Finding Amber 2

It was Amber's 20th birthday - the birthday that straddles the winding river between teenage-dom and adulthood. My sweet daughter - true to nature wanted to go to Skate Country and spend the day with her sister skating and having icees and pizza.  We figured that on a summer afternoon on Friday the place would be open and didn't bother to see if was before we left the house. 

We drove up to a completely empty parking lot and learned that the skating rink was only open at night.  Quickly recalculating, I said - "Hey do you want to see Finding Dory?  I know I have Group-Ons for it."  Both girls gave a resounding "YES!" and we were on our way.  

I have blogged before about what the movie Finding Nemo had meant to me.  I had seen it with Amber in 2003 when she was seven and had been diagnosed on autism spectrum for four years at that point. Here is the link for the original blog.  Click here to read Finding Amber .  We had seen the movie again in 2012 and it touched me as a parent of a child with developmental disability and how far our journey had come: from Amber's first diagnosis as a toddler,  fearing that she would not be able to take care of herself, over compensating by doing everything for her and worrying about how people would treat her.  So here we were in a dark theater getting ready to see Dory's journey as a fish with short term memory loss and her flight into adulthood.  One of the really cool things was the audience was not so much composed of little kids but of teens who loved Finding Nemo and wanted to relive the magic of that first movie. 

As the young sweet little Dory works up the confidence to ask questions of her parents or other people - she must always preface it by "Hi. I'm Dory. I suffer from short-term remembery loss."   She also worries that she's constantly letting her parents down.  Of course, I got the feels immediately.  The sight of this sweet little thing trying to find her way in the world hit home and having to apologize for her disability was heartbreaking.   Her parents try to keep her safe but a rogue current carries her away and she is lost.  Unlike Nemo, young Dory can't remember exactly where she lives and as years go by, she starts to forget who her parents are.  It's a worst case scenario for any parent but for a mother of a child with a developmental disability it exposes your worst fear.   You then see Dory over the years - growing  up, constantly asking for help, explaining her disability and swimming further away from home.  Eventually, she meets Marlin and helps him find Nemo. 

It didn't dawn on my then, but in Finding Nemo, you had two characters with disabilities who had to take control and eventually help save the day when most people would have written them off. I was so focused on Nemo and his handicap that Dory seemed more of a comic foil than a character who was also struggling with her own challenges.  But her way of handling life actually made sense - she had confidence in herself because she didn't have any other choice.   When Marlin talks about wanting to protect Nemo from everything her response is a wake-up call to any overprotective parent:

Marlin: I promised I'd never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That's a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can't never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.

When I first saw this - Amber was a child and the idea of her

being out in the world was theoretical - it would be years before she would be on her own and it was just something I didn't want to deal with at that point.  I just wanted to keep her out of harm's way, keep her from getting her feelings hurt from kids who might make fun of her, keep her from trying something new that she might fail at and feel embarrassed.  But the reality was that I wasn't so much protecting her - I was protecting me.   The idea that the world would not embrace your child because they are out of the norm is scary so you overcompensate.   You answer for them, you do as much for them as possible to soften the blow of anyone hurting them.  

There are so many plans that you make from the time your child is born - the birthday parties, the dances at school, the first boyfriend, the prom date, the wedding day.  Then you are told that they are on the autism spectrum and will go on the special education track.  The idea of how they will be as an adult one day is sidelined so you can get them from pre-school, to kindergarten, to grade school, hoping they can make it through the challenge of middle school and then high school.  At graduation, they will get a special education diploma which means that after 12 years of school they still need to take a GED to get into a community college or get a job.  You see the posts from parents who spend the spring of their child's senior year on social media wondering if their child got into the college of their choice.  You are just hoping that your child will be able to find a job, find an apartment and make ends meet.  You worry that you need to plan financially to still support them in adulthood and provide for them in your will to help them when you're gone and pray that her sibling will keep an eye on her finances.  It's pretty heady stuff to deal with when your kid is just getting out of their teens.  

