The Head-to-Head Matchup: Asperger Syndrome vs Anxiety Disorder
There is a chapter in Annie Proulx’s novel The Shipping News where the main character Quoyle is helping boatbuilder Alvin Yark finish Quoyle’s new boat. The curved timbers leaning against the wall of the shop remind him of the body of Wavey, the strong and quiet woman he has fallen in love with in Newfoundland. If they were to marry, he wonders, would his dead adulterous wife Petal and Wavey’s drowned philandering husband Herry be in the bed with them? “He imagined the demon lovers coupling, biting and growling, while he and Wavey crouched against the footboard with their eyes squeezed shut, fingers in their ears.”
This image makes me think of Andy and me, crouched at the foot of our bed, while our respective disorders duke it out or mate or both. Asperger’s Syndrome and Anxiety Disorder, in pitched battle – or union. There were days when I would have loved to claim that Andy caused my Anxiety Disorder, that his constant state of apprehension, his overreactions to perceived threats, his loud outbursts at unexpected times, his unwarranted criticisms, were what set into overdrive in my brain the mechanism for releasing high-alert neurochemicals. That my brain became corroded from too much adrenaline and eventually turned my body into a twitching marionette. But that would be untrue.
I think back over my life and realize that I have always suffered from anxiety, even as early as age eight. In third grade my arch enemy was Lisa Miller. I really hated her, though I couldn’t tell you why now. I was all excited about Brownies, even showed up to the first meeting with my little chocolate-milk-colored skirt and beanie, until I realized that Lisa’s mother was the troop leader and Lisa the troop star. I turned in my vest without even a single badge.
One day in third grade we were working with rulers and those pink parallelogram-shaped erasers, which I realized in combination would make a tremendous catapult. Mrs. Bergner was writing on the blackboard, so I placed the eraser on the end of the ruler, pulled the ruler/eraser back with my right hand, holding the ruler’s other end in my left, and TWANG! let it fly. I nailed Lisa right on the side of the head, a direct temple hit. She turned to me, mouth open, stunned, and immediately raised her hand.
“Mrs. Bergner, Maureen just hit me in the head with an eraser!”
“Maureen?” Mrs. Bergner turned from Lisa to me, stunned. I was the Class Angel. This was unprecedented.
My face turned white. I couldn’t even speak. My head turned cold and I could feel my hands start to shake.
“I’ll talk to you after class,” Mrs. Bergner said to me, clearly mystified.
At 3:30, when everyone else had left, I stammered and stuttered through a complete lie: It was an accident. I was holding my ruler and eraser and somehow it just happened. Accidentally. The eraser arced across the room and I was as surprised as anybody. I was sorry. I would be more careful.
One of the benefits of being Class Angel is that the teacher always believes you. Mrs. Bergner smiled and, knees bent to put her face at my level, said, “I didn’t think you could have done something like that on purpose.”
I smiled through my tears, clutched my gnome bookbag to my chest and walked carefully out of the classroom. I walked down the stairs, past the doorway to the basement storage room filled with construction paper and glue where we hid during air raid drills, and out the big front door.
Once outside, I ran. Down the one block of Rogers Avenue, past the dark narrow driveway between houses where I had fended off Jamie Barrs and his cooties with my umbrella, slowly across East Avenue via Mrs. Meisner the crossing guard, past the park where I had lost my copy of Farmer Boy (found and returned to me by my hero Perry Beardsley because it had my name on a gnome nameplate on the inside front cover), past Bud’s Liquor Store where my father bought gin for Leona our sick old lush neighbor and for himself, across the street, past the house where our adopted dog Tuffy really lived, past Juniper Street where down in the shady depths lived Josie Sowicki, the teenage felon who walked home right on top of my heels to scare me, past Chrissy Caputo’s house, and up my driveway. I hurled open the side door, flew up the four stairs into the kitchen and threw myself on my mother’s mercy.
“What’s wrong?” she exclaimed, distressed at my tears.
“Can’t … you … see … how …late…I …am?” I managed between sobs.
“You’re not late, honey.”
“That’s … ‘cause … I … ran … the … whole…way!!” I bawled.
“What happened?” she asked, soothing me.
Of course I lied to her, too. It was unthinkable that I had done something wrong. Unthinkable. It could not be admitted. I was an angel. So I covered my sin.
Nowadays, our own three boys never get this bent out of shape when they get in trouble, so I do believe my reactions to the eraser event could count as early symptoms of my anxiety. I don’t know where it came from: Catholicism, being the little cute one, covering up my parents’ problems (which I didn’t have a name for at this point). But I knew it would never happen ever again. Ever.
In high school my anxiety took a more destructive turn, and clinical problems cropped up. My beloved older sister had left for Japan. My silent older brother was home but inaccessible. My father’s drinking had gotten worse and my mother’s reactions to it more extreme. I was the perfect invisible daughter with the high grades and the spotless behavior record. The only thing I was not was thin … well, not thin enough. Gwen Everett was gaining eleventh-grade fame prior to the Junior Miss pageant by losing lots of weight: everyone speculated she was using diet pills. That seemed like a good route to the icing on my own cake, so I decided to starve.
The only problem was that when I got home from school, I felt so sorry for myself and also felt I so deserved a reward for my high grades and perfection, that every day I gave myself a treat – a big treat. A gallon of ice cream. An entire pie. A whole package of Oreos. Once I was blissed out on sugar, an image of Gwen would pop into my mind and horror struck. Up I’d go to the second-floor bathroom where I would close the door, drink an entire glass of water, leave the tap running, and vomit the entire indulgent feast into the toilet.
Again, I think I might call that anxiety. I have since read that bulimia has been linked to abnormalities in serotonin levels in the brain, the same neurochemical implicated in anxiety. I do not know if the stress of living in an alcoholic household altered my serotonin levels or my genetically low serotonin levels caused me to overreact to any perceived threat or if my eating order left a serotonin “scar” that caused anxiety to chase me for years after. I have even speculated that my father drank to self-medicate his own genetic anxiety disorder. Whichever way the sequence went, anxiety got pretty firmly entrenched.
Even through college, I feared new situations, social gatherings, speaking in class, lots of things. Mid-way through my Bachelor’s, my dad went to rehab, I grew up, met Andy, found my feet, and the anxiety seemed to subside for a while.
Then we moved to the farm. Talk about tense. For years we barely made ends meet. We would just throw weeks’ worth of mail in the trash because we knew we couldn’t pay the bills. I remember sleeping on the floor by the woodstove because we couldn’t afford fuel oil and finding the cupboards bare except for a solitary can of kidney beans.
And there was Andy’s dad, our financial backer, breathing down our necks, and me struggling to find a job that paid decent with an English degree in rural upstate New York, and trying to decide if we could stick it out or should give it up and be ostracized by the Bartlett family. Gracious! the work, the worry, the fear.
And also, though not named at this time, there was Asperger’s Syndrome. While Andy and I, our purest essential selves, cowered at the end of the bed, our two mental difficulties would come out swinging: Asperger’s Syndrome and Anxiety Disorder in head-on-head combat. 
Each would choose its symptom of choice and throw it out there to wage war against the other one’s symptom of choice. It was like a Pokemon battle.
Asperger’s says, “Extreme overreaction to perceived threat, I choose you!” and Andy would melt down into a rant and rave over a problem in the barn.
Anxiety fights back with, “feelings of panic, fear and uneasiness” and I would go racing around, quivering, trying to help or deal with the problems or clear the deck ahead of Andy so nothing would cause an outburst.
Asperger’s strikes out with “lack of empathy or understanding of another person’s perspective” and Andy would call me at 9 AM on my first day of a new job to tell me we were being sued by the neighbor for five million dollars.
Anxiety throws back “abnormal apprehension and fear” and I would spend the morning not only quaking through my first day on the job but also practicing my testimony in court about the tractor accident.
Asperger’s pulls out “uncontrollable rage” and makes Andy swipe all the items off the top of my dresser.
Anxiety pulls out “sensitivity to criticism” and hurls me out into the cold haymow where I fume and cry and wish I had somewhere else to go.
This epic conflict went on for years until it finally came to a head. April truly is the cruelest month. One April I was in a car accident with five of my favorite students, and the next April we had a sociopathic liar holed up in our employee trailer, exploiting a Worker’s Comp injury and threatening to sue us if we fired him. We sent the kids to my Mom’s for April break and kept the shotgun in our bedroom.
