Partial Timeline

1964 - The Beatles blare from every corner of the earth. A midwestern woman already quite unhappy with her life drinks but not excessively drinks a lot of coffee with saccharin, and is a heavy smoker. She has a husband who does things like vanishing without warning, making drunken collect calls from several states away to tell her that he is leaving . already having two young children who are 3 and 4 for most of the year, she is pregnant with her 3rd, this one her husband had badgered her into bearing..

Late 1964 -- I am birthed by a small town family doctor in a hospital in a nearby larger city. I am what is called a 'blue baby' and I barely pass the 1964 APGAR standard. have birth defects, growths on my face and ears, deformed eyes, extremely spastic and jerky movements for a newborn, which my doctor informs my mother and that he predicts I will be moderately to severely retarded. I am also very undersized and I will remain notably smaller than my same aged peers at any age for the rest of my life. I am allowed to go home with my mother in a couple of days (which is standard length of time and management of baby care for the times). One of the characteristics noted by the doctor at that time was the way I went rigid when touched/held (as part of that spasticity 'too jerky of moments for an infant'). Arrangement is made for corrective surgeries, removal of odd growths, eye surgeries. My grandmothers both fretted, my mother eyed me and my father with mocking contempt, my father defended and denied, all around the topic of "there's something wrong with this child."

1965 - I am one year's old, already obviously behind in milestones, I continue to have eye surgeries. I am visually impaired and undergoing a series of eye surgeries and eye contact isn't expected. I lay about like a fish and ruminate my food, except when picked up and held at which time I go entirely rigid and then arch my back and push away. My mother interprets this as my rejecting her, my parents argue deeply over this sort of topic, often into the night ("the child cannot reject the mother its you rejecting her' etc). My brother and sister become accustomed to these verbal screaming matches. I very nearly die of pneumonia this year.

1965-66. to 16 - 18 months I have not crawled or made any attempt to transport myself anywhere, no attempts at speech my skills consist of being able to sit up by myself. I have made no babble, I stim a lot by rocking my body, shaking my hands and shaking head so hard I frequently throw myself over. I get on all fours 'tigering' style in my crib to ram my head repeatedly into the headboard and sides of my crib. I scream a lot. My parents are told I am not only a blind retarded baby but I'm also a colicky baby. The only thing that sooths me from my constant waking hours of screaming are two things a musical sort of xylophone toy I will sometimes play with endlessly over and lining and working the parts to make the same sounds over and over, and a transistor radio, this is taken with me to the many hospital stays for surgeries. My father vividly recalls the day this transistor radio fell out of the crib at the hospital and broke.

1966 Somewhere at 16 to 18 months the patches are removed from my eyes for good and it becomes apparent that there's more going on here than blindisms and mental retardation. I can physically see but I still seem blind. I don't lose the blindisms, I still don't crawl, my mother begins to believe I will never crawl let alone walk until at 18 months I abruptly pull myself up on furniture to toddle unsteadily but freely across the room to clap onto the edge of the table and peer over at my sister's toy turntable to scream at it until its figured out what I wanted there (my sister's Beatles 45 records to be played).

1966-67 18 - 24 months the family doctor suspects I may have a thing called "Kanner's Syndrome" and I might be 'autistic' and tells my parents so. . I am taken to specialists in the nearby larger city for testing and this is confirmed. My father looks for books on this in the library and finds very little.
I begin to wallow on the local newspaper teaching myself word shape recognition unawares to anyone.

1967 Dr Bettleheim comes out with a theory that autism is caused by poor mothering. My father discovers this and mother just happens to actually fit the image and a new tool to be used against her by my father is entered into my parents’ ongoing battle which serves to escalate that situation. Due to this, Bettleheim theories would live long in our house long after they had died out anywhere else. Aunts and uncles begin asking my parents that they'll take the older two but not me on gatherings and overnights etc. My mother cringes feeling accused, my father, in denial and desperately believing I'd be just find if my mother were any sort of mother and if the whole world would just leave me alone, rages feeling defensively at this on my behalf. It is under these conditions that my father's zeal to defend prove and 'make me like the others' and as I am walking and the typical age when this is done to children at that time, my father starts to attempt toilet training me.

