Summer Recreation

I am not a traveler. As my sister and her family headed off this week for a summer vacation in Myrtle Beach, I was happy for them but even happier that I didn’t have to go anywhere this summer. My aversion to car trips, I’m sure, was shaped by our annual summer treks to see my mom’s family in West Virginia. While I was delighted to get there and visit my relatives, the journey there was not fun. Of course, this was in the 1970’s when kids didn’t have personal DVD players, handheld video games, IPods, or cell phones to keep us amused during a nine-hour trip. Nope, I had a book and a stack of Tiger Beat magazines to pass the time. My parents and we three kids would pile into our version of the Griswold family truckster [from the movie Vacation], a Buick Estate Wagon, and make the trip southeast. My mom would pack a nice assortment of snacks for the trip, including cheese and peanut butter crackers that left orange powder on our hands, seats, and car mats. One year, the three of us plowed through a box of Bugles corn chips less than a half hour into our journey, leading my mom to complain and later be quoted through the years, “You ate all the Bugles, and we’re not even to Wheatfield!” [a real town in Northwest Indiana about 30 miles from our hometown] My dad did all the driving and insisted on complete quiet, which meant that any territorial disputes within the car between siblings had to be settled through dirty looks so as not to disturb our driver and risk his wrath. Moreover, he saw no need to stop unless we needed gasoline, so we learned to ask for bathroom breaks only when absolutely necessary. I don’t think he intended to be a tyrant about things; he just focused on getting there and making good time instead of making the getting there a good time.

After Ed and I were married and went on some car trips of our own, I began to experience some déjà vu, minus the family station wagon and sharing salty snacks with my siblings. Like my dad, Ed preferred to travel in silence, although we could listen to music at times, and he also stopped infrequently for rest or bathroom breaks because he, unlike me, rarely needed to stop and rest or use the facilities. To pass time, I would read books or People magazines, but I discovered the best way to pass time (and not think about having to use the bathroom) was to sleep. Ed even wrote a poem [“Driving North at Nightfall”] that mentions my penchant for dozing in the car while he notices the landscape along the way. Anyway, my lack of affection for traveling has made it easy to accept that we can’t vacation with Alex; this has not been a sacrifice for me. Since Alex is on a restricted diet due to his food sensitivities, planning what he can eat away from home would be a tricky task. Also, his previous history of meltdowns in the car makes us reluctant to take him on a long car ride, lest risking being hit, kicked, or pelted by objects thrown by our backseat driver, should something along the way annoy him. Moreover, Ed and I always have various escape routes and diversion plans for known places that may not necessarily work for strange places, so we’re not eager to put ourselves in situations that could be potentially dangerous, or at least embarrassing, should Alex pitch a fit. And so, this summer, I look over the vacation pictures my friends have shared on Facebook and don’t feel a twinge of jealousy, pleased that Alex’s unpredictable behavior has allowed me to sleep in my own bed, use my own clean bathroom, and avoid being cooped up in the car wondering when we can stop and get out.

Knowing that summer vacation should be a time of new adventures, however, Ed and I have worked at trying to give Alex opportunities to do fun things during our autism-imposed “staycation.” When he was younger, Alex liked to wander around the backyard and play in the sprinkler, but he’s outgrown those activities, leaving us to find things to do close to home. We’re big on free or cheap entertainment in case we have to leave quickly with Alex, so as not to compound the frustration of changed plans with wasted money. This summer, we have taken Alex to “Wonderful Wednesdays,” the weekly noon free concerts at the Valparaiso University Union, which have been terrific. We’re on familiar territory there, and Alex enjoys listening to the singer-guitarists while we sit and sip soft drinks. In addition, we’ve taken him to Dairy Queen for slushes, a local coffee shop for root beer, and family restaurants regularly for meals. He also likes going to our local arcade to play their Deal or No Deal video game. One of our daily activities is shared computer time in which, thanks to our wireless router and each of us having our own laptops, we are all on our computers at the same time. Ed checks out literary journals, current events, and political websites; I play video games, read entertainment news, and spend time on Facebook; and Alex does math research, checks out electronic gadgets, and Googles a variety of topics he wants to learn. For something new, Ed bought Alex an inexpensive digital camera and has taken him to our city parks to take pictures, which he seems to like doing. Alex’s favorite pastime, however, is grocery shopping at Walmart, where he likes strolling the aisles, pushing the cart, and smiling in amusement the entire time. For him, this is Disney World. While I guess we should be thankful that he finds fun in such a common activity, we still keep looking for summer recreation to keep him interested and busy. Besides, I’m hoping to do something worthy of good photographs to post on my Facebook page and/or material to write for the blog. With four weeks of summer vacation left, I’m sure we’ll find it soon.