Something about this one-two hit really threw me off the deep end. I started developing every physical symptom of anxiety that exists: heart palpitations, hot flashes, dizziness, shortness of breath, tunnel vision, numb fingers and toes, loss of balance. My doctor ruled out every possible physical problem through heart monitors, MRIs, blood work. And still these symptoms persisted.
Finally Andy took the bull by the horns. One really great thing about the Asperger’s flight-or-fight response is the fight half. Once Andy turns the corner on a threat, he becomes my knight in shining armor. One morning I was gathering my stuff for school and I was crying, I couldn’t stand up, I was tipping over, I couldn’t breathe, and Andy said, “That’s it. We’re going to the doctor.” He called me in sick and put me in the car.
My GP looked at me and said, “We’ve ruled out every other possible explanation for this. I believe you have an anxiety disorder and we’re going to have to try medication.” And so I entered the wild world of psychopharmaceuticals. Celexa gave me a rash, Paxil turned me into a libido-less concrete block, and then we tried Effexor.
As Asperger’s and Anxiety were entering the tenth round, in swooped Effexor Woman to halt the fight. This medicine plus weekly counseling for four months turned me into a person I had never been. Effexor Woman was assertive, she was confident, she was fearless, she used positive dialogue, and she fought off panic attacks with one hand. She had reasonable expectations of herself, she exercised, she tolerated neither guilt nor obsessive scary thoughts.
She was actually quite frightening for everyone until she got her sea legs.
I can honestly say that with the use of a very low dose SSRI, I finally feel “normal.” I can feel myself even now in situations where I used to become anxious, waiting for the stab in the stomach, the sting of adrenaline, the racing thoughts. And they just don’t happen. Situations that would have driven me under the table previously elicit only the appropriate amount of apprehension, not debilitating fear.
Finally finding the “Anxiety Disorder” name for my behaviors allowed me to find the right antidote to help me out. Now that Effexor Woman is on my team, I can see what is happening with clarity. I took my fingers out of my ears and opened my eyes and threw Anxiety Disorder out of our bed for good. In the ring with Asperger’s, EW just smiles and steps back from the thrown punches. Let those symptoms do as they will. They won’t bother me.
According to the Harvard Women’s Health Journal, “Anxiety is a reaction to stress that has both psychological and physical features. The feeling is thought to arise in the amygdala, a brain region that governs many intense emotional responses.” So Andy and I have that in common: we both are affected by atypical amygdala activity. The big difference seems to be that mine is chemical and his is structural.
Now that we know Andy’s issue, I want to have some nice superhero help him out as well. I am completely on the side of the Asperger’s Rights Groups who decry people’s efforts to change the neurologically different. I have a treatable neurochemical imbalance; Andy has a neurological difference and that makes him who he is. (I want a T-shirt that says “I’m with the Aspie.”)
But that neurological difference does often distress him and makes him anxious and ineffective. It makes him do things he later feels really bad about. (Andy’s alternate Asperger’s nickname “Caspar Weinberger Syndrome” comes to mind.) Andy actually guards his hyper-alertness, saying that fear is what allows survival, of an animal or a farm. But excessive fear, as I well know, can actually cause imprecise thinking and fruitless commotion when it is extreme.
In her book Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin relates that she began taking anti-depressants when her panic attacks began to seriously affect her ability to function but that she has had to adjust and experiment with the combination that works best. She admits that “Manipulating my biochemistry has not made me a completely different person but it has been somewhat unsettling to my idea of who and what I am to be able to adjust my emotions as if I were tuning up a car.”
I admit to the same discomfort. I have read the scientific descriptions of what Effexor does in my brain and I question whether I am messing with the person God genetically made me to be. However, when I missed a dose lately, and found myself unable to attend to my students or my children, I decided this was not a way God wanted me to be.
Every time I talk to my doctor about lowering my dose or going off the medicine completely, she says, “Has your lifestyle changed?” “No.” “Then I would not go off the medicine.” She continues, “You might have to accept that this is a lifelong condition, like diabetes.” In that light, I would not deprive myself of insulin if I were diabetic. I would not stop taking my allergy medication. Why is manipulation of brain biochemistry any different?
However, Asperger Syndrome and autism are different. The actual neurons – the wiring – is different, not the chemical cocktail that’s flowing around them. My drugs alter the amount of serotonin and nor-epinephrine available in my brain. This can be changed. Asperger Syndrome, as far as the biologists can tell, is a condition of the neurons themselves.
This is why Aspies for Freedom oppose the idea of an autism “cure.” Their website states, “Part of the problem with the “autism as tragedy” point of view is that it carries with it the idea that a person is somehow separable from autism, and that there is a “normal” person trapped “behind” the autism. Being autistic is something that influences every single element of who a person is – from the interests we have, the ethical systems we use, the way we view the world, and the way we live our lives. As such, autism is a part of who we are. To “cure” someone of autism would be to take away the person they are, and replace them with someone else … Aspies For Freedom opposes the idea of an autism “cure”, as a real cure would be unethical, and the current myth of the cure is harmful.”
However, those with Asperger Syndrome and autism DO acknowledge the benefits of treating the symptoms of Asperger’s and autism. One woman, who takes five different pills to manage an array of tics and panic attacks, says, “Of course I’d like to be able to live a happy life without medications. I will have to find a time when I have the freedom to risk inconvenient behavior changes, and the courage to risk the emotional trauma that would go with those changes … I might do it, someday, but for now my pills are too helpful to give up.
I don’t know if medication is an appropriate option for Andy, but Effexor Woman is ready and willing to fly him down to the doctor to find out. There are days when Andy’s stress is minimal and mine is chemically controlled and we interact like two relatively normal folks instead of puppets handled by battling neurological conditions.
The person I am with unmedicated Anxiety Disorder is not me, and now that she has been banished from the bed, my real me can take her place. I am not looking to change Andy, but I know that even he dislikes the power that the constant fight-flight response has over him and the exhaustion it causes.
This is a territory into which we are treading lightly. Andy was misdiagnosed with ADHD as a kid and was on Ritalin for many years. He still bridles at the stigma of that time period. He also fears that quelling his anxiety would make him less able to manage the farm. He says time and again that fear is what propels him to the barn in the middle of the night to save a $500 newborn calf.
But when I am dealing with a Tasmanian attack and stuff is flying, I rage silently, “Sure, it’s OK for ME to take anti-anxiety drugs but not for YOU.” But this is indeed dangerous territory. Asperger Syndrome, with the grace of the unconscious, provide its own self-medications in stimming and Special Interests.
Looking at other elements of God’s creation, we allow the wind to be both a gentle breeze and a raging hurricane. Precipitation is both a gentle rain and a torrential monsoon. Jesus himself both sat little children on his lap and flipped tables.
I don’t know. I admit this is a tough one, another facet that is going to require further study, talking with experts, discussions, soul-searching and love. I know that my own capacities for love and compassion are greatly diminished by my untreated Anxiety Disorder. Maybe in ten years or after retirement or when some big financial ship comes in, the circumstances of my life will stop triggering so many anxiety responses. But right now, I am needed and I can’t be dysfunctional. As they tell mothers on airplanes, affix your own air mask first so that you can then assist others.
For right now, my disorder is better understood and more easily managed, and I am relatively comfortable with the treatment. Asperger’s information is still forth-coming, and it is more difficult to find local, well-informed counselors and doctors. So for the time being, I’ll wear my air mask and be ready to help Andy if and when that help is indicated. In the meantime, at least we know what we’re dealing with on Andy’s side of the ring, and we can use the techniques and management tools that are known. It’s already making a difference.
Wavey and Quoyle finally do banish the demon lovers from their bed. They find strength in each other and also in the quiet comfort and ease of each other’s loyalty. In Newfoundland and in this woman, Quoyle finds that the most profound of miracles – those massive seismic shifts in the human heart – are quite possible. The book ends like this: “Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat’s blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
Yes, I think so too.
Mind Vet, Tractor Limbs, Grass Impersonations: The Unique Talents of My Aspergian
When I was organizing our office one day, I ran into an occupational interest assessment Andy took on December 5, 1975, which I recognized as being based on John Holland’s hexagon of vocational preferences. Andy must have been 16, almost 17, at the time and was therefore at Westledge, an experimental school in Connecticut that Andy’s parents finally turned to in desperation.
His high scores for specific interests were in the areas of Nature, Medical Science, Writing, Public Speaking, Law/Politics, Medical Service, Art, Agriculture, and Science. And one step further, suggested occupations that would be fulfilling for him were Farmer, Forester, Veterinarian, and Minister.
