Progress

As I mentioned at the beginning, it sometimes takes people with autism a while to open up. For some individuals, it can even take five months.

“Annie” (middle-aged) barely acknowledged my existence when I first started helping out. For the first month, when I would say hello, the most she would do was turn her head a little or give a little smirk. I knew to let her be and just give her time, to be consistent and friendly. Around the holidays, she started saying hi back- except she would first ask my name, and then say, “Dag, Valerie.” I’ll take it. During this phase and the following knowing-my-name phase, she would give me her smirk in response to other questions, such as, “how are you,” or “how was your weekend?” Hey, progress.

Yesterday something amazing happened. Annie started talking to me- unprompted. I guess she was so excited about her pending birthday that she wanted to tell me all about her birthday dinner. It was so nice to have her talk to me! I even saw her smile: a relaxed, toothy grin. I didn’t know she had teeth! It was such a pleasure to see her walls come down and see a big, natural smile behind them. I asked her if there would be a cake, and if she liked cake…we had a conversation. It was awesome.

Also yesterday, the quiet but very astute “Art” asked me if I knew the Three Stooges (sorry, Dad, "why soi-tenly" doesn’t translate into Dutch). Even though he usually likes to sit alone and rarely likes to talk, he later approached me at the bus stop to ask me which of the Stooges videos were my favorite, and if I knew that they were related, and did I know Shemp. I told him how my father loves the Three Stooges and finds them very funny, and asked Art if he knew Laurel and Hardy. We had a brief conversation about old Hollywood comedy. It was so cool!

I have inside jokes with some of the people I work with. We sit together on the bus and I don’t care that people look at us because we’re having funny conversations or seem different. I love that when the kids see me walking around campus, they get this big, wide-eyed gasp and an excited wave-and-grin to go with it. I am another person whom they’re excited to see, and what better feeling is there in the world?

I feel really blessed to have gotten to know these people, even if it takes half a year just to get a conversation going. That’s six months well spent.

xoxo

kw