Tower Of Babel

Well, after a wonderful week with sunshine and brilliant blue skies and warm weather, today dawned foggy, rainy and cold. The fall wind has come folks. There are now 100% more leaves on the ground than yesterday….Aaaah well, I guess that is what seasons are all about.

We had a great weekend here. Aside from the mundane things like laundry and housework etc we went fishing twice, on Sunday and Monday (hence no comments, or blogs because when I was home there was all that “housework” and the other four letter word “work” (the paying kind) to do.

On Sunday just Popsy and I went fishing. It was great. We caught about 16 fish, mostly perch and some sunfish. However, they were all pretty small so we did not end up keeping any of them. Then we decided that seeing as Popsy had the day off on Monday it would be great if we brought along one of my clients
(I am an ABA therapist) on the Monday. He is 7 years old and is autistic. He gets along very well with our own 7-year-old, KD#3, so we let him skip school too and the four of us headed out by 9:30 am on Monday morning.

We were not sure how Jake would react to the boat as he is often rather frightened by loud noises and things that are not routine for him. But he was great. He had met Popsy before, at which time Popsy had taught him how to play baseball. That might be a bit of an exaggeration…. he taught him how to bat the ball and the basics of the game. I am not sure how much of it Jake will remember even now. So he was quite comfortable with him and of course he is always happy to be with KD # 3 as I often take #3 along when he has the day off school and I am going for therapy with Jake. They have become fairly good friends.

Well, to say that the boys out fished Popsy and I is an understatement. I did not get my first fish until about 1:00pm. Some of that was because I was helping Jake and often just holding his line for him. But some of it was just plain bad luck too.

Popsy was busy helping KD #3, who was hands down the Fishing King for the day. He caught 7 fish and some rather good sized ones too. Poor Popsy would hardly have gotten #3’s rod wormed and the line let out before # 3 was bringing up another fish. He caught 3 on the same worm even!!! He is very definitely his Popsy’s son and is quite competitive, especially with Popsy himself and so he was teasing him the entire way home and the rest of the evening about how many he caught and how many Popsy did not. Of course, Popsy had a hand in on each fish, but # 3 does not know that yet, nor does he need to.

We all had great fun. It was also very good to help Jake to experience something new and exciting. He is such a sweet little boy. Having an autistic child is stressful and many times, because of the nature of the condition most of them do not have the ability to be loving or maybe to show their love and when for the first time Jake came downstairs and said to his Mom, “You are my Mommy” she burst into tears and we felt so proud of having been able to help him to express the things that he had not been able to until recently.

My year with him is almost over and I must say, I will miss spending as much time with him as I have over the past year. ( He lives in the same small town as I do and his Mom and I are friends). But above all, I have been blessed to be a part of his life and his learning experience and although we have taught him many things over the year, he has also taught us many things. So cheers to Jake and to all the Jakes out there in the world…they are very special people, even if they cannot always communicate with us. They do have something to offer, we just have to figure out what that is and to learn how to accept it.

It was a great day!!! One for the memories!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2004 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.