After graduating from Westledge, a slightly circuitous route took Andy first to Earlham College’s Pre-Med program and then, realizing that an MD would mean living life inside, first to a year on the road, Jack Keruoac style, and then to UMass Amherst. After six years there he finally finished college – the same year as his sister, six years his junior – with three bachelor’s degrees: in Biochemistry, Agriculture, and Social Theory/Economic Policy.
I also ran into Andy’s proposal to the UMass BDIC program (Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration) in which he proposed his own unique major. He stated, “The student concerned with agriculture’s precarious situation needs to possess a firm scientific background and an understanding of the economic tools used to evaluate alternative cropping and livestock management systems. It is my belief that this can best be accomplished through the BDIC program.” He posited a course of study with three components: General Production, Economics, and Pest Factors, explaining that “The potential for a synthesis of knowledge from many disciplines to provide a constructive framework for real agricultural progress is an encouraging possibility which represents many of my hopes and aspirations.”
And here he is, twenty years later, living out his hopes and aspirations and stunning the locals with his success. I know that Andy’s ability to run this farm so well comes not just from his academic background in Plant Pest Control or Animal Nutrition or Economic Theory but from something much different: Asperger’s.
Trait One: Mind Vet
Andy can walk into a barn filled with 150 cows, not even turn on the lights, and know one of them is sick. Even our vet is stunned by this one. Andy will notice symptoms of illness two days before a “normal” farmer would and he will usually know what the cow’s problem is. This is one part academics and five parts neurologically heightened sensations.
High-functioning autistic Temple Grandin, who found fulfillment in a similar agricultural career path, explains that autistic people have excruciating sensitivities which can lead to dysfunctional over-reaction to many “normal stimuli” but also a surperb sensitivity to things like breathing rates, abnormal smells, unusual feed patterns, and atypical body temperatures.
The psychologist Oliver Sacks tells the story of a neurotypical medical student who had taken lots of amphetamines and then dreamed that he was a dog. When he awoke, his sense of smell had been intensified to the point where he could distinguish among his twenty patients by scent and had an overwhelming desire to sniff surrounding objects. Luckily for Andy, he already has these extreme perceptions and will wake in the middle of the night knowing a cow is in labor or sure a bad storm is about to hit or sensing trouble in the heifer lot.
Prey animals, Grandin says, are very uncomplaining as a defense mechanism against getting killed. Because they don’t make noise or act very strange when in pain, in their distress they do not become an easy target for predators. Unfortunately, neither do they become an easy target for humans looking for animal health problems. A sick cow’s symptoms would be barely recognizable to most people: cold ears, not eating, unusual posture.
The trained or experienced eye can see these; the autistic eye can’t NOT see them. Grandin explains, “I think many or even most autistic people experience the world a lot the way animals experience the world: as a swirling mass of tiny details. We’re seeing, hearing, and feeling all the things no one else can.” This leads to problems in the barn when one of our employees fails to recognize the signs of a sick cow for three days while we are away and Andy will notice it the split second he returns to the barn.
In one psychological experiment, randomly selected subjects are asked to watch a basketball game on a television screen and count the passes one team or the other makes. Mid-way through, a woman in a gorilla costume runs onto the court, stops and beats her chest, and runs off again. A full 50% of the subjects never even see it. “Normal people see only what they expect to see – because they can’t consciously experience the raw data – only the schema their brains create out of the raw data.”
So Andy’s psychic veterinarian skills are a product of both long-term occupational interest, academic training, and Aspergian senses.
Trait Two: Tractor Limbs
I watch Andy operate equipment and use tools all the time. I can tell that unlike the crude movements of own my fumbling and frustration, a tool of any size either in his hand or under his control, is merely an extension of his body. This must be the result of the amazing spatial and mechanical abilities gifted to him from Asperger’s. When Andy is dumping feed into the mixer, he tips the silage or corn meal out of the loader and then gently shakes out the last specks like a woman gently sprinkling salt out of her hand. He can spin on a huge tractor as gracefully as a ballerina in a pirouette. When he uses a screwdriver, it is just an extension of his fingers, with the same amount of dexterity and finesse.
As a corollary, Andy uses his own body in a very tool-like way. Although his hands and fingers are huge (farmers actually build up their finger muscles), he can perform the most delicate of tasks with them. He truly would have made a fine surgeon.
Grandin says that when she is working on an animal system design problem, she can see what is there and what could be there and look at it from every possible angle – all in her mind, like a 3-D video game. I can tell that Andy does this, too, because he can walk into a farm situation, like getting silage from an awkward angle or moving cows from here to there, and find an elegant solution without even seeming to think.
The only problem this causes is his frustration and incomprehension when others cannot.
Trait Three: Grass Impersonations
Somewhere toward the end of April we were sitting in the kitchen. Andy had been outside all morning and was in for breakfast. He said, indicating the west pasture, “Can you feel the grass out there? It’s like this.” And he did an impersonation of the grass: mouth pressed tight in anticipation, eyes squinting looking eagerly into the future, head strained up toward the sun. I knew exactly what he meant.
It’s a rare man who can impersonate grass. Aspies are great at impersonations, I suppose because they can analyze their subject in detail – eyes, voice, inflection, speech patterns – and then replicate each of these in combination. Andy does a mean George Bush. But grass?
I have also heard Andy explain the “desires” of a flowering plant. I will try to replicate it here: “The plant’s goal is to reproduce itself. It grows vegetatively to create maximum energy, it flowers and then sends all that energy into the seed pod. When the seed is made, the plant is done. The vegetative growth will stop and what’s left is mostly lignin. If you want to keep a plant in its vegetative state (like grass crops or basil or lettuce) then you have to keep it from flowering.”
The result of such knowledge on our farm? Twice the hay other farmers get from their fields, lettuce and basil all summer long, and from the other plants, the ones allowed to flower and set seed, enormous vegetables and berries.
And flowers. Andy communes with the flowers, I know he does. He knows that the two hanging baskets outside the back door like to be watered morning and evening every day. He knows he needs to cut the dead-heads off the fuchsias to make them re-flower. He can actually hear the flowers whimper in dry weather.
Grandin claims that “Theoretically, we [all] could have extreme perceptions the way animals do if we figured out how to use the sensory processing cells in our brains the way animals do.” And I know just from living with Andy and hearing him vocalize his every passing thought for twenty years that I too have developed some of these skills. I can spot a sick calf or cow pretty quickly. I can sense changes in the weather. Maybe it’s actually because I see and do the same damn thing every day, so any change in the tedium is going to be noticeable. But seriously, I know I have become more conscious of some of the things that Andy cannot be unconscious of.
Aaron Copeland in his classic book What to Listen for in Music says that understanding any type of music requires answering two questions:
Are you hearing everything that is going on? and
Are you really being sensitive to it?
“The main difference between [the composer] and the lay listener is that he is better prepared to listen,” he claims. So too the Aspie farmer: He is hearing everything that is going on and he is sensitive to it.
Here again I am convinced that the Aspergian neurological system represents an evolutionary jump in humankind’s movement toward divinity, a la Pierre de Chardin. I think of that wonderful description by Jesus of God’s loving concern for detail: “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?
But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” That is attention to detail. Very Aspergian. And there is also God’s speech to Job: “Do you know about the birth of the mountain goats, watch for the birth pangs of the hinds, Number the months that they must fulfill?” This is also Andy-like. He can espy the tiniest details in the woods. It’s why he’s such a good hunter.
(This beautiful photograph is by Jonicool, available at RedBubble)
Career-wise, Andy has probably fallen into the perfect occupation. Grandin says “I have been lucky, because my understanding of animals and visual thinking led me to a satisfying career in which my autistic traits don’t impede my progress.” I know how the sensory sensitivity and awareness of detail tires Andy and keeps his anxiety level at a high intensity, but it also has contributed to his great success as a farmer.
Andy’s BDIC proposal is primarily made up of an historical and economic analysis of American agriculture in order to justify the need to combine classes from the Agriculture Department and the Economics Department. However, Andy also included a section related to the very personal nature of this occupation: “In my farming experience I have come to see that a close relationship between farmers and the land [and animals] is in fact a basic requirement of farming.” At the time, 1986, Andy did not realize just how close that relationship was for him. His nerves vibrate to the doings of the grass. His ears turn to the subtlest of signs from the cows. His muscles extend into steel that does his bidding.
