have to say) and piano. Then I saw Charlie poking at the contents of a kitchen drawer: He found a roll of Scotch tape and I heard him pulling out a long piece. “Tape,” said Charlie. “Tape.” I was in the living room when Charlie appeared with the cracked-up bucket and the tape. He held out a long piece to me: “Tape.” “The bucket’s broken,” I said, and pointed to the arc of the crack. “Tape,” said Charlie. And then, “help fix.”

The last two words (I just remembered) are what he always used to say after he had ripped up a photo and wanted me to tape it back together, however beyond repair it was.

I put the tape over a part of the crack and then said, “This calls for duct tape, Charlie,” and returned with a silvery roll and scissors. As Charlie sat on his knees and watched, blinking, I cut strips of tape and sealed up the crack and reinforced it, and also the cracks along the upper brim. Then I laid down a series—sort of a weave–of strips of tape to remake the half of the bottom that was missing, and pulled more strips of silvery, sticky tape over those. “Done!” I said and handed Charlie the remade bucket. He inspected it for a moment, then took the handle and put it in his room, and ran back out with a smile.

He has left the photos in their new, much sturdier bag (he prefers the photos to be in a stack, rather than in an album). This evening, Charlie made a point of getting the bucket and setting it near him as he listened to music while wrapped in his blanket; when it was time for bed, he was careful to pick up the bucket with his other things and place it beside his bed. And I thought about how Charlie’s most cherished items tend to be old and worn-down—Jim’s black t-shirt with Roberto Clemente’s number on it; my old laptop case, scribbled on and discolored; a faded fleece blanket with a penguin design that “Miss Greene” gave to him years ago. Charlie’s favorite things come with a history, with a story or stories attached to them: No wonder he is so regularly so leery about anything new. What does any shiny unsmudged object have to do with him and where he’s been?

I note often that Charlie is as tall as me, his feet bigger, his arms longer, and, yes, his strength greater. In many ways, he seems so unaware of all of these changes—-and yet perhaps this is precisely why he is so careful to keep things from his past with him in the present, to keep some things the same amid a swirling world of change. They are his anchors, his permanence in change—the silent forms that he can cling to, as he tries to navigate and think his way through the endless chaos of the here and now.

And me, I just try to put the tape in the right places and hold things together.

Share This

Related Stories

Many Thanks and Then Some
Vote at Change.org!
I’d Rather Be…..
Change and Change Again
Vote for Autism Vox

POSTED IN: Charlisms, Holidays, Literature, Poetry