1967 - 1971 My father becomes the stay-at-home parent to watch me between his college work and sometimes factory tool and dye work while my mother sustains steady work as a secretary for first one place then another. My grandfather sometimes fills the gaps when my father must be away but he works his schedule to be my primary caregiver as much as is possible. I expand from reading the newspaper to tearing up his college books as well as occasional books left about by family members. This book destruction frustrates my family greatly, who don't realize I am doing anything more than mimicking behaviors. . Though I can't speak and I'm not potty trained and I'm thought to be retarded by the age of 7 I have read some fairly lofty texts, including Mein Kampf, the Communist Manifesto, various works by Nietzsche. My father watches Sesame Street with me and I enjoy the quality time with him. I am 11 years old before I make the connection of the colorful shapes the muppets hold up and sing about to what I've been doing and that there is an alphabet, these separate individual pieces to the patterns.

1969-1970 Its been assumed by now that I will never be able to speak. I am 4 years old and sitting in a highchair in the back of the livingroom when after one of my brothers favorite obsessions in the form of a weekly tv show is coming to a close, I once imitate the offkey musical repeating sounds that I also hear at show's end, startling my entire family with my first word. Quite clearly I speak my first word -- "batman." My family's reaction and general upset and chaos attention and coaxing that results from this scared me. I wasn’t able to give a repeat performance and spoke no more words until a year later when I would not only do it again actually string two words together to say (between bites of spaghetti at the dinner table) on my father's walking through the door that "Dad's home." Excited upset from my family follows this event as well. Throughout my childhood and beyond words will continue to be very rare events which are virtually non existent. I'm considered "functionally non verbal' and later in life the lack of coordination and preplanning required to form words will be called 'dysphasia' and then 'aphasia.'

1970-1971 My father attempts to place me in a regular kindergarten at the same school my older brother and sister attend. He is called before the half day is over and told I can't be taught there, I will need to go to a special school, they don't take children like me at this school. Later that day the busdriver calls and says he will never have me on his bus again either. I had thought I had fun and a good time when I was there and I recall being extremely upset when I learned I would not be going back. I had thought I had been roughhousing on the bus and in the school with other children being playful and having a good time, the school however felt I had been fighting and the worst of it was my kicking at the teacher shins. I become quite upset when I begin to realize that I won't be getting on the big yellow schoolbus and going there again. I throw a massive fit every morning when I watch my brother and sister get on that bus and I can't go until my father finally locates a nursery school designed for younger children than I am that will take me. It is a catholic nursery school run by odd nuns who crack each child's hands with a ruler at the start of every morning. My classmates are mostly 3 and 4 and I am 5, soon to be 6. I don't deal well here and end up being picked on by the younger children, my behavior at home deteriorates. The day I come home with my security blanket torn to shreds, the silk having been carefully ripped off by the nun is the last day my father sends me there.

1971 -1972 my behaviors get worse. My mother cannot control me at all and arguments between my parents escalate yet again my father hears of a method of treatment called Lovaas. This promised to remove my bad behaviors plus teach me to talk and toilet train me. They used what are called negative reinforcements and it was very brutal and cruel screaming in my face and ears grabbing and shaking me shocking and slapping me. I was not allowed to eat or drink or have anything I liked to have or do and I could not do the things they wanted and I gave up and withdrew and became very afraid and stopped doing anything at all and my father made them stop.


1975- 76 (11 years old)
Notes/keywords:
weird allergic reaction, puberty, cracking head on ice, 'convulsion' gran mal seizures, wildchild hellcat, climbing the tv areal, parents separated, Bill Sherwood's farm 'sherwood's forrest' me in the woods, hunters, climbing the windmill, dad's drinking, the pig farmer, first fosterhomes