Even at age 16 Andy was heading this way. His occupational assessment states “These areas probably will be sources of satisfaction in your life: — occupations related to preventing illness and maintaining health — areas dealing with creativity in expressing thoughts — being in the out-of-doors and studying nature.”
The survey had no idea it was summarizing the preferred occupations for an Aspergian. Are these activities “Sources of satisfaction” for Andy? Yes. Are they in fact “Nodes of genius?” Even more so.
I’d love it if you left a comment.
Not Your Neurotypical Guy: Aspergian Blindness to Gender Stereotypes
I have a confession to make: I have found every single one of my old boyfriends or potential boyfriends on the internet: current job, address, and where possible, photograph. I am hoping this is something most women do and not just another symptom of my neurosis. It’s probably more a symptom of PMS. Grrrrrrr … Look what I passed up. Look at the life I could have had: Wife of a neuro-surgeon. Wife of a securities lawyer. Wife of an Economics professor. Wife of a business tycoon.
But I will say this: They have all lost their hair. Andy has not.
When I think back to each of these guys, now men, I remember that I was the one who broke it off or never pursued it or let it fizzle. I had at least a shot at life with each of them if I had wanted it badly enough. But when I met Andy, it was so obvious he was the one I wanted. I knew even back then about his more “unusual” traits, even if I didn’t have a name or reason for them. But he was the one I wanted. He was the one I chose. After we met, all these other choices just faded from my view. There was never a period of time when I balanced Andy against any of these others for comparison’s sake or kept any of them on the back burner just in case. Andy was instantaneous and exclusive.
Looking back now at those prior boyfriends in contrast with my actual espoused, I can understand my choice. Not that I had a ton of boyfriends by any means, but several of these relationships were intense enough that the person in question might have been a serious contender for my hand. And they were all very nice young men: interesting, sweet. I never dated a jerk and then threw him on the heap.
If anything I have a desire to call up some of these guys and apologize for my cluelessness. I didn’t hit physiological puberty until age 18 and so was a complete neophyte at love throughout college. My body was leading the charge most of the time, with the brain and any sense of proper behavior in a romantic relationship lagging well behind. By the time I met Andy, I was 22 and somewhat over the intense, hormone-driven years that most girls have out of the way by 16. Body and mind were working in tandem by that point.
When I think back to these dear young men and consider why none of them seemed worth the quest and why Andy did, I realize that I was not really interested in the “typical” guy. I guess I wasn’t even interested in the “neurotypical” guy. Several of the Aspie wife books analyze the reasons why a woman will fall in love with an Autie, and I tend to agree with the analysis.
Maxine Aston points out that many women in this situation are attracted to the fact that most Aspie males are gentle, somewhat naïve and boyish, and have a more developed female side than most typical males. Our AS partners have no problem with cooking or growing flowers. “They do not feel obligated to fulfill and display masculine roles, but are much more likely to do what pleases them, rather than what society states they are supposed to do … Many women interpret this as meaning that they are sure enough of their masculinity to be in touch with their feminine side as well.”
Too true. One exemplar event I can share was before my time, but I know that the purple cotton skirt I wore while pregnant was actually once Andy’s. I heard that he attended a college party wearing it, and most of the women said he looked great. This was during the same period of time that Andy was the lone male student in a class on Feminism. I could see Andy wearing a kilt, especially since he is half Scottish. In fact I would be quite interested in this sight. There is something about the thought of a studly guy with big muscles and the strongest-looking arms I have ever seen wearing a skirt. Like Mel Gibson in Brave Heart. Confidence.
I have always found myself put off by the really typical males and their interests. Sports. Blondes. Competition. Swagger. It all seems so predictable, so stinking scripted. As if they cannot help but like these things. As if they are but metazoans, responding by stimulus-response to a passing woman or ESPN. They can’t not.
It kind of repulses me: when the frontal lobes shut down and the cerebellum takes over. I feel that way about a lot of societal behaviors. Like that scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout faces down the mob of men that has arrived outside Tom Robinson’s cell ready to lynch him. They are armed and agitated and ready for action until Scout greets Mr. Cunningham by name. As the men turn back into individuals instead of a mob, they shame-facedly creep away. Where did their brains go during that time? Were they not – during that time – homo sapiens, “thinking man”? Did brain turn off and spinal cord take over?
I also see this when most guys are watching sports. They can’t not react. What is that? It almost makes me sick, like seeing de-evolution in front of me. They regress from being full cognates back into some kind of Neanderthals with limited brain function. It makes me nauseous.
But Andy is not like that. Yeah, he’ll watch the random sports event, and we have turned the Super Bowl into a family party in the name of cultural literacy. But he doesn’t follow any sports team. He doesn’t play any kind of organized sport. He has no discomfort wearing a skirt, and God bless him, he thinks Keira Knightley is ugly.
He will look at her in her separate elements and say, “She is not at all beautiful. In fact, she is quite strange-looking. She looks like an anorexia warning poster.” This comes from the Aspergian trait of seeing all the details instead of the whole and in addition being impervious and immune to society’s coding. In fact, I went to college with a young woman who was a model, and she was a little strange-looking in real life: six feet tall and constantly working out to stay thin, her face boxy and angular without make-up.
This coding-blindness trait of Andy’s I truly do love. Having suffered through an eating disorder in high school, I just want to jump up and hug Andy over his ability to look at women’s bodies so objectively. He’ll see a model on the cover of a women’s magazine, frown, and say “She is truly odd-looking.” This is the benefit of Aspergians having difficulty Gestalting a set of images into the package society prescribes. Ha, Madison Avenue!
Andy also had some bad experiences in college with “beautiful women” who used their looks as social weaponry. Thus his aversion to blondes. This is good news for me. Being short, Irish and therefore stocky, with mouse-colored hair, I am not by any means society’s beauty ideal. But Andy saw through that. I have fairly nice eyes and I suppose I am what Aston describes as “strong, independent, and nurturing,” the Aspergian male’s ideal mate.
But I have also been a social rebel by birth, shunning my female birth-right to become a high-maintenance trophy wife (which would have required living at the gym, plastic surgery on every part of my body, and full-time, live-in beauticians) in favor of becoming an English geek who has no problem being covered with manure. Andy and I saw in each other a mutual distaste for society’s lifestyle and attractiveness norms.
This is why I am sometimes amazed that Andy is good-looking. I did not set out to marry a handsome man. I admit to being attracted to his physical appearance, but it was quickly over-shadowed by his, shall we say, unique personality and sometimes odd behaviors. So sometimes I’ll see other women ogling him in the grocery store and turn with surprise to notice the figure he cuts. Over six feet tall, dirty blond hair still all there, long strong limbs from working on the farm, a square jaw and deep-set eyes, a wicked tan (though it stops at the shirtsleeves, ladies), and, when I force him into them, Levi’s and an outdoorsy plaid shirt that makes him look like a buff lumberjack who could carry off his girlie with one hand.
At such times I’ll step over and grab his arm or give him a wifely and possessive smile. Back off, girls. This one’s mine. English major: 1. Blonde bombshell: 0.
Oh sure, once in a while I find myself screaming silently, “Can’t you just pretend to be a normal guy?” but most of the time I am quite content with my Yin-Yang Man. Maxine Aston says that “Your partner can offer you a special kind of security that, in these days of high rates of divorce and separation, is very hard to find. He will probably stick by you for all your life.”
And I know that this is true. Once Andy had made up his mind to choose me, that was it. And I really know that he chose me for the very things I feel most make me me. The genetic gifts I feel best about are my fairly high intelligence (from my dad), my passion for words (also from dad), my ability to withstand hardship for very long periods of time (the unfortunate but time-honored characteristic of all Irish), my wit when it’s up and running, and my rebelliousness. It’s as if Andy sees past my physical me and sees my essence, and that’s what he loves.
Jesus did this too, and it’s what drove a lot of people crazy enough to kill him. He saw right through the “whitewashed tombs” of the self-righteous wealthy and straight into the heart of the poor widows with their small donations. Any woman with whom he came into contact was transformed when she realized He saw her as herself, not as society viewed her.
The woman with the twelve-year hemorrhage, shunned as unclean, was healed by touching His hem and then gently told to stand and be seen. The woman who had lived bent over for eighteen years was touched and told to stand aright – in violation of Sabbath “laws.” And then probably the best example, shown with the awesomeness it truly embodied in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” when Jesus draws that fabulous line in the sand and challenges the man without sin to cast the first stone at the woman caught in adultery.