“So I recommend having fun, because there is nothing better for people in this world than to eat, drink, and enjoy life. This way they will experience some happiness along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 8:15

Adventures

This week, Alex and I are on spring vacation. "Vacation" is really a misnomer because we aren’t actually going somewhere on vacation; perhaps spring break is a better explanation for our situation—we’re on a break from school. Since the university where Ed teaches always has its spring break the first two weeks of March, and the school district where I teach always has its spring vacation the last week of March, our schedules for spring break never coordinate. Not that this difference really matters because we don’t vacation in the traditional sense anyway. Certainly, we enjoy our time off from school, but we spend our time relaxing at home instead of on a beach or at a family fun park. With Alex’s potential to have meltdowns—although less frequent than when he was younger—and his restricted diet that requires planning, staying home makes more sense than trying to deal with issues in unfamiliar settings.

This spring break week, as my friends and colleagues are flying to far-flung places, such as Arizona, Florida, Las Vegas, Cancun, Colorado, and the Caribbean, I’ll be here in Indiana hoping for sunshine. Fortunately, I am a homebody by nature, so staying home never feels like a sacrifice to me. Interestingly, two of my friends who are mothers of teenagers confessed that they would rather stay home, too, instead of going on their family’s planned trips over spring vacation, especially considering all the work involved in packing and unpacking that a trip involves. What they were most looking forward to on their vacations was spending time with their kids, and I can do that at home with Alex more easily than anywhere else. In addition, we can avoid dealing with the rising costs of gasoline, which I fear may upset Alex at some point. A few years ago when gas prices were high, he would have a fit every time we passed a gas station and he saw how expensive gasoline was at the time. Expressing his frustration, he would either throw anything loose he could reach from the backseat (snow scrapers, his sunglasses, books, etc.) at the windshield, or he would slap one of us in the front seat to make his displeasure known. During this time, Ed and I mastered driving places while avoiding any gas stations to prevent provoking the wrath of our backseat driver. Before we went anyplace, we would plot routes ahead of time to make certain Alex would never see the high cost of gasoline, and we learned to take several scenic routes to avoid the dreaded gas stations. Thankfully, gas prices went down, and Alex got over that obsession, but we worry that behavior might return, should he be agitated by rising costs again. Of course, this problem makes travel with Alex difficult, if not impossible.

Fortunately, Alex has simple tastes, finding joy and adventure in everyday experiences that most people take for granted or even find annoying. To begin our spring break, we spontaneously decided the other afternoon to go shopping at Walmart, his favorite place, with my mom. Although most teenage boys would rather be caught dead than shopping at Walmart with their mothers and grandmothers, Alex had a high old time pushing the cart for us, and he patiently listened as we discussed the merits of various toilet bowl cleaners and which flavors of sugar-free Jello tasted best. After we were done with our shopping, we took him to his current favorite section of the store, office supplies, where he happily looked at calculators and label makers, never touching anything, just tilting his head to see their various features. (His previous favorite section of the store was pet food, where he searched for the big bags of dog food and wanted to see the ones that contained the most pounds of food.) With a bemused smile, he waited calmly in the checkout line as the woman in front of us had difficulty using her credit card. Since he had been so pleasant, we decided to take him to an even-bigger array of office supplies at Staples, where he was pleased to view a large display of one of his favorite things, calendars. Again, he never touched anything in the store, just walked along and browsed contentedly. To reward him for his good shopping behavior, we took him to one of his favorite restaurants, a 1950’s style diner that plays golden oldies he enjoys. Sitting in a corner booth we call the Bob Dylan booth because Dylan’s Nashville Skyline album hangs on the wall above it, Alex always smiles as the pictured Bob tips his hat to him as if in greeting. Downing three large Sprites, Alex grinned as he listened to our animated conversation, never interrupting once. Certainly others probably have more exotic experiences during their spring breaks, but I doubt they enjoyed themselves any more than the three generations of us did on that cold, sunny afternoon in Indiana, running around doing mundane things. After all, life is about whom you’re with, not where you are, and Alex has learned that truth early and appreciates those experiences, never feeling that he is somehow missing out on other adventures in life. His contentment brings joy to those around him and makes us feel proud to have raised such a wise young man.

“Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have.” Ecclesiastes 6:9