As time goes on - you realize that your plan was just that - an idea but that nothing is set in stone.  You have a chance to create something out of the norm and because there are so few books about girls with autism.  You realize that you are going to have to make it up as you go along.  A plan is not really something you can ever really count on and you have to take things day to day.  Dory exemplifies that and says rather forcefully at one point, "I've never had a plan in my life!" 

For us control freaks that line seems like heresy. How can you never have a plan - how can you go through life without knowing how to get from point A to point Z - there always has to be a plan for God's sake!   But as Dory explains further,  “The best things happen by chance."   So I reflected on that quote and having a daughter who has what the world perceives as a disability - autism.  She is in my life to teach me that the most wonderful things happen when God laughs at your plan, throws it aside and gives you something incredible that you might not be able to comprehend at the time.  

Amber cannot be simply defined as someone with a disorder, a disability, or a disease - she is my daughter and one of the sweetest, kindest people I've ever met.  While some signs of autism, particularly Aspergers, can seem like the person you love is not connected and can be obsessive/compulsive - we've been lucky that Amber's symptoms are pretty mild and how they manifest are different in girls than boys.   She gets jokes, has a sense of humor and loves animals.  She still has a hard time making eye contact but her social skills have come a long way since she was younger.   She's rarely given me any type of female teenage drama that most parents must endure.  I can count on one hand the number of times that she's ever rolled her eyes and said "Whatever!" 

In a recent interview, the director of Finding Dory Andrew

Staten explains how he sees Dory and how he wanted to bring in her back story and relationship with her mother and father.  "Her parents don't try to change her. They just want to help her own who she is. Being a parent and seeing my kids grow up and enter the world, I realize that all kids are born with certain temperaments, flaws, quirks — and it will probably be who they are. You probably spend most of the time worrying about those things as a parent, too — you don't lose sleep over the things they do well. The best quality I could give Dory's parents is that they never doubt her." 

At the end of the day, I think most parents worry if their kids can make it on their own.  If we've done our jobs hopefully they will be creative, independent and loving people you've always prayed they would be.  Dory, even in light of her short term memory, is strong, smart, loyal and can even speak whale.   To quote Dory, "You have to let go and see what happens," because despite your best efforts - you won't be around forever no matter how hard you try.   And when that day comes - hopefully you'll have a good laugh with God about your plan. 

Super 8

For those of you that are under 40, you probably don’t remember the ritual that was watching home movies.  Not to sound like an old fart, but back in the 1960’s we didn’t have the instant playback that you have with digital video, your cell phone or hell even VHS video back in the 1970’s.  First you had to get a super 8 camera where you could take home movies and purchase the cassettes which held about 50 feet of film or two and a half minutes of action.   Needless to say, you couldn’t linger too long on one subject because after a little over two minutes, your film would run out.  This situation led to wedding movies going from a quick ceremony, to a few seconds of the first dance, a quick look at the sharing of the wedding cake, a few seconds of the tossing of the bouquet and finally leaving the reception in a hail of rice.  Your wedding could be condensed to a few minutes with no editing needed, and no audio.  There was no sound to go with the movies until 1973 when a sound track was added to Super 8 film. So if your drunk uncle got up to give a toast, there was no audio record of it.  All you saw was either people laughing or mortified but no sound to give you a hint that he blurted out that it would never last, he slept with his sister-in-law or that he was pretty sure the bride was knocked up.  When it was played back, the only sound you heard was ticking of the projector as the film popped up and down.      

The limited amount of time that you could record on a movie cassette led to people trying to pack in as much action into 150 seconds as possible.  Many of these movies ended up feeling like you were seeing the 1960’s through the eyes of someone who had Attention Deficit Disorder.   Even if you had 10 to 15 rolls to record that special event, it still took a few seconds load between switching out cassettes so you would still have lost pieces of action between where the last roll ended the new one began.  Worse, it would take at least a few days to send off the film and get it developed so you couldn’t really be sure that you got everything.  Primitive as it seems now, it was the best technology that we had at the time.   It was the only way we could go beyond capturing  a nanosecond of action in a photo.  Rather than explaining how your child learned how to walk, you could show them taking those precious tentative steps out into the world.  You could see them doing it in those ridiculous puffy pants with ruffles on the back, the hair in a silly sprout and toddler saddle shoes.   You could see the pride of the Mom or Dad taking their child's hand and leading them down that path with a big silent smile on their face – and appreciate how timeless that moment is.   Different clothes, different decade, but still those tentative steps have to be taken by every toddler and experienced by every parent.