The list goes on: the Samaritan woman at the well, Mary of shirking-her-housekeeping-duties fame who boldly knelt at His feet, and of course Mary Magdalene – with all the contemporary speculation swirling about her. We do know that when she broke her perfume on His feet and wiped it off with her hair, Jesus saw her heart and commended her actions. As the historians tell us, Jesus lifted these women out of their status as second-class citizens and into equality based on their hearts, not their gender, and certainly not their looks.
Were Jesus to walk into our local country club, He would bypass the tanned and toned beautiful people in their uppity corral at the bar and most likely go to hang out in the kitchen. The Beautiful People do not like this. It is very threatening to the status quo. But Jesus would seek out the needy and the pure of heart, the women whose spirits He could discern shining brightly through their hairnets and aprons.
As a woman in the 21st century, I can still be surprised to be treated this way by my spouse. If the tabloids at the grocery check-out are any kind of display of society’s feminine ideal, I’m apparently not even of the correct species. I’m not blonde. I’m not thin. I’m not tan. I’m not beautiful. Even the local farmers in the area – the supposed salt of the earth – have been known to take up with a tart and give the long-suffering and physically depleted farmwife the boot. These farmers wouldn’t give me a second look, depleted farmwife that I am. And forget finding any welcoming arms even for friendship among the ultra-hip soccer moms and dads spouse-swapping at the country club. All those high-school cliques just grow up and replicate themselves in adult clothing.
It truly is a blessing to be married to someone who sees through all that, who can turn off society’s encoded responses and say “That woman looks just like a b%@* in high heels” and instead adore the plain but well-intentioned woman that I hope I am. Yeah, Andy’s not your typical guy. He’s not even your neuro-typical guy. He follows the road less-traveled, wearing a skirt and blind to the blondes, and that – for me – has made all the difference.
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Reindeer Games: Asperger’s and Social Codes
Scene: Dean Hanson’s House. Maureen, her boyfriend Andy, and Maureen’s college friends Sarah, Elizabeth, and Amelia are playing Monopoly and drinking beer. Andy is winning. Andy rolls the dice, moves his player, and lands on Park Place. He rubs his hands together with a greedy glint in his eye. Amelia and Elizabeth exchange glances from the corners of their eyes. Maureen gives them an apologetic smile. Andy hands over a pile of money, receives eight hotels and lines them up on Boardwalk and Park Place. Sarah rolls the dice and moves her player, landing on Park Place. She counts up her money, mortgages all her properties, and hands the pile of cash to Andy. She pushes her chair back and sips her beer. Elizabeth rolls and lands on Boardwalk. She also hands over her last cash, shrugs with a grin and sips her beer. Amelia rolls, lands on Park Place and hands over her money. Maureen smiles at Andy, shrugs her shoulders, palms up, and starts to gather the cards and playing pieces. Andy frowns and hands her the dice. Maureen puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head. Andy pushes his chair back in frustration. One leg of the chair slips into a hole in the floor and he tumbles over backward. Everyone bursts our laughing.
A typical evening in the life of a young woman in love with an as-yet undiagnosed Aspergian.
One of the Asperger’s assessments I took on Andy’s behalf contained the statement “Unaware of unwritten social rules of adult recreation.” One such rule is “Don’t take Monopoly too seriously, especially when meeting your girlfriend’s best friends.” Yes, Andy is remarkably good at understanding money, a fact I am most grateful for, and yes, he was intimidated by my Amherst buddies, feeling like a lowly UMasser himself. (One urban legend claims that the five Scooby Doo characters are based on the Five Colleges of the Connecticut River Valley, with us Amherst students the suave and sophisticated Fred and the UMass folks the goofy-faced Scooby. I used to remind Andy that it’s usually Scooby that solves the case.) However, social rules of adult recreation preclude acting like a robber baron while getting to know one’s girlfriend’s best friends, even if said player does have an above-average IQ and feels it is only logical to use it.
We all laughed because we felt Andy deserved the fall to the floor. He had violated obvious social mores. Sure, I was embarrassed. Sure, I wish he had neither acted like a jerk nor fallen off his chair. I really was confused that night: stuck between adoring this man and feeling that something was very off.
Even so, my friends and I were all thankful for Andy’s Aspie traits that summer when we were house-sitting up in the hills of Montague. Francoise and Scott Monet – she a Smith professor, he Harvard – had left for the summer with their daughter to spend three months in Iceland, leaving us to care for their 200-year-old house, a tennis court, horse barn and pond. With only a week left before their return, we were all distraught at the amount of work we needed to do – especially because we had spent most of the summer writing sestinas – and we were flailing about helplessly. Andy came over and in four hours had finished nailing in the facing for the box stalls, killed the weeds in the tennis court, removed the algae from the pond, reprogrammed the Jacuzzi, and healed the annoying dog from his porcupine attack.
I am reminded, thinking back now on all this, of the scene in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in which Rudolph demonstrates his flying skills in front of the other young bucks but then is shunned when his black rubber camouflage falls off and his red nose glares, hurting all their eyes. The studly and obnoxious Coach Comet widens his eyes in fear but then quickly says to the others, “From now on, gang, we won’t let Rudolph join in any reindeer games.” He jerks his jock neck to dismiss the posse, and off they go, leaving poor Rudolph alone, but not before raining down a torrent of insults such as “fire snoot” and “neon nose.”
But, when push comes to shove and the toys will not get delivered without the helpful radiance of Rudolph’s snout, “then how the reindeer loved him!” This Christmas special is truly a celebration of misfits, with Hermie the elven dentist the only one who can disarm the Abominable Snowman, and Yukon Cornelius (obviously up North because of his off-putting social demeanor) the only one who can rehabilitate the Abominable to join society. And Rudolph, God bless him, instead of rubbing everybody’s noses in it (forgive the pun), simply says to Santa’s request, “It will be an honor, sir.” Now that’s graciousness.
I have read similar tales in the various high-functioning autism books, especially those by Auties themselves, to the effect of “Sure, we have trouble socializing, but whom do you call to create Microsoft or discover the Theory of Relativity or design better slaughter chutes?” As Temple Grandin says, “the social people who sat around the campfire talking were probably not the makers of the first stone spear. It is also likely that the most social people did not create the great culture of our civilization, such as literature, art, engineering, music, science, and mathematics.”
A much more acerbic comment came from one Aspergian who reviewed a book for wives of Aspergians on Amazon.com. She says, “It’s true AS people do have trouble to recognize and understand others’ state of mind and feelings when they are different from their own. BUT…[the author] is either too arrogant or lacks the intelligence (or both?) to realize and know that what she says works both ways. Neurotypical people always have trouble to recognize and understand an AS person’s state of mind and feelings … If this review sounds condescending towards the author, then thought needs to be given to how the author sounds when she says such things as ‘People with AS have difficulty getting the gist of the situation.’ Maybe so in instances she gives. However, NTs also have difficulty getting the gist of the situation in certain instances that AS people have no trouble with (such as rapidly noticing a long-range pattern that a typical person could never grasp).” Oooo, burn.
I also think of Good Will Hunting when Professor Lambeau, reviewing a difficult proof that his genius protégé Will has easily solved, scolds him for not showing up for a job interview. Will says, “Maybe I don’t want to spend my life sittin’ around and explaining s*?+ to people.” He holds up his mathematical proof. “You know how f-in’ easy this is to me? This is a joke! I’m sorry you can’t do this. I really am.” He lights the proof on fire and drops it on the ground. Lambeau, dropping in intellectual pain to put out the flames finally sits back on his heels and says, “You’re right, Will. I can’t do that proof and you can.”
Perhaps the Amazon reviewer is right that “An NT like [the author] gets her book published because most of the people who are seeking to buy a book to learn about AS are NTs and NTs feel most comfortable reading material that doesn’t challenge their way of thinking and/or their egos.” Again, big ouch.
But isn’t all this pride in savantism extraordinarily rude? What about social niceties and “Do unto others”? What about our other well-founded social rule that justifiable arrogance is as objectionable as lack of humility over ignorance? What would Jesus say about this one?
My guess, and this is very obviously a guess, is that Jesus had both the remarkable pattern-physics-kinesthetic abilities of a genius – after all, he was able to manipulate H2O molecules and walk on them – but he also had metaphysical-level abilities for understanding others’ emotional states at both close and long range. His empathy and love for others is well-documented and exemplary, but you can also sense Jesus’ frustration sometimes when people just don’t get it. Once in a while his impatience with the apostles breaks through and he says something like, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand all the parables?” This sounds fed up, though perhaps he actually said this with great sympathy.
