If you had asked me, before Austen was born, if nearly every detail of my life was fixed in routine, I would have said no, and I would have thought that was quite true. After all, I had free will and all that. If I felt like picking up a doughnut on the way to work today, then, damn it, I could do that. I could drive all kinds of alternate routes to the grocery store. I could drink from the pink glass and not the blue one. I could get away for the weekend or even pick up and fly to another country.

But the fact is, most days I didn't do that. And I never noticed it until Austen pointed it out. I wouldn't notice I'd always served Austen his baby oatmeal in the orange bowl until I put it in the blue bowl and he refused to eat it. I wouldn't notice I'd always driven the same road to the grocery store until I had to stop along the way at the post office or the gas station and Austen would howl with confusion and outrage. I wouldn't notice that always sorted the mail by the mailbox and muttered "junk, junk, junk..." under my breath until Austen started saying "junk" whenever we went to get the mail. There were a thousand habits I didn't notice until I broke course and found that, for Austen, my habits had become compulsions. They were part of The Way Things Must Be.

A few days ago, Austen was playing with Mark while I arranged a playdate for Janie. "Ok, bye. Great, thank you. See you then," I said as I hung up. "No!" Austen shouted, "You said it wrong!"

"What?"

"You said the wrong thing on the phone!"

I struggled to remember what it was I said and realized I'd said something after "bye."

"Oh, did I say something after I said bye?" I asked.

"Yes!" said Austen, "What's wrong with you?!"

"I just don't always think about the rules when I'm talking, buddy. That's the way my mind works. And that's ok. I like being a little flexible, and the other person knew what I meant."

"No, it's not ok. What's wrong with you?!"

"I'm different?"

"No," Austen was getting increasingly upset, and I could tell he didn't want to let go of this question, "What's wrong with you?!"

"I'm crazy!" I said with a smile.

"No, you're not! What's wrong with you?!"

And suddenly, something clicked. I broke a routine, but this question was part of a routine too. It wasn't the exact same question -- it certainly wasn't the same tone of voice -- but I could hear myself asking Austen, "Hey, what's wrong, buddy?" And I knew the answer. Because Austen has an extremely limited diet and is extremely particular about how his food is served, it can be a struggle to get him to eat enough.  He also has difficulty recognizing his hunger (although we can always recognize it based on his behavior), and he can go long periods of time without realizing he needs to eat.  So, when he's at his most anxious and upset, as he was now, the solution has nearly always to ignore whatever he was upset about and feed him.  We also diligently point out to him that his anxiety and frustration are hunger signals, hoping that this will help him recognize his body's cues.

"I guess I must be hungry, buddy," I ventured.

"Ok," he said, "I guess so."  And returned, immediately and peacefully, to his game.

My husband and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised.  Interesting.  In Austen's view, I had done something wrong, so there must be something wrong with me that caused me to misbehave that way, and what he (and we) had linked to misbehavior in his mind was hunger.  I know of other kids who have threatened to put their (seemingly) misbehaving parents into time-out, but only Austen would think to feed us.  I was thankful that he didn't follow me into the kitchen to make sure I got a snack, because I'd just eaten lunch, and frankly, I was stuffed, both with food and food for thought.

As I write this, I have a cup of tea beside me, and I am trying to get myself to drink it.  I'm not hesitating because I don't like tea or because I think it will be unpleasant.  I'm hesitating because I'm trying to drink it out of a Pyrex measuring cup, which feels... Uncomfortable.  Weird.  Challenging.

You see, my mugs were all dirty and I had forgotten to start the dishwasher.  Now sure, I could have hand washed a mug, but why not use the more readily available measuring cup?  It has a handle.  It can hold hot liquids.  It's no heavier or more unwieldy than some of my beloved oversized mugs.  But I recoiled a bit at the thought.  Was it sanitary? I wondered.  Um, yes.  It's been through the same dishwasher as the mugs I usually drink tea from, and I use it to make lots of food that I safely and happily eat.  Would the tea taste ok?  Why wouldn't it; the measuring cup is just glass, and I drink out of glasses all the time.  But still, it just seemed... Wrong.

Of course, my son Austen is very familiar with this sensation.  Austen (as those of you who visit regularly may know) is autistic and has to eat his yogurt with a plastic spoon.  It can't be silverware, because those spoons are heavier and will (if left in the yogurt container) sometimes tip the carton.  Disaster!  But even among plastic spoons, not all spoons are created equal.  Austen's plastic spoons must be clear plastic, and not just any clear plastic; they must be the kind I buy (in bulk) from our local grocery.