I guess the reason I’m waxing nostalgic about all this is because for my holiday project for my mother and my brothers and sisters this year, I decided to convert a few reels of personal home movies into digital video.  I tried at first to do it myself but trying to get a 40 year old projector to gently play the precious moments of my recorded childhood  didn't work out so well.  I found that the decades of dust made the machine smoke and when I tried to un-jam the film, my finger got shredded in the sprockets before I could even get my video camera set up.  I decided then and there to have the professionals transfer it.  The quality would be better and the chances of bloodshed were much lower.

My brothers got a selection of home movies from my mother’s house which has been pretty empty since she moved from Miami to Tallahassee to go into assisted living.  The films spanned from 1957 from when they lived in Medford, Massachusetts to various vacations up to 1974.  My mother was pretty meticulous about labeling the outside of the film canisters so it was easy to see what year it covered and what activities were documented.  I got a dual 8 mm viewer from the place that I was having the film transferred so that I could see the movies in advance to decide which movies were worth transferring.  Putting the film on the spools and cranking them through the viewer brought  back to life those memories that had remained still for all these decades.  Birthday parties with pony rides, trips to Mathason Hammock, a family vacation to Pioneer City, or just playing in the backyard were all subjects of these long forgotten films. 

I picked out the best of our collective toddler-hoods.  I got 200 feet of film from 1957 when my parents still lived near Boston and my sister Sharon and I were still six to seven years from existence.   It was interesting seeing my older sister Kathy playing with her baby brother Bill in the pool in their backyard, seeing her climb on monkey bars and totally mug for the camera.  Again, these films were silent so any sound of her little voice singing to her brothers was never captured.  There’s the footage of my brother Bill’s second birthday which proved that no matter how advanced we as a species become, kids will always love ice cream, cake and getting presents – those emotions are pretty timeless.  Then there are the images of my brother Steve as an infant being passed around and adored as infants always are.  Then there is the footage of my parents young and just starting out with their family.  My mother is wearing bright red lipstick which was your make-up basic back then with matching nail polish.  She looks vibrant even in light of the fact she had three children in five years.  My dad looks thin and has no problem pushing a stroller or shooting some of the movie footage so that my mother is actually documented in the movies.  My grandparents still look like my grandparents but with less gray and more energy.  It’s a little freaky to see all these people and how they looked before I was born.  I’m not jealous mind you, just interested in the dynamic before I came along.  There is one part where my mother is throwing back her head and laughing out loud - something I rarely saw growing up probably because probably after having five kids to look after, she didn’t has as many LOL moments.

When I got to the footage of 1966, I got to see myself at three and my sister at two playing in the backyard.  My brother Steve who is about nine at this point is clowning around as I douse him with a hose.   My sister Sharon running around topless in the backyard with me in my favorite bathing suit (I still remember how much I loved that suit!)  The two of us were so close then, she was my little Dee-Dee. I was 16 months old when she was born and I couldn’t say Sharon but I could call her Dee-Dee.  It stuck through the time we went to college.   I remembered how much she hated sand on her toes and would insist on sitting in a chair while the rest of us played in the water.  It’s those little seemingly small details you remember the most.