The Jesuit geologist and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin believed that the evolutionary process is moving us closer and closer to being like God Himself. One counselor Andy and I talked to suggested that Aspergians are actually the evolutionary avant garde – having intellectual abilities that will move us ahead as a species. But he also said that evolution runs by fits and starts: the Aspies gained the pattern-recognition thing, but lost the social-emotional thing. Oops. Try again. Generations from now, perhaps all humans will have extraordinary pattern-recognition ability AND genius interpersonal skills.
In the meantime, those who got the former and lost some of the latter still suffer at the hands of the socially adept. Watch any jock high school student and he acts remarkably like those jerky reindeer troglodytes. I remember my own high school experience, and since I am also in and out of our county’s high schools in my current job, I truly suffer in empathy as our own Eldest makes his way through his last years of public education. The jocks have it made. They are the socially accepted and media-saturating ideal, even though they could not invent the lightbulb or television. Evolutionarily speaking, the skills needed for football are left over from the days when men were running down the family meat and beating off saber tooth tigers.
Nowadays, in the information age, the Aspies actually have the upper hand when it comes to holding down the high-paying jobs. Steve Silberman states in Wired magazine that “It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics – coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours – are residing somewhere in the Asperger’s domain.”
So despite the physical attractiveness and social effortlessness of the sports-heads, they are not the ones who can pull down the big bucks. In terms of occupations, the ability to run into other heavy objects, knock them down, and get across a line carrying something prepares one pretty clearly for blue-collar work.
As a consequence, the evolutionary tide of mate selection may be turning in favor of the Asperger’s geek, with many NT females choosing well-paid AS spouses. Silberman continues, “Compensatory unions of opposites also thrive along the continuum, and in the last 10 years, geekitude has become sexy and associated with financial success.” I know this sounds incredibly sour grapes coming from me, an English nerd who has always resented the conduct of the popular crowd. The football players never dated me, after all.
On the other hand, one unfortunate result in the Silicon Valley is that these genetic traits are seemingly intensified in children, especially if an Aspie marries an Aspie, with an alarming rise in low-functioning autism among the children in this area of the country. I am not proposing social engineering, but I do find myself thinking that Aspies marrying NTs might be a good way to calm the waters of the gene pool.
As Andy said the other night, one Aspergian in 150 (which is the current estimate) is probably about the ideal ratio. He said, “That’s all you NTs really need for us to keep society progressing. Besides, one in 150 is probably about all you guys could tolerate!”
If a night of Monopoly is any gauge, I think he’s right.
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Vlädafeesh: The Childlike Wonder of Asperger’s
My last year at Amherst, I lucked into the most amazing housing situation. The Dean of Students and his wife had bought a new home off-campus but still had one semester left in their college rental house. They were looking for some students to sub-let it, and because I had worked for the dean two semesters, he asked me if I would like to gather some friends together to live there. Ummmm, yes.
Andy and I were already engaged, though with two semesters of college left, I felt this was kind of an “intentionality” type of engagement rather than a real one (no ring, after all). So Andy was over at our sub-let house a lot.
I remember one specific day when I was the only one home and he stopped by. We young co-eds had moved the kitchen table into the room with the fireplace and the huge window that overlooked the back yard, and that’s where Andy and I were sitting, eating some lunch together.
I don’t remember why, but Andy launched into a little chant to amuse me. It went like this:
“Vlädafeesh-feesh vee doe foe.” Beat. “Vlädafeesh-feesh vee doe.” Beat. “Vlädafeesh-feesh vee doe foe video foe. Foe.”
For some reason this tickled me beyond reason. Perhaps it was the accumulated stress of the semester. Perhaps it was young love. So he chanted it again:
“Vlädafeesh-feesh vee doe foe.” Beat. “Vlädafeesh-feesh vee doe.” Beat. “Vlädafeesh- feesh vee doe foe video foe. Foe.”
Andy had this mock concentrated look on his face and had pitched his voice low as if he were some sort of Nordic shaman performing a ritual to bring back the sun. I laughed and laughed.
Then he transitioned into another oddly amusing persona, and began proclaiming, “For heaffen’s sake, Mrs. Heiffershmorsh” with his lips compressed and looking in an agitated way left and right. I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants and tears were rolling down my cheeks.
I wonder now as I wondered then, how did he come up with that? The sounds are certainly Scandinavian, not surprising considering Andy’s Swedish background and growing up around his Mormor. But the beat, the facial expression, the very fact that a 29-year-old man would be performing such ditties, where does that come from?
Maybe my Amherst years had wrung some of the child out of me, or maybe my literary linguistic tendencies bent me more toward reciting “Whan that aprill with his shoures soote/The droghte of march hath perced to the roote” in my best Middle English, but I could never have composed, on the spot, the “Vlädafeesh” chant.
This is one of the earliest memories I have of Andy’s wonderful childlike side. Apparently this is a Bartlett trait, not specifically Asperger’s, because I have heard the tales of Andy’s grandmother’s similar whimsical sense of humor.
For example, as Andy’s dad tells it, one day she and her husband (my father-in-law’s dad) came home from the grocery store and five lemons they had bought rolled out of their bag, unbeknownst to the grandfolks. They thought they had either left the lemons at the store or misplaced the bag the lemons were in. A week or so later they found the lemons, which had rolled behind a door in the kitchen. They were now desiccated and rattling like little maracas.
Instead of being disposed of, the lemons were given the status of “rogue citrus” and allowed — for years — to roll around and stay hidden in various places in the house: under the dining room hutch, behind an umbrella in the entrance hall. They would periodically roll out when no one was looking and hide themselves elsewhere. Apparently these lemons remained on the lam until Andy’s grandfather died and his grandmother sold the house and moved to a nursing facility, by which point they had finally been forgotten.
Apparently, this childlike trait is genetic. When we were up at the Bartlett camp in the Berkshires recently, Andy filled me in about the photos in the loft of the A-frame, which I had always assumed were purchased. In the photos, a small group of stuffed bears and a giraffe are on a boat floating on a lake. I thought these were by the same photographer who created The Lonely Doll, but no. On the wall between these two photos was the actual marine-canvas boat from the photo, resting on a wooden platform made especially for it. Andy told me that his Dad had crafted the boat, staged the voyage, photographed it, and then told Andy and his brother and sister stories about the fanciful expedition.
I can visualize this because I know Andy’s dad. He can go from the driest, most technical explanation of methillin-resistant staph aureus infections to the most child-like of tale. He just loves the 1931 picture book Joe Buys Nails, which is only tangentially about young Joe’s time at the hardware store and predominantly about his adventures through the woods en route.
And then there’s Andy. Most of the time he is quite technical and precise. Asked by one of our boys what a bruise is, he will respond with “Well, a contusion against the bone will dissipate blood under the epidermis until the lymphatic fluid dissolves it.” All three boys turn their heads to me like the three little kittens for the translation. “A bruise is blood that oozed out of a vein when it broke and then got stuck under your skin.”
“Well,” Andy says, “that’s not precisely what happens –“
At this point I hold up my hand and say, “Close enough until they get to med school.”
“I’m just trying to be accurate.”
But then there are things like Vladafeesh and Mrs. Heiffershmorsh, and when Andy invites the boys to a foam noodle battle in the pool, he seems to be the one having the most fun. Apparently, the same neurological difference that leads to anxiety and temper tantrums – the immature amygdala – also leads to the other child-like emotions: joy, whimsy, and playfulness.
Einstein himself attributed his discovery of the theory of relativity to his delayed emotional development. He once said, “The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems … I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done.” There is that famous photograph of Einstein sticking out his tongue or the one where he is riding his bicycle with a huge grin. The downside to this was that he sometimes had to be fed and told when to go to sleep and protected from exploitative people.
Einstein was also a ditty writer, penning for example a little poem about Captain Carefree. This poem reminds me of a song from Andy’s childhood that he sometimes sings: “Ahoy! Ahoy! I’m captain of my ship. My name is Captain Salty and I live on the sea.” He unfailingly intones this chantey in a bold husky voice, standing feet spread with one fist on his chest, grasping the lapel of his pretend captain’s coat and looking to the far horizon, and he unfailingly makes me laugh.