This has been frustrating.  I've carried a lingering resentment over it.  After all, I once forgot to pack a spoon in his lunch, and the school called.  Austen completely refused to eat lunch without that damn spoon.  The school has plastic spoons of course, but they are white, not clear.  He insisted on a clear spoon.  So, the teachers looked through their own lunches and his classmates lunches for one to trade, but their clear spoons weren't the same brand as our clear spoons.  Their clear spoons had little swirls on the handles, making them totally different.  And because he couldn't eat his yogurt, he couldn't eat anything.  He was stuck on yogurt and couldn't get past that to the rest of lunch.

So, I ended up driving a package of spoons over to school, muttering to myself the whole time, "A spoon's a spoon, damn it!  Why does it have to be this spoon?  There are a hundred spoons at school.  There are even clear plastic spoons at school.  For crying out loud you don't even need a spoon.  You could drink it.  Or lick it off your fingers!  Why do you have to eat the yogurt with this particular type of spoon?!"

But I know why.  Autistic engineer and author Temple Grandin explained it in her recent interview on NPR when she said, "If I say to you, 'Think about a church steeple,' I only see specific ones and I can tell you exactly where they're at. And I was shocked to find out that most of the people see a generalized sort of vague, generalized, generic steeple. For me there's no generalized one. There's only lots of different specific ones."  There is no Platonic ideal of a spoon in Austen's mind, there are only specific spoons.

And I can say that's crazy and troublesome and that I just don't get why it makes eating yogurt at school impossible some days.  I can say that, that is, until I sit here unable to drink out of a clearly very mug-like object, complete with a handle and an ability to hold hot liquids simply because it doesn't fit my idea of what one ought to drink tea from.

"How did you know?" my son Austen asked.

"Know what, buddy?" I asked.  We had been talking about how a particular connector fit into a particular slot.  This, along with batteries and speakers, is a particular fascination of Austen's lately.  When we were watching the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks on DVD recently, we had to pause the movie during the scene in which Dave presents a record executive with the Chipmunks on a set decorated with lighted model Christmas trees and wired to play the background music to their big hit, "Christmas Don't Be Late."

This scene was the source of much heated speculation.  Where had Dave put the speakers?  Could we see them?  What was powering it all?  Did Dave plug it in but we didn't see it?  If so, how many prongs did the plug have?  If not, what kind of batteries (Double A? Triple A? C? Nine volt?) were powering the lights and the music?  Were there wires leading from the batteries?  What kinds of plugs and connectors were on the wires?  The possibilities were nearly endless, and all tantalizingly out of sight.  Austen clearly had a vision for a superior, autistic version of the movie where the camera would have plunged right past the Chipmunks and into the tangled mass of wires behind the cotton ball snow and plastic fir trees.  And I've got to agree with him, that version probably would have been more interesting to me too.

But right now, I have no idea what he's talking about other than something I just said about something that is probably (but not definitely) wires.  This is a problem I often encounter with Austen: he pays much more attention to what I say than I do, especially when his sister is talking to me at the same time, and I'm trying to get a snack ready for one of them and my terrible monkey mind is jumping ahead to the thousand other things I need to get done before bed.  It leads me to end up in moments like this where I'm standing and staring blankly at my kids as if I just woke up to find I'd been sleep walking around the house all day.

"HOW!  How did you know?!"

"Hm," I search my mind and I'm pretty sure the last sentence I said was that I didn't think that plug fit in the slot he was trying. "How did I know that connector doesn't fit in that slot?" I venture, "Um, because that's a connector for an XBox, but the thing you were trying to connect it to was not an XBox and the slot looked different, so I didn't think it would fit."

"No!" he screamed, "How did you know?!"

Damn.  Now I'm screwed.  I don't know what I said.  "I don't know, Austen.  I really don't remember what I just said.  I thought we were talking about that connector?  Could you help me?"

"No.  Remember for yourself.  Now, how did you know?"

Ok, I can get out of this.  I know he's stuck on this point because he's hungry, so I decide to continue with the activity that made me forget what I was talking about in the first place: making him something to eat.  He follows me dutifully around the kitchen, barking out at regular intervals, "How did you know?  How did you know?  How did you know?"

