Autism Vox

Remembering BART, BlogHer, and Some Books

by Kristina Chew, PhD on July 21st, 2008

The first thing I have to say about being at BlogHer was that, because I didn’t have to keep looking for a boy at my back (not that I didn’t sometimes turn and scan the room for him; it’s a reflex)—-because I was on my own, I got a chance to look at some things a little more.

I got in at the San Francisco Airport mid-Friday morning and took BART, and was briefly disoriented. When I growing up, BART ended at Daly City, not the airport, and went to Fremont, Concord, or Richmond. Now it goes out to Pittsburg/Bay Point and Millbrae and to Dublin/Pleasanton, places not unfamiliar to me but not familiar as BART stops. As I waited for the train, I remembered how, with my sister and father and Yeh-Yeh, my grandfather, we all took a ride on BART when it opened—a ride to nowhere in particular—and how my sister and I chewed a pack of orange gum and every time the flavor ran out, I asked for another piece.

The conference hotel was near the Powell Street station which is the one station we always went to, as it’s very near Macy’s and the stores. And the hotel, was across the street from Union Square which we’d walked by hundreds of times. Strangely familiar territory—-not that I ever thought I’d be back here at a blogging conference to talk about being the mother of an autistic son and writing on the internet about it.

Friday, I met the members of my panel “in person and actually,” went to a panel on video blogging (no plans of starting that here), and wandered around the exhibits, where I helped myself to a plate of smiley-faced McCain fries (thinking of Charlie; he only likes the ones that looks like McD’s) and got into a conversation about Charlie’s struggles to read with the folks at the Leapfrog booth. Then to BART to Oakland, where I met my parents for dinner at a restaurant across the street from where my high school was once located. I dozed off on my parents’ couch as my dad explained how he has been printing out every entry from my original blogs about Charlie, My Son Has Autism and Autismland (”gives me something else to do besides play Solitaire”) and my mom prepared to make oxtail stew—a dish that made sense since it was about 50 degrees in the Bay Area, versus (as Jim reported to me) 95 in New Jersey—as my relatives were coming over on Saturday night.

Saturday morning I left later than planned. I left my bag by the door for my dad to bring when he picked me up in the evening to go to the airport. “How about we go to the Lake Merritt station?” he said. “That way the trains come every 10 minutes instead of every 20 minutes.” I didn’t think that made much of a difference. As we were approaching Lake Merritt, my dad said, “Do you have a few minutes?” I said, of course yes; no Charlie duty going on. “Good, then you can go visit Ngin-Ngin,” and he pulled the car in front of her house.

We walked by two young Chinese American women who offered us pamphlets about their church and up the old stairs. Ngin-Ngin was in her kitchen, bright and cheerful in the morning sunlight, and one my aunts was there, too. My grandmother has a live-in aide; the aide gets every Saturday off, and my dad and his siblings stay with Ngin-Ngin, who’ll be 103 in October. “She’s going blind in one eye, we think,” my dad said under his breath and went to the dining room to check her mail. I said something in English and Ngin-Ngin said something in Cantonese: The same exchange we’ve been having all these years. I said good-bye and my dad walked me to the BART station and soon I was back at the conference.

Here’s a photo of our panel on mom-bloggers with special needs kids: Shannon Des Roches Rosa, me, Jennifer Graf Gronenberg, Vicki Forman, and Susan Etlinger, who organized the panel. Susan’s put up some photos here, Vicki’s blogged twice about it here and here, Jennifer wrote this prior to the conference, Shannon put up the photo and also here. and wrote about the most important parenting panel at BlogHer08. We talked about how we got started blogging and balancing public and private, especially for children who are disabled. Jennifer talked about editing an anthology about parent writing and how she was told that three submissions by parents of disabled children were too “scary” to include. She disagreed and worked and pushed to get those three submissions in; only one—poems by Barbara Crooker (a friend; I’ll soon be reviewing her latest book, Line Dance)—was not included. (Yes, I couldn’t believe it, and yet I could.)

The panel was too short and there’s more to be said about what was talked about, especially from the audience. I went to another panel, wandered again through the exhibits area and—when I passed the Leapfrog booth again—it was insisted that I take home a Tag and a Leapster for Charlie. I was a little flabbergasted.

After the keynote—Heather Armstrong and Stephanie Klein—-I found myself in two places that are straight out of my childhood mythology. First, the lower level of Macy’s, through which we always entered to look for school clothes before the stores got bigger on the Easy Bay side. The conference held a reception in the handbag section of the store, which led to the surreal feeling of hors d’oeuvres amid the Marc Jacobs. Then onto dinner at a Chinese restaurant, but the handbag displays made it very difficult to find my friends and I left the reception and found myself walking up the hill, pass the Sutter Street garage where my family’d squeezed in our cars many a time. Then through the Stockton Street tunnel, and into Chinatown.

My family never goes to eat in Chinatown anymore. We used to—-Joe Jung’s for the fried chicken, Empress of China for something really fancy, a place maybe called Hong Kong Garden for dim sum—but there’s plenty of places across the bay now, so no need to bother. I went down Jackson Street and only had time for 25 minutes of dinner before hurrying out to meet my dad. I watched the multiple generations of a Chinese family stand around and talk in front of the restaurant as the multiple generations of my family used to. “Ho sik?” the grandmother (who still had black hair) asked three children; the boy was wearing green crocs and running back and forth with his sisters. Someone who might be their father, uncle?, appeared with a baby in a baby carrier and a plastic bag of leftovers.

My dad appeared, very glum. “Do you have my bag—-” I started to say. “Mom called me,” my dad said, with suppressed exasperation. “It’s still by the door to the garage.”  “I said I’d put it in the car but you said not to,” I said. “Yes, I know,” said my dad.

Somehow one of my aunts got to the SF airport in record time, with my bag (containing my cell phone charger….) and I went through security and onto the plane and then to Newark Airport and a Port Authority train station in a random unweeded area on an 80 degree Sunday morning and then to NJ Transit and then I walked home, as it was only 7.30am on Sunday morning.

I didn’t start unpacking till after noon. Charlie—after devouring some Chinese treats my mother had sent—-was sitting on the couch when he saw me take the Leapster out of my bag.

“Give,” said Charlie. “Mom! I want.”

“Sure,” I said. I helped him type in CHARLIE and he fiddled around with the buttons and screen and stylus for the rest of the afternoon until a bike ride with Jim. Charlie reached for the Leapster again as I tucked him into bed and it was by his side when I went to check on him.

I’d been remembering how he had one of the first Leapbooks and loved it, years and years ago, and then things plateaued and we put the toy aside. The Leapster is the same green and green as the book, and has the blue stylus attached by a string.

And I wonder if Charlie thought, on seeing it, that’s something I had once when I was younger, and now I have it, here, again.

Photo courtesy of Ji Design.

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POSTED IN: Books, California, Charlisms, Parenting, Poetry, Reading, Toys, Travel