Of course, as Andy is the first to admit, he might have Asperger’s but he is “no Einstein,” and luckily for me that means he is not so childlike that he needs me to feed him or tuck him in. Well, not often. But he is childlike enough to keep life fresh for me, the boring 40-something NT with her mature and aging brain. He does funny little dances in the kitchen and play Legos with the boys and sings silly songs. But then he’ll turn around and analyze the Iraqi economy or calculate our break-even price on a 50-cow expansion or rewire the electrical service to the house.
Appreciating this polarity in an Aspergian is an acquired taste. The rare combination of childlike whimsy and sophisticated intellectual analysis is like one of those sense experiences that contrasts sweet with bitter or sour with salty or hot with cold. It’s like amaretto cheesecake with espresso or sweet and sour chicken. Or listening to the various movements of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Such contrasts can be just exquisite, like leaping from a sauna out into the snow.
Of course the emotional rollercoaster can be taxing, and like a little overwhelmed child, Andy does frequently fall into bed exhausted by day’s end. And so do I, after being hurled from side-splitting laughter at one of his silly personas to dealing with his explosive rage over some lack of precision or efficiency.
The elderly Einstein had that crazy white hair and that impish grin. I can imagine Andy looking very similar in old age. His hair will eventually turn white, though his childlikeness seems to have extrapolated itself into keeping his hair from graying or falling out. And I know that he will be whimsical and beloved of our someday grandchildren.
We all know that the mysteries of the kingdom are given to little children and hidden from the wise. There is something about the wide-open nature of childlike perception and wonder and contemplation that allows children more direct access to the rarer dimension of experience – call it relativity, call it the Kingdom of Heaven, call it what you will. Andy certainly takes great joy in nature and experiences it in a way far beyond my grasp, while my aged amygdala often feels jaded and just sees mud and leaves. He is much more pure of heart than I am in this way.
It seems to be part of the human experience to return to our child self before death, but the Aspie gets to retain that delight and awe throughout life. Eventually, I’ll be developmentally back there with him, but in the meantime, Andy tries valiantly to take me along for the ride. He often has to pull me off my middle-aged lawn chair and back into the sandbox. But truthfully, once you’re back there, it is a lot of fun.
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Meeting Almanzo: Falling in Love with the Taz
On February 5, 1988, I saw my future husband for the first time when he walked into the kitchen of Valentine Dining hall at Amherst College. He was the delivery guy from Squash, Incorporated, a local produce delivery business that bought fresh fruit and vegetables from the Chelsea Market in Boston and sold them to the five colleges and local restaurants in the Connecticut River Valley of Central Massachusetts.
I heard a voice first, dusky, singing the James Taylor song “Damn, this traffic jam. How I hate to be late,” and then this guy turned the corner into the workspace where Harriet, Mavis, Rose and I were working.
I looked up, took him in pushing a dolly of lettuce boxes, and responded in song, “It hurts my motor to go so slow.”
He looked at me surprised, smiled, exclaimed, “All right!” and continued past me, ringing out, “Good morning, Harriet! Good morning, Mavis! Good morning, Rose!” with a smiling nod to each.
“Good mornin’, Chowda’!” I heard Harriet beam, in her strong Central Mass accent. “Whatta you doin’ hea’?” obviously delighted to see this scruffy man with the vegetables.
I can remember Andy so clearly that morning. I remember what he was wearing: faded Levi’s, a navy blue L.L. Bean reindeer sweater, an old red bandanna around his neck, a black Australian cowboy hat, Timberland work boots. I remember how he smelled: like wood smoke and fresh strawberries. I remember how he sounded: his voice was smoky but kind of high – a tenor for sure. I remember his grin and his dirty blond curls poking out around his ears, the sense of his size: tall, strong, big hands, long legs, capable.
This so-called “Chowder” stopped and leaned both forearms on the handles of his dolly. “Well, J.P. called in sick today, so Marge asked if I’d do the deliveries.”
“Good! Good! So, how’s it goin’?” Harriet asked. I loved Harriet. She was my mom away from mom, my rough-handed, kitchen-ruling, middle-aged boss with the short graying black hair and sharp chin and thick glasses and hair net, who didn’t take any crap from the cooks but took me under her wing as an obvious babe lost in the woods of the college below grounds that most students never see – or want to see.
My work-study job that semester was to make bag lunches for students whose classes went right through lunchtime. I would arrive in the basement at 7 AM, set my bowls of tuna and egg salad on the counter, lay out forty pieces of bread, and slather the correct number with the correct sandwich spreads. Then I would baggie them up, put each in a brown bag with a package of cookies (Lorna Doones or Oreos), a juice box, a yogurt cup, and a bag of chips. I labeled each with the student’s name and set it in a box to be picked up at the end of breakfast by the unfortunate few who had to cram their sandwiches between classes instead of lounging for a leisurely lunch with their buddies in the Commons.
I took my job quite seriously. I implemented a check-off form so students could request their own personalized combo of sandwich, chips, and cookies. I felt I had to perform well after my embarrassing short-lived effort at trying to cook short-order eggs upstairs in the dining room.
As I worked on my stainless steel counter to one side, Mavis, a small, quiet Caribbean woman, and Rose, a soft-fleshed, white-haired grandma type, would be cutting vegetables for the salad bar and mixing tuna and egg salad in preparation for the lunch hour. Harriet kept us all hopping at a brisk pace and variously yelled at or took orders from the 20-something big-guy cooks or the ever-so-poised head of Dining Services who floated by periodically.
It was loud down in the kitchen and busy. People coming and going and shouting, clouds of steam and huge trays of hot breakfast foods, clanking spoons and pots, men with wrenches fixing pipes, and delivery guys arriving and departing.
But this Chowder person stopped and stood. He rested one foot on top of the other, toes and knee pointed in like a little boy, and leaned on his dolly to chat with Harriet. And she melted like a star-struck fan.
“Well, Harriet, my day always goes better when I get to see you,” he said with a grin.
Harriet blushed and gave him a swat. “Ah, you! How’s the sheep?”
Sheep? I thought.
“They’re fine. I had two lambs born this morning. More on the way.”
“Aww. They must be so cute.”
Sheep?
I hadn’t heard mention of an animal in two and a half years of college. BMWs, yes, literary theory, yes, ski trips, yes. But sheep? Every one of my senses was leaning his way.
“Yeah, they’re pretty great,” he said. “Anywhere specific you’d like this lettuce?”
The two of them went into the walk-in cooler and I took a quick assessment of my vitals: heart rate fast, breathing shallow, face red.
And so I was swept off my feet by the vegetable delivery man.
Now, I’ll admit I was not your standard fare at Amherst College. From a middle-class Western New York Irish family, born with my dad’s smarts and gifts with language, I soared through high school, nailed the SAT, and had my pick of colleges.
Amherst was really a bit of an accident. At the time I was entranced with the Alps for some reason (I confess to the inspiration probably being Heidi) and had decided European Studies was my calling. In my high school guidance office, I typed in “Small. Liberal Arts. European Studies. Selective. Rural. New England.” And Amherst was my top hit. I had never heard of it, nor had any of my friends. None of us knew it regularly topped the US News and World Report list of top liberal arts schools or that its selectivity was correspondingly intense. I applied and was accepted.
Looking back, I probably got in because I provided some socio-economic and ethnic diversity to the Class of 1989: lower-middle-class Irish from Upstate.
But the most unusual thing about me compared to my Amherst peers was that I was a closet farm girl. I grew up in a small-city suburb of Buffalo with next-door neighbors on either side only a driveway away. But in my heart I knew I belonged in the country. I had discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder in first grade and knew she was my soul sister. I read every book in the Little House series over and over and then all the non-fiction about her that only the true groupies unearth.
I knew every moment of Laura’s life: when she slapped her sister Mary over the Indian beads, when the log fell on Ma’s ankle, when Laura almost drowned in Plum Creek, Laura arriving first at the Surveyor’s House (ah, the Surveyor’s House!), and then of course, meeting Almanzo.
In By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura Ingalls gets lost in the Big Slough on her way to town to buy a cutter blade for Pa. She and her little sister Carrie are wandering in the high grass when they hear two brothers stacking hay. It is Almanzo Wilder and his brother Royal, homesteading young men, working out in the sun. I bet they smelled warm and sweet like honest sweat and baking bread. Laura is barely able to look at these two but they point her through the high grass toward Pa. Laura does note that Almanzo’s eyes twinkle down at her.