I was reminded of one day in high school history class when a teacher called on me, I think because he sensed I wasn't paying attention.  Which I wasn't.  I heard my name, but not the question.  "I'm sorry, what was the question?"

"Answer the question," he said.

"I can't answer it, because I didn't hear the question," I responded.

"Answer the question," he repeated.  We went back and forth like this, several more times, with me getting angrier and angrier until he called on someone else.  I was so relieved to hear the answer because then I could finally infer what the damn question was!  I wished I had someone else to pass this off to now.  Where was my husband when I needed him?

"Can we call Daddy and ask him how I know things?" I asked.

"No," said Austen, "How did you know?"

Ok, fair enough.  I was, admittedly, trying to cheese my way out there, but it was still worth a shot.

So, I try (unsuccessfully) focusing on the task at hand.  I try repeating my answer and then not answering at all.  Then I hazard a few more guesses.  I try some vague but plausible answers.  I try telling him I have magic, psychic powers that allow me to know everything.  I even try total kid gross-out silliness by telling him the way that I know is "because of big, drippy, gooey, snotty, yellow and green boogers."  That makes him laugh.  A lot.  But when he finishes laughing, he goes back to "How did you know?" adding the frustrated command, "And tell the truth!"  Boogers, however entertaining, clearly were not the truth.

But the truth is that I already told him the truth: I don't know and I need more information.  What he wants isn't the truth, it's the right answer, his right answer.  And as I hear him droning, over and over, "How did you know? How did you know?  How did you know?" I find that I desperately want to be able to give him the answer he wants to hear, so that we can all move on.  And I think, "Ah, this is how people end up with false confessions from torture, because they just want to find the answer that makes it end."

After he eats, Austen begins to calm down and asks, "How did you know that connector wasn't going to fit in that slot?"  Finally!  And damn it, that was the very first thing I tried and he told me that was not it!  "Well, I know that's a connector for an XBox because it says so on the package, but the thing you were trying to connect it to was not an XBox and the slot looked different, so I didn't think it would fit."

"Oh, ok," said Austen, and went off to examine some other wires.

So, it turns out that sometimes it's not having the true answer or the right answer that counts; it's having it at the right time.  And the right time for us is almost always after Austen eats.  (Note to self: if you're ever held for questioning, try offering the officers a snack, then give them the answer they want.)

I started keeping a journal semi-regularly when I was in middle school.  My very earliest journal entries are a thrilling roller coaster ride through the life of a suburban tween: from the heartbreaking lows of the cancellation of my favorite TV show to the giddy highs of eating raviolis from a can for lunch.  But by high school, my journal had become my closest confidant, not because I had any terrible secrets, but because the secrets I did have became so tiresome to the friends who had to hear them again and again.

I've never smoked, never done drugs and never drank a drop of alcohol in high school (and not much even beyond that).  But I did grow up to marry a sex addict, which means I had my obsessions and I had my own drug of choice: other people.  Like most schoolgirls, I had crushes, but unlike most schoolgirls, my crushes were epic fantasies that rocked me to sleep at night and sustained me moment to moment during my days.  They were the refuge I'd escape to when loneliness or stress or fear crept too close.  They were the rock I'd cling to in an unstable world.  One day my true love, my knight in shining armor, was going to catch me as I fell, swoop me up and save me, make everything perfect.  And until that day, I'd block out the dirty imperfections of this world by drifting off into the next in my mind.

My journal didn't care how many times I described the way that boy's hair fell across my math book when he leaned back or the precise shade of his eyes in the sunlight outside.  And unlike my friends, who grew bored with the unflagging nature (or perhaps just vaguely uncomfortable with the intensity) of my interests, my journal was quite happy to watch me carefully craft each intricate detail of those moments, happy to sit quietly receptive as I painted the same scene over and over from a thousand different angles, and happy to replay all of it for reuse in future fantasies.

And replay it I did.  For years I would go back and touch those pages, softly, like a lover and live that thrill again: here he taps my shoulder, there brushes my hand as he borrows a pencil.  Then in the moment that never came, yet always sustained me, he falls down on his knees and begs me never to leave, and he never leaves, never hurts me, but makes me (finally, impossibly) whole.

Now I see something different in those pages: the sling that gently cradled an unseen brokenness and held it safe for a time, the coma that protected the injured patient who could not have coped with consciousness.  And I'm grateful, both for the service those pages rendered and for the fact that I've healed enough not to be in danger without them.

