Meltdown in a shopping mall
The security guards
who circle my son
look at me for guidance.
Their authority has crumbled.
I’m in total control
of these four young men,
three in grey uniforms,
one in jeans, T-shirt and hoodie
thrashing on the polished floor
squealing
groaning
purple-faced
frightening the shoppers.
I want to tell them they’re in no danger:
I can easily get him to attack me.
He prefers to attack the people he loves.
My son wants two date scones
from Bakers Delight
and to eat them in the food court.
Daay sc-ON! Daay sc-ON! Daay sc-ON!
he chanted from the back of the car.
We’ve aborted our mission
on the lower-ground concourse
halfway between
Target and Golden Banana
where he’s been felled by
the fluorescent lights that beat down on him
the white noise that roars all around him
the shoppers and trolleys
that confuse and disorient him.
My son’s face has gone from purple to blue.
His squeals are now screams.
Shoppers are running.
The security guards look at me:
they’re starting to panic.
Back away from him, I tell them.
Clear the area, I tell them.
We have to get him to the car, I tell them.
Each time, they obey.
They obey this older father
with his short grey beard
and his teenage son
reed thin
writhing like a fish
hauled out from another world.
By force of reason
After the diagnosis
I walked back
from the community health centre
under Ashfield Mall
and I made the decision
by force of reason
that I would love my son
for the rest of my life.
I made the decision
that his nervous system
would be my nervous system.
That I would see
that I would try to see
how I thought he might see
with his bright-eyed absorption
a ladybird on a leaf
the glint of a crushed foil packet
in the gutter.
I made the decision
that I would feel
that I would try to feel
the driving rain
the tidal waves
the electrical storms
that coursed through his senses.
That I would watch
over and over and over again
the burnt-orange sunsets
the blue-shadowed ice floes
from The Lion King
and The Pebble and the Penguin.
After the diagnosis
I made the decision
by force of reason
that because he would be forced
to be neurotypical
to pretend to be neurotypical
to largely fail
at being neurotypical,
then it was only fair
that I should be autistic
that I should try to be autistic
that I should guess
what it might be like
to see the world in fragments
that I must forever
slowly, painfully
reassemble.
So I got down on my knees
and magnified the small
until no part could be connected
to any other.
Then I stood tall
and stared down from on high
and raised the earth to the sky
and abolished the horizon.
Then I flattened the world
onto an endless plain
and twisted it like a kaleidoscope
and became drunk,
blissfully drunk,
on its ruby colours.
After the diagnosis
I made the decision
by force of reason
to give my life to someone
who might never
know my name.
The finitude
of the overlap
of the lifespan
of parent and child
is time’s cruellest gesture.
My son’s mother
If I tried to count how many hours
his mother has sat beside him
at different tables
in different houses
trying to reconstruct
his shattered senses
I could only guess at a total.
Let’s say an average
of two hours a day
for fifteen years.
That’s approximately
10,950 hours and counting.
Her hand over his
he traces
letters and numbers,
flowers and fish.
He copies
clocks and cars,
houses and sunsets.
His eyes trained on her lips
he mouths sounds,
strains to form them
into vowels, consonants,
syllables, words.
When she let’s go of his hand
the pictures are scrambled, distorted.
When he forms his own words
the sounds are chunked, fragmented.
But there are words.
‘Maah naayym…ees Aaa-LEX!’
he whoops.
And there are pictures –
diligently drawn,
perfectly recognisable pictures
of a bee, a bat, a cockatoo.
At the table beside her son
his mother’s patience
has no limit.
His drawings climb the wall:
sheets of A4, Blu-Tacked ceiling high.
They’re filled with tangled lines
that somehow form
the twist of a snake,
the bill of a toucan,
the head of kangaroo,
the flaking Corinthian columns
on the front landing
of our brick veneer house
that he loves to lean against
when his lessons are over,
until he’s drawn back inside
by the smell of Vegemite toast
his mother or I have made him
for afternoon tea.
Later, she’ll come to where
I’m sitting at my desk and say
‘Look at this.’
It’s the drawing of the day.
On the left of the page
an emu stands tall and still,
on the right
our son has set it dancing.
Author’s note: The poem ‘Meltdown in a shopping mall’ reflects a period during my son’s adolescence when he experienced severe sensory overload in noisy, busy places. As he has grown older, and with the help of various programs and interventions, his ability to cope has significantly improved.