I decided to get about 600 feet transferred which would be about 40 minutes of digital video.  Ironically, I had to drop off the film and wait for about a week for it to be transferred much like my mother used to when she took her movies to be developed at Zayre’s or Walgreens.  I asked them to put it in a Quicktime format so that I could edit on iMovie.   I uploaded the video into my computer and watched these images come to life once again but without being washed out by a projector bulb.   There we were, the Cody kids in all our youthful glory – just learning to walk, play and swing.  I looked at one scene of me at three getting ready to jump into a plastic pool with a blue two piece bathing suit.  I take a running start then hesitate and go back and run back before stopping again and then plopping with both legs bent.  I’d watch that piece and want to tell that little girl that it’s okay to be bold – jump in without hesitating.   As I grew older, I would often hesitate – sometimes it worked in my favor but most of the time it didn’t.  I guess that’s why I became so attracted to improvisation in college – you can’t hesitate if you want to be any good at it. 

I finished the editing the video and put the holiday footage together at the end from 1957 and 1963.  I hoped my mother and my siblings would like it.  I took it with me to Tallahassee so that my sister Kathy, my brother Bill, my mom and our families could watch it together.  I also uploaded it on Vimeo for my sister Sharon and Steve to watch.  The time came for us to watch it in Kathy’s living-room on her DVD much like we used to as kids when my mom got our the projector so we could see the footage she had just gotten back.  I was amazed how much Kathy and Bill remembered of their Massachusetts days.   We laughed at the our antics as children and at the patience my father had at trying to keep a band of five kids together while my mother documented what she could.  My mother remembered people we couldn’t and it felt good to hear her connect to those old memories and see herself as that young mother excited to have her daughter try on a coat from Felines Department store.  Here’s a link to a 60 second mock movie promo I did for The Codys – A Party of Seven.

I guess my hope with all this is to remind the Cody kids how close we used to be before adulthood, marriage and our own families got in the way.   Our mother is beginning to lose her memory and soon these home movies will be all we have to connect us to our past because she won’t be able to recount those moments to us anymore.  In a way, I guess that’s what this blog is about.  If my kids ever wonder who I was, they can look here and get an idea of what their mother thought and the things I went through, both good and bad.   It also makes me think for all the video equipment I have around here - I need to take video of them and save it because they will be grown and out before I know it.  I’ll want them to remember the good times and not all the times I had to say that we need to watch our money. You know, the silly times in the park or on vacation in Chattanooga or just playing around in the living room.  I'm going to be 50 years old this year and yet I still remember vividly playing in my childhood Miami backyard, the smell of the fresh cut grass and how much my brother Steve used to make me laugh.  It seems like yesterday and yet it was 47 years ago.   I just want my kids to remember their childhood and to be able to smile about it because it all goes by so very, very fast.  

The Replacements

The other day I came across two boxes that were hidden in the back of the garage that had to be moved because there was a leak from the top floor shower dripping on them.   The boxes had undoubtedly been there for many years - probably since we moved into the house in 2004.   As I started to go through them trying to salvage what was wet, I realized that these boxes were more of time capsule than anything else.  They were a mishmash of things that were thrown carelessly together in an effort to move our lives quickly from one place to another.  I probably had the intention of unpacking them immediately once we moved into the new house before life distracted me from that goal.  

There was an interesting conglomeration of items - the petticoat from my wedding dress along with my wedding veil which were wet but not moldy.   I was able to save the petticoat and veil.  It was amazing how well they looked after a quick wash and line dry.  I'm not the size 4 that I was when I got married but at least the veil still fit. There were my high school year books that didn't get wet thankfully, old photos in plastic frames that were protected, and an ivory pipe collection from Max's side of the family had only a little wear and tear.   Finally, I found some old clothes of the kids that probably should have been donated rather than moved.   Knowing me, I probably thought they would get a few months more wear before they went the Salvation Army.    I put the damp clothes in the washing machine marveling at how little they were once and that their butts actually fit into these little sweat pants and dresses.  