My daughter, Janie, found the body. Our pet* had been missing for a while, so at first she shouted to me excitedly. She found him! But when I ran to her, it was clear that he was already gone. She looked from his still body up at me and asked, tentatively, "Is he very hurt, Mama?" There was a pause, where I knew that this was the moment I was supposed to do that magical mama thing. I was supposed to kiss the boo boo, mend the tear, put the pieces back together, paste the petals back in place. I was supposed to fix it. I was supposed to make it better. But I had to admit, with tears in my eyes, that he was more than hurt, he was dead. And I couldn't fix that.

Janie's grief was overwhelming and instantaneous. She sobbed until she couldn't breathe and cried until her red eyes were swollen nearly shut. I had to carry her in to the living room and place her on the sofa where she clung to me and wept. Her brother Austen hovered nearby. "I'm sad," he said, in a simple statement of facts, "but I'm not crying." After a while, Janie wanted to sit with the body, so I wrapped it in a towel and we sat together, crying, as we watched its stillness.

I told the children we would need to bury it; the life was gone and the body had to return to the earth now. While Austen accepted and even seconded this idea, Janie was, at first, vehemently against putting the body in the ground. But as she watched it, not moving, she asked what would happen to the body. I told her it would slowly decay and transform, like the dead bird we saw wasting away earlier this spring, shrinking and dissolving to just feathers and bones. If we put it into the earth, it would transform into rich soil and nourish plants. She liked the idea of new life in a plant, so she and I prepared a plant and something to contain the body. She drew pictures of herself, crying, to lay in the grave and a note with hearts and our pet's name to say goodbye. Austen said he would like to do something too. So, he took a Sharpie marker and on the towel I had wrapped the body in he wrote, in block letters, the label: "DEAD ANIMAL." Mark dug the grave and we each threw a handful of dirt on the body before placing the new plant on top.

Over the intervening weeks, each child has continued to process the loss. Janie focused first on death: pointing out dead grass, dead leaves, dead bugs wherever she went and telling me they were dead like her pet. However, I've noticed a gradual shift to thoughts of rebirth. At first, she expressed hopes and wishes for the body and spirit of her lost animal, but more recently she has spent a lot of time tending the plant that sits over the grave, drawing pictures of it, talking about it. Two weeks after the burial, she talks very little about the pet itself, although the loss is still clearly on her mind.

Austen, on the other hand, talks about the lost pet each day. He continues to express, always very matter-of-factly, that he feels sadness and misses the lost animal, even though he continues to appear (to the world at large) not to show it. He talks about how things might be if his pet were still alive: what it might be doing and feeling and thinking at any given moment. And he seems very concerned (in a way that many would find totally un-autistic of him) about how the animal parents and siblings of our pet might react to its loss. He wonders if its mother would be angry or sad to know that it was dead, and he hopes she doesn't find out, so that she won't know the pain. He wonders if its siblings would miss it and feel sad that it's gone.

As for me, I cried writing this post, so I know I'm still grieving the loss — and feeling my children's grief as well as my own.

This week, when our family pet went missing and later turned up dead, I did an obsessive imitation of some of my favorite literary detectives; like Sherlock Holmes, I tried to piece together the smallest clues and like Hercule Poirot, I strained the little grey cells of my brain looking for answers. How and when did he get out? When did he die? What did I miss or overlook? I tried to pinpoint the time of death, doing google searches for information on when rigor mortis sets in in animals. I tried to talk to witnesses, questioning everyone from my five-year-old daughter to my husband on what they last remembered seeing and hearing. I had theories, but no way to confirm them. No answers.

And what difference would answers have made? The answers wouldn't have changed anything, but they would have given me the illusion of control. Next time, I wouldn't let those thousand little circumstances that led to tragedy play out in quite the same way, would I? I wouldn't choose that same moment to go get food ready. I wouldn't ask my husband to run that same errand. I wouldn't have my daughter help me with that chore. I wouldn't let my pet out of my sight. Still I was desperate to know; I felt that somehow knowing would calm my grief. And I was angry and frustrated that I couldn't know. There simply weren't enough data points, not enough evidence, not enough pieces to make out the picture in the puzzle.

Then — because life, because the universe, because God likes to beat me over the head until I learn — my daughter misplaced her favorite stuffed bedtime companion, Gigi, and I had to run through the detective work all over again. When did she last have Gigi? Did the babysitter see her at bedtime? Had my husband seen her the night before? Had she taken Gigi out of the house? Should I search the trash? The yard? The car? The closet? Should I tear the sofa apart again and search under the cushions more thoroughly? And again I couldn't know. I just couldn't gather enough information to solve the mystery.

