Loving the Tasmanian Devil: Ooh! I Love the Falling Snow Thing!

Catholics have a concept called the “victim soul,” a person specially chosen by God to suffer, and who accepts this suffering in the tradition of Christ to both make up for the sins of others and to educe compassion from a world sorely in need of practicing it. Well, I must make a confession, which is that about two years ago I offered myself as a victim soul. Maybe I had suffered through a day of adolescent testoster-slosh or the predictable sibling rivalries and their attendant squabbles and fights or the necessary but annoying need of pre-pubescents to talk back and disobey. Maybe I have just watched Terms of Endearment too many times. But I was really feeling as if I needed to take the bull by the horns and give my kids some situation where compassion was called for. Kind of force them into maturing morally.

So, I offered myself. I wrote a prayer in my journal and said, “God, if it would help my family to develop compassion, I offer myself for that cause. If I need to get cancer or MS or whatever, I’ll do it. Just don’t make me lose my sight.”

Of course I envisioned everyone grief-stricken at the news, the boys falling over themselves to hug me, rubbing my bald head. I did not propose this lightly. I watched my own father die of lung cancer, so my offer was not flippant, ignorant of the ravages of a terrible illness. I was just hoping that since I was the family rock and the place everyone ran for comfort and love, that my suffering would be the tragedy to bring the family together. Also, Andy’s Mom and Dad have always called me Saint Mo for putting up with Andy, but I knew I needed something more miraculous to seal my canonization.

I should know by now to be careful what I pray for, especially from a God who fashioned the platypus.

It was two days after that that I heard the Asperger’s segment on NPR. Andy became the one with the diagnosis. With a loving but wry smile, God pointed His finger at the plank in my own eye. Well, there, Ms Maureen, how compassionate are you? Instead of the image of everyone gathered around my bed – Andy and the three boys bringing me breakfast and telling me how much they appreciate all that I have done for them – suddenly I am the one serving, I am the one being daily reminded that another suffers instead of me. I am the one doing yet another semester here in Earth School.

And in truth, when I look at myself in relationship to Andy and his Asperger’s, I must describe my attitude toward Andy’s “idiosyncrasies,” now identified as “symptoms,” as one of annoyance rather than compassion. I truly was the one in need of kindness training.

Back in my impressionable youth, I adoringly followed my beloved older sister through a phase of reading a bunch of books that accomplished this very thing. First there were the books about Karen Killilea who was born with cerebral palsy. I just found out, courtesy of Wikpedia, that she is now a receptionist at a Catholic retreat house run by monks (small world). Then there was Angel Unaware, about Robin Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of Dale Evans and Roy Rogers, born with Down’s Syndrome. (I just reread this book and the wave of nostalgia was intense.) The premise of this book is that Robin was sent to the Rogers family to help them develop compassion.

This whole set of books, checked out by my sister in Permabound from the dark and somewhat intimidating Young People’s Room at the Lockport Public Library, led to weeks of playing CP clinic with our Fisher Price people and fabricating metal braces for our own legs and I’m sure to my sister’s running a camp for special needs kids during the summer.

So what happened to that? Where did all that innocent and bottomless compassion go? Can I blame the 80s? The Me Generation? That I came of age just as Madonna released Material Girl? Actually, I kind of got through college with my compassion intact. Twenty years of negotiating the dangerous curves of life with an undiagnosed Aspergian probably did more to wear me down.

In my own defense, it is very hard to be compassionate toward someone with a syndrome whose main symptom is rudeness. It’s one thing to hold someone’s hand and offer help when the ailment is physical and obviously debilitating, and like Beth in Little Women, the sufferer is sweet-natured and thankful and bestowing grace right and left (like I would have, of course). It’s another when the main disability the victim needs help with is unavoidable obnoxiousness.

South Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who had to learn to accept both North Vietnamese and American soldiers during the Vietnam War, says that the first step toward compassion is understanding. If we can know why our brother acts as he does, we can then understand him and have empathy.

So, rudeness and Asperger’s: my attempt at understanding. “Rudeness” in its various guises is one of the key traits of an Aspergian and is therefore most likely linked to the amygdala’s immaturity. Neurologically speaking, for an Aspergian there is no instinctive understanding of tone of voice as a method of communication. I have found this goes both ways. Andy cannot necessarily pick up on others’ tones of voice, but the flipside is also true: Andy cannot understand how his own tones of voice flavor a statement.

Aspies also have trouble with volume modulation, talking too loud or too soft, in Andy’s case too loud. A further factor is the Aspie need to have things orderly and efficient or, in other situations, to limit the amount of sensory input, all of this due to excessive anxiety and the need to limit fear. Add on to that extreme logic and its attendant lack of empathy and we have all the ingredients for being offensive.