I'm know I'm not the first person to say how fast the time goes when you have kids.   Time seems to slow down when they are babies and you are sleep deprived - you wonder when they will be able to do things for themselves.   Your whole life is about taking care of them - seeing to their needs.   You might have momentary feelings of resentment - when you just want five minutes in the bathroom to yourself but you need to have them in there with you so you can see what they're doing.  Everything has to be baby proofed once they get mobile.  Then when they are toddlers - they are all about saying "I do it - I do it" so emphatically that you let them even if you know that glass of milk they're pouring will end up over the counter and raining droplets on the floor.    Time speeds up once you are able to sleep through the night and their infant bodies seem to double and triple in size at a lightening speed.   They start to talk in full sentences and let you know exactly what they think and will ask you a ton of questions.  They develop this bold brightness - this trust in the world and their ability to navigate it. You marvel as they go into pre-school and let go of your hand so quickly to be with new friends or holding on for dear life because this new situation scares them.   In elementary school they have homework and school projects that make you realize that you are not smarter than a second grader much less than a fifth grader.  

I guess for me the wake up call on how fast it all goes came when Amber was about 10 years old and still in grade school.  We had gone and done some back to school shopping and gotten new shoes to start the school year.   We'd gone to Payless Shoes and found a wide variety of Barbie, Bratz and My Little Pony shoes.  I made a little joke about the Barbie shoes attacking the Bratz shoes which Amber just rolled her eyes at.   Six weeks later I noticed blisters on the tops of Amber's toes and asked her what was wrong.  "My shoes are really hurting me,"  she said.   I always buy shoes at least a half size bigger than what they are wearing and asked her to put on her shoes.  Instead of having toe wiggling room, I could see how her toes were crammed into the top of her sneaker.    We went to get shoes that night.   The sales lady took one look at her feet and got out the women's foot measure.   "She's ten and we just bought some little girl shoes a few week ago, how could she be in a women's size?" I asked.   The sales lady laughed - "Sometimes they literally grow over night and it look like she's a women's 5 1/2."   When Amber heard that, she was off like a flash to the women's department trying on bright red pumps.   I ran after her, past the the Barbie and Bratz shoes that I had casually mocked a few weeks ago and now was sad that I would never buy again for my daughter.   I found some sensible flats for her to try on to which she responded - "Those shoes are for little women Mom, they're not for me."   Gulp.   My daughter was turning into a young woman right before my very eyes and I was not ready.    

Daniel went from being my easy baby to a toddler with strong opinions about everything.   He's always known how to use his fair haired good looks to get what he wants.  When he was a toddler, he figured out how to climb out of his crib and go down the hall of our apartment at the time to see what we were watching on TV.   He'd get picked up and put right back into his crib.   One night as Max and I were watching The Gilmore Girls, there's three year old Daniel crawling on his stomach Marine style with a blanket, a small pillow and his favorite stuffy, Pup-Pup.   Once again, we told him "Get back into bed."  He looked at us with a mischievous smile and said "I in bed."  Technically, he was right, he had brought the contents of his bed with him - so yes - he was in bed.  Ah, loopholes - my first insight to the fact that my son might just be a lawyer.   Since then, he's become the family's resident expert on the Titanic and other shipwrecks.  But now he has set his sights on bigger things than just cruise ships - he's created his own country of Asoman which is in the Pacific and has it's own language, form of government, exports and currency.  He's even designed a flag and buildings for the capital of the country.    Some kids do Fantasy Football, my 11 year old son does fantasy countries.  

Those things ran through my mind as I got their time capsule clothes out of the dryer - and held them in my arms - still warm from the dryer and smelling of fabric softener.   The stripped green pajamas they both wore because it didn't look like a girl's or boy's PJs.  The little sun dress that Amber wore in the first grade.  The blue sweat pants Daniel used to wear to the park when he was 18 months and would sit on the swings and want us to push him.   The sight of them together holding hands and six year old Amber admonishing us for giving a time out to a two year old Daniel for breaking something he was told not to touch.  "How could you possibly punish this perfect little boy?" she asked with one hand on her hip and the other hand in his.    I prayed then and now that they will always stay best friends and look out after each other like that. 

As I put those clothes in the box to donate to St. Vincent DePaul, I realized that my children are growing up whether I wanted them to or not.  They are the next generation - our replacements.   They are also two of the smartest, funniest, creative and loving people I've ever met.   And while Max and I might not be perfect parents (Good God- who is?) I'm going to look forward to seeing what sort of adults they turn out to be.  My guess is that the future is in very good hands.