After a night of sleep, I discovered Gigi in the morning, buried under a pile of other stuffed toys in my daughter's closet. No one remembered having put her there. Someone (daughter? playmate? babysitter? husband? son? me?) scooped Gigi up and dumped her in the closet. We never would know who and it didn't matter. Yet I had tortured myself the night before in my own quest to know the unknowable, both in Gigi's disappearance and in that of our pet.

When my husband disclosed his addiction, I went through the same thing: grilling him for hours each day on exactly what had happened, trying to solve the mystery and create that nice, neat narrative that came at the end of the detective stories of my youth. But some parts of the story were lost forever. There were no answers. Early on, I thought that recovery might help me to understand addiction enough to at least fill in the blanks, like researching the rigor mortis of the marriage I thought I had. Instead, I'm recognizing that accepting what is — and letting go of my obsessive need to have all the answers — is where my recovery is taking me today.

Photo credit: Photo by Nick Atkins Photography on Flick

A few weeks ago, my son had his annual checkup. Because I am perpetually disorganized, and because insurance only pays for one checkup a year (meaning each must be scheduled at least one year and one day apart), my children's checkups keep moving further and further from their actual birthdays. Eventually, they will move all the way around the calendar and be examined in their birth months again. My daughter is actually so far off at this point that when I took her in, the doctor wasn't sure whether to consider it a four or a five year old appointment; she was equal times from both.

Aside from the thrill of never knowing exactly when they will occur, doctor's appointments with my son take on the extra aura of excitement that comes from being tinged with terror. There are few things in life my son fears more than seeing the doctor; as far as my son is concerned, the doctor is right up there with food as one of the great evils in life.

I learned some time ago that the easiest way to handle doctor's visits was to spring them on my son unexpectedly. I'd tell my son we were going to the toy store, and out we'd go out with me whistling innocently. Fifty feet down the road from the doctor's office I'd tell my son we had to make a stop on the way to the toy store, and then -- surprise! -- there we'd be. I'd hold out the toy store throughout the visit as the end goal, and true to my word, would reward him at the end with a trip to pick out a treat to make up for the trauma.

On this last visit, I made the mistake of musing out loud the night before to my husband, "I have to check our messages. I think I might have to take Son to the..." Shit! Of course, he was listening. And he stood in front of me, hopping up and down anxiously, "To the what? To the what? Take me to the what, Mama?" Never one to think well on my feet, I said, "You might, maybe, I'm not sure, but you might have to go to the doctor."

"NOOooooo! Are there going to be any needle bites? Are there? Are there? I don't want any needle bites!" He's descended into a flurry of panic in his great fear of shots.

"I don't know if you have to go and if you do I don't know if there are any shots." I hate lying.

"Are there any needle bites? ARE THERE? I don't want any needle bites."

"I'll have to ask the doctor."

"Ask now! Call now! NOW! NOW!"

I decide a little deception is ok, since uncertainty means anxiety and shots also mean anxiety. Telling him definitively that there are no shots will buy him 12 hours relatively free of panic until we arrive at the doctor's office and he starts repeating this question (regardless of any previous assurances) 5000 times between then and our departure. I pretend to check the computer and reassure him that there will be no "needle bites" the next day.

The day of the appointment dawns and I get both kids up and dressed. When my son realizes his bus has not arrived and it's time for his sister to go to school, he asks, "No school for me this morning?" "Nope," I answer, "It's a short day for you." No mention of the doctor. Whew! We drop my daughter off at school and he stares happily at trees and buildings and cars whizzing by without noticing or asking where we're going. Whew!

We arrive in the parking lot of the doctor's office. It represents years of progress that he does not break down in tears at the sight of the building, but he clutches my sleeve and buries his head in my arm as he walks sideways, like a crab, toward the office. Along the way the question that torments him is repeated again and again, "Will there be any needle bites? Will there be any needle bites? Will there be any needle bites?" My vague answers are distinctly unsatisfactory, but a straight up "yes" will send him into a panicky tantrum, so I continue to hedge.