But it’s in The Long Winter that Almanzo really shows his stuff: what a stud. We learn that he has arrived in South Dakota at age nineteen (officially swearing he is 21) to stake a claim using money made raising a wheat crop in Minnesota and he has the finest pair of matched Morgans in the whole area. He goes heroically after one of them, Lady, after she runs off with an antelope herd. And then with his buddy Cap Garland he risks his life to bring back wheat for the starving town. He even faces down the storekeeper who wants to overcharge the townspeople for the grain he brought back. It’s no wonder Laura falls for him.
While growing up, I would sneak off to the nasty little wooded drainage creek a few blocks from my house and pretend I was on the frontier. My sister and I would have nights when we turned off all the lights and ate with wooden spoons by candlelight. Because of both my rural fetish and my being from a GM factory town, I was more than a little out of my social league at Amherst. There, I was hob-nobbing with the daughter of the president of NBC and a grandson of a US Supreme Court justice.
And although I was most definitely in rural New England and loved to go running through the farmland on the outskirts of town, my day-to-day life did not involve any real interaction with those country people or their lives. UMass was the place with the Ag school, but I was intellectually far more at home in Lit Crit classes at AC.
But this Chowder fellow, he was so different from the Amherst College guys with their expensive and deliberately worn casual clothes and their classy cars and subtle aroma of Polo, their urbane wit and unflappable good spirits. I realized this delivery man was a “townie,” but a townie was downright traffic-stopping after one too many a cappella glitterati had flaunted his unassailable right to privilege and prestige my direction. I was middle-class. I liked a real man.
And so, three years into Amherst, though I had been involved with a few guys heading toward law school or med school, my secret male ideal was an 1880s homesteader with draft horses. And magically, here was this guy, fitting the description. He had a farm. He raised sheep. He smelled like woodsmoke. I was thoroughly smitten at first sight.
Looking back through the lens of Asperger’s, I can see that my smiter had accumulated a wide repertoire of social skills at this point in his life. He was actually quite the charmer. Oftentimes, people with Asperger’s Syndrome really struggle with social cues and social niceties: these do not come instinctually nor do they seem logical.
But this man had them down. I am sure it came from dealing with Italian dockside vegetable brokers and various restaurateurs and farmers in the area. He had also analyzed the moves for attracting a female, besides which he was rather good-looking. I saw the charming grin, heard the easy banter, smelled smoke on his sweater, and melted like hot butter.
Harriet, God bless her, realized that I was moonstruck after he left, especially because I pumped her for information.
“Who was that guy?”
“Why? You got the hots for him?” she asked.
“Well, he is pretty cute,” I responded.
Unbeknownst to me (until Andy told me later), Harriet called Squash Inc. later that day and requested that Chowder make all the Amherst College deliveries – and she told them why! So I suppose he was primed when a week later I asked him why his nickname was Chowder.
He paused, looked at the ground, looked back up with a charming smile, and said, “How about I tell you over dinner?” Just like a line from a romantic movie. He wrote down his full real name – Andrew Tyler Bartlett – and his phone number, and we set a date for the upcoming Sunday evening at Panda East, the best Chinese restaurant in town.
There, over a dinner I barely tasted, I found out he was a recent Biochemistry, Social and Economic Theory, and Ag Finance graduate from UMass (formerly pre-med at Earlham College). We talked about everything under the sun and moon, which was high and bright by the time he finally dropped me off at my dorm.
And so, off I was swept. We met in Valentine Hall and had our first date on Valentine’s Day. He had brought me a red rose, winning for me a challenge I had made with my best friend from high school. Over the preceding Christmas break she and I had pledged that both of us, mutually still reeling over recently failed romances, would receive a red rose from someone new by February 14.
My spring semester that year was a whirlwind of new experiences. On Chowder’s rented farm I watched ewes give birth, tedded hay on a tractor, tended the famed woodstove, drove shotgun in a pick-up truck, hauled round bales from the farm down the road, strung high-tensile fence, ate fresh eggs from chickens I had personally met, trimmed hooves, gave sheep shots, unrolled water line. It was as if someone had plucked me off the Amherst campus and set me down in South Dakota with that dashing young Wilder brother. This was something I had always dreamed of but had relegated to my mental video library of literature-inspired fantasies.
Many who read the Song of Solomon have to work hard to imagine the yearnings of the young maiden for the shepherd King. But when I read them, I remember actual experiences from that fateful spring: “Tell me, you whom my heart loves, where you pasture your flock?” “If you do not know, O most beautiful of women, follow the tracks of the flock.” This I have done. I have literally tracked my love into the fields to find him with his flock. And furthermore, when he came to my chamber, “my heart trembled within me.”
How could I not fall head over heels? And, in true Asperger’s fashion, once Andy had decided I was the one, he proposed inside of a year. So I was one of the truly rare Amherst seniors who was “engaged.” I was completely oblivious to the fact that this made me a bit of a social pariah. Everyone else was applying to grad school or interviewing for high-profile jobs. I was living Green Acres.
Andy and I shared an apartment near the farm, and I drove back and forth to campus in a used car he bought for me. My new friends were other townies much older than me, I had “future in-laws” and subjected myself to the meeting of the two sets of parents. Actually, I was in such a state of bliss I was oblivious to their conversation.
My last summer after college, Andy and I spent farm shopping and finally settled on 200 acres in Central New York. Two years almost to the day of meeting each other, we signed the mortgage on a farm in Chenango County, New York.
Of course the tale of these past 20 years is another story, but I can say that Andy, my Almanzo, is still my main squeeze. After we had purchased the farm, I received Little House in the Ozarks, a compilation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s weekly columns for the Missouri Ruralist, penned after she and Almanzo had bought Rocky Ridge Farm near Mansfield, Missouri. My mother had inscribed this book “For Maureen, on her own Rocky Ridge Farm.”
I have not consciously modeled my life on Laura’s nor did I consciously choose Andy because he seemed like Almanzo. It’s more like Andy and I are sort of channeling these two people. I think we both had the impression of having been born into the wrong century, into the wrong setting. I can see us as children: Andy in the suburbs of Hartford, Connecticut, with an MD dad and RN mom, fishing every chance he got, entranced by visiting his great-grandparents’ strawberry farm and dairy on the island of Oland in Sweden. Me in Lockport, New York, a GM factory town, riding ten miles on my bike to get into the countryside where I could see horses and cows, and bathing my brain in Little House books.
Perhaps I retreated to Laura’s world as a refuge from my loving but dysfunctional family. Perhaps Andy retreated to his daydream of a Swedish farm as a refuge from a social milieu he could not navigate as a child with Asperger’s, back when Asperger’s hadn’t even been identified. We were children of the 60s longing for the Populist Era, chancing to meet each other in a college kitchen, recognizing in each other our other half, like the two parts of Plato’s egg.
And here we are, twenty years later. He still makes my heart go thump when I see him in the hot summer sun on a tractor. I still feel fulfilled when I sit by the woodstove braiding onion tops. How wonderful, really, that two quirky souls, who had found their true selves in a world bygone, met each other and rode off into society’s agricultural frontier. “Hartford Pathologist’s Son Goes Dairy.” “GM Accountant’s Valedictorian Daughter Milks Cows.” Pretty radical, actually.
We turned and looked West, back in time but forward for us into the rural world our own grandparents had fought to leave behind. Perhaps Andy was the one person in the world who could be my Almanzo. Perhaps I was the one person in the world who could be his Laura. Sometimes I feel like we are childhood best friends, holding hands and grinning in our secret hideout.
I did not wonder at the time why this man had been delivered to my feet. I just grabbed him and ran. It now seems so incredibly unlikely, so remarkably serendipitous. Our early romance was a tornado, a tidal wave of compatibility and passion that erased any other plans that I or my parents or my fine college had in mind for me. There was no question in my mind: I had been granted the man I had always longed for. It felt like a gift, like a blessing, like exactly what I was supposed to do. It still feels that way, though twenty years of challenges and difficulties have given me a more mature view of the word “gift.”
Every once in a great while, usually when my college alumni magazine comes, I question my decision. My fellow grads and former boyfriends are off teaching at universities, managing mutual funds, practicing corporate law, editing magazines. I am milking cows. At such times I run upstairs to grab my worn copy of These Happy Golden Years and reread the final chapter. Laura and Almanzo have just married and driven the beautiful Morgans to their Little Gray Home in the West. They sit on their doorstep and look at the night. The horses are snuffling in the grass, their beloved dog Shep is at their feet, the stars are softly shining. Andy and I do this, too – often, in fact – and the feeling in my heart is the same as theirs: full to overflowing.
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