I give his name to the receptionist. He screams at her for using his real name and not his nickname. He is terrified, but his ferocity terrifies her too. He's too terrified to check and make sure that I paid the copay with the credit card that has his favorite number and signed my name the way he likes, which is good, because I didn't. The nurse calls us back, and he screams at her too for using the "wrong" name. She tries to get his weight, but he clutches the pole and rocks on the scale as he continues to ask if there will be any needle bites. I tell the nurse to forget about the weight, but she continues to try and gets frustrated as he rocks. I tell her again to stop trying, and we go to the exam room, weight unknown.

He asks again and again about needle bites. I try to keep him in the present, reassuring him that there are no needles in the room right now. The doctor comes in and checks my son's records: he's not due for any immunizations (No shots! Good!), but due to his limited diet, he needs to be checked to make sure he doesn't have any vitamin deficiencies (Blood draw! Worse than shots!) My son sits on my lap and stiffens with panic during each part of the exam, but makes it through: normal blood pressure (surprisingly), normal temperature, healthy eyes and ears and throat, normal heart and lungs. He leaves the exam room, having received no needle bites, in a much better mood. He's extremely cooperative for his hearing and vision tests; they are like games and he likes them. The nurse pushes her luck and tries to get him on the scale again. He yells at her and she reprimands him for being "not very nice."

I tell him we have to make one more stop. We go to the blood lab, and I hand them the paperwork. My son has stopped asking about the needle bites, feeling he has escaped. We sit down to wait, or I sit down to wait while he slides off his chair, drapes his feet over the armrest, slides his body under the armrest, repeats his current favorite word ("boogers") over and over. I can feel the old ladies waiting for their blood tests staring at me while I do nothing. He calls me "boogerhead" and giggles. The old ladies stare coldly. He melts onto the floor and slides back up again. He squats on the chair and rocks. He asks me about his friends at school while he slides under the armrest. The old ladies silently disapprove. They don't know I am leading a lamb to the slaughter.

Finally, the nurse calls his name (and is yelled at) and we walk back toward those torturous blood draw chairs. As we walk down the hall, I explain that the doctor needs to have this one last test done to make sure he's healthy. He tenses as he sees the chairs, and I sit down and hoist him onto my lap while I tell him that they're going to have to take some blood. When the technician attempts to roll up his sleeve, a trauma in and of itself, he stiffens and starts to scream. She calls another technician over to help hold him. I talk softly to him and remind him that it won't take long and that we're going to the game store as soon as this is over. Between the three of us, we hold him down and get the vial of blood that will tell the doctor whether or not he's getting sufficient nutrition.

One of the technicians brings him two lollipops. He doesn't eat them, of course. They end up being for his sister, but I never tell anyone that; it seems to make them feel better to give him something for the pain, something most kids like. We sit in the chair for several minutes after it's over. He's red faced and sobbing, holding his pricked arm out stiff and straight. The technician throws us a sympathetic look, the only person all day who has, because it's understandable for kids to be terrified of needles.

I ask him if he's ready to leave, but he can't answer, because he's upset and words fail him. So, I stand. He'll push back if he's not ready, but he stands too, and we walk out. "Can we go to the top floor?" he asks. (Yay! He's overcome the trauma to engage in his routine in every multi-floor building we enter: to travel to the top story.) We go up and explore, go to the game store and buy a used version of Battleship for the Gameboy and head off to school. And we're all done for another year. Well, maybe let's make that a little more than a year; after all, it'll make sure the insurance pays, help us work our way around the calendar and give us all that much more time to recover.

Now, while my weight is more than double my son's 60 pounds (but, thanks to the Shangri-La diet, no longer triple!), I thought the tunnel was likely designed to hold that much anyway. What the tunnel really wasn't designed to hold was a full sized, unathletic, 40-ish adult with bad knees. So, there I knelt, at the entrance to the tunnel maze, trying to calm my weepy, excited, fascinated, terrified son, who would neither attempt to enter nor be distracted from his quest.

Other kids, most smaller than my son rushed and jostled past us. "Get out of the way," they said. They went up and down easily and happily. For them it wasn't a new experience or new experiences weren't terrifying. For my son, new is terrifying, and this was new; even though he has been in bigger play structures, he hadn't been in this particular structure before. That's when we met a boy I'll call Tim, who was about the same age as my son.

"Hey, is he scared?" Tim asked me.

"Yes," I said, "He wants to go up, but he's afraid to."

"Here, I can help. I think he'll listen to me, because," and here he did this cocky little thing where he put his head to one side, smiled and gestured toward himself, like a little Harrison Ford as Han Solo and said, "I'm a kid!" Then he looked at my weeping son and said, "Hey, it's ok. I'll go up with you. I was really scared the first time I did this too. But I just closed my eyes. And I did it. And now it's fun. Come on. You can hold my hand."

"It's ok, buddy," I said, "He can go up with you. He's the right size, and he knows how to do it."

"But I'm afraid it's going to fall!" my son wailed.

"Look," Tim said, smacking the support columns, "These hold it up, and they're really strong."

My son's tears stopped as his eyes traced the support column from Tim's hand up to the maze above. "Well, ok," he said in a quavering voice, and up the climbed together. When they reached the top of the slide, Tim pointed down to me and gave me the thumbs up. I waved. But my son balked again, afraid to go down the slide. Tim slid down to show my son it was ok, updated me on the situation and climbed back up to my again weeping son and climbed down with him.

"Good job, buddy!" I said, "You climbed up!"

"But is the slide going to be fast? I'm afraid it's going to be too fast!"

"It won't be too fast, buddy."

"No," said Tim, "All you have to do is sit. When you're sitting, you go slow, but if you lie down, you go fast. Just don't lie down. Here, I'll show you." And he demonstrated, sitting and lying on the slide, going up and sliding down so that my son could watch. "Here, now hold my hand. We'll climb up, and then just as slow as we went up, you can come down."

Up they went again, and down they slid together, and when he reached the bottom, my son beamed through his tears, "It wasn't too fast!" Then he and Tim went down again and again, easier each time, until it was time for us to leave. "See," Tim told me, "He just needed another kid to show him."

I could not thank that little boy enough or praise him enough to his mother. I didn't have words to tell them what it meant to me that instead of pushing past my son or making fun of him for being scared and crying, Tim empathized and helped; that instead of getting frustrated with my son's progress, Tim was patient with the setbacks and enthusiastic about the successes; that instead of just enjoying himself, he helped another little boy enjoy the evening too. Just to know that there are children like him, people like him, in the world is a gift. Thank you, Tim.

As time went on, they seemed to be able to hold things in their mind longer. The bottle of red pepper flakes would disappear behind my back and they'd continue to look for it and start to wail. But then I'd hold out a spoon and watch their little brain shift gears: "Ooo, look! Something shiny!" Of course, eventually that didn't work either; the new object I was offering up had to be more attractive than the forbidden object, which is difficult, because there is essentially nothing that is more attractive than a forbidden object. That was when the wailing began in earnest.

Fortunately, most children quickly get bored with wailing for what they can't have and settle for something else. My son is not one of those children. He perseverates. He continues on, unwavering, even in the face of both repeated disappointment and distracting rewards.

I know a mom who, when she is in doubt, uses what she calls "The Cookie Test" to determine how genuinely determined and distressed a child is. For example, a child falls off a bicycle and starts screaming in pain and fear. Does the child actually need to go to the emergency room or is it more shock than pain that is causing the uproar? She will offer the child a cookie. If the child calms down and accepts the cookie, all is probably well. If the child continues wailing even in the face of a special treat, further monitoring is warranted. A child who is perseverating (or seriously injured) will fail the Cookie Test.

A week ago, my son wanted "squares." He could not communicate what he wanted more clearly than that, so we played 10,000 questions to try to figure out what "squares" meant. Was it a checker board? Tetris? Blokus? Tangrams? No, no, no and NO! I was stumped. I told him we'd have to do something else, but all attempts at distraction failed. I offered my own version of the Cookie Test: video game time. No, he wanted "squares." I offered the Chocolate Cake With Ice Cream Test: a brand new game. Nope, "squares." So, I let him scream, and ask me over and over for "squares" while I told him over and over I couldn't figure it out. And I waited with him for one of us to have a breakthrough.

When he finally screamed himself out after an hour and a half, he was able to tell me that "squares" was "a new game" he had invented: "And it's on a green game board. And the board has 600 squares and 22 sides and 500 pieces. And the pieces are blue and red and you have to put them down diagonal and get 6 in a row to win." Then he told me we'd play it tomorrow and took me up on that video game time. Whew! What happened to the days when I could wave a spoon at him and get him to change tracks?

It saddens me that he gets so painfully frustrated, that he can't let go, that we can't have our cookie and move on. But I love that he is brilliant, that he is persisting and trying and creating and sharing. And after all, who am I to talk? Haven't I been known to perseverate myself at times? Haven't most of us who have moved beyond the stage of being distracted by shiny spoons?