Exempli gratia: A simple statement made by Andy, “Would you please turn down the radio?” can sound 1) frantic if Andy is experiencing sensory overload 2) accidentally angry if his voice modulates too loud 3) demeaning if his tone accidentally indicates there are other things I should be doing, and 4) impatient if he is needing quiet to get something done.

I guess if I am ever to attain sainthood, I am going to have to learn to consciously undo what Andy has unconsciously had to learn to do. That is, the same effort it takes me to unwrap all the emotional layers that I “hear” in his statements, it takes Andy to add on all the emotional layers to what I say. That definitely calls forth my compassion.

Since the diagnosis, every time I think Andy is being rude, I consciously try to 1) peel off his tone of voice 2) take into account his sensitivity to sensory input from the environment 3) adjust his volume to normal using my mental mixing board and 4) unthink that he wants me to being doing something other than what I am doing. I can feel the amount of energy this takes and realize it takes Andy the same amount to read into my statements everything I am indicating through my eyes, my body language, my tone, and my context.

OK. This is hard work, and on a day when I just want an adult husband by my side, can seem unfairly burdensome. The nice thing about Catholicism is the wide array of saints one can call on for inspiration or help. The nave at St. Paul’s, the “Irish” church in Norwich, is quite plain and unadorned compared to the nave of St. Bartholomew’s, the “Italian” church. To the uninitiated, the pictures in St. Bart’s can be baffling. There is St. Ambrose in his long red robe holding a bee hive. There are three little nude children in a brine bucket behind St. Nicholas, St. Francis of Assissi is petting a deer, St. Christopher is holding a little child on his shoulder while knee-deep in a rushing river. The saints are like family for a Catholic, older uncles and aunts who can offer advice and help and will intercede in a pinch to save you.

There are books and websites that index the various saints and the special protection they have assumed based on their life stories, especially their persecutions and deaths. Thus the bizarre paintings of Saint Lawrence holding what looks to be a grill grate, because he had been burned to death on a brazier, crying out mid-torture, “I am already roasted on one side and, if thou wouldst have me well cooked, it is time to turn me on the other.” Logically, he is the patron saint of chefs and butchers. Or there is St. Lucy holding her gouged-out eyeballs on a plate, patron saint of the blind. I am a big fan of the Irish St. Brigid, known for her great generosity ladling out her father’s milk to the poor. For this reason she is known as the patron saint of dairy workers and is sometimes depicted standing next to a butter churn.

Paintings by Jen Wojtowicz, blogging at Jenny's Dresser Drawer http://jenwojtowicz.blogspot.com

Is there a patron saint of Asperger’s Syndrome? Indeed there is, well, a patron saint of neurological issues: Saint Dymphna. Another Irish pagan-turned-Catholic, at fourteen she fled the advances of her grief-crazed father who, after his wife’s death, developed a case of pathological incestuousness and chased his daughter down. When she refused him, he decapitated her, thus the pictures of glowing brains on the websites of her followers. Because of this, she is the patron saint of neurological issues, mental illnesses, mental health professionals, runaways, incest victims, and of all things, happy families. This is typical of the saints’ patronage, that they seek to advance the converse of whatever caused their persecution.

So I can offer up a prayer to her, calling on Saint Dymphna to help Andy grapple with his neurological differences, especially at times when the sensory input and whirl of detail overwhelms him: “Lord, our God, you graciously chose St. Dymphna as patroness of those afflicted with mental and neurological illnesses or challenges. She is thus an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who ask her intercession. Please grant, Lord, through the prayers of this pure youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all suffering such trials, and especially those for whom we pray: my husband Andrew. We beg You, Lord, to hear the prayers of St. Dymphna on our behalf. Grant all those for whom we pray patience in their sufferings and resignation to Your divine will. Please fill them with hope, and grant them the relief they so much desire.”

Perhaps Andy and I both need St. Dymphna medals to carry. Or scapulars.

But back to me and my plight. When I am frustrated by a Tasmanian day, I can most certainly turn to Dymphna on Andy’s behalf, but there is also my behalf. Where do I get the patience to be compassionate and understanding and use this marital challenge as a way to strengthen my own character?

I find myself turning to the Buddhists and their much more developed protocols for mind and thought management. I usually find Buddhist texts too prescriptive and sequential for my random-concrete style: the four noble truths, the eight-fold path, breathing exercises. I am too nebulous in spirit to channel my soul into such rigid confines. However, I did pull out Santideva’s Guide to the Boddhisatva’s Way of Life and found some verses that offered gems of insight such as this one: “If fishermen, outcasts, farmers, and others, whose minds are fixed merely on their own livelihoods, withstand the adversities of cold and heat, then why do I not endure for the sake of the well being of the world?”

I think of Andy, every day, unfailingly, rising at 3:30 AM, prioritizing his lists, doing the hard things, spreading manure in negative temperatures and blizzards, baling hay in the blistering summer sun. I have had to do these things too, but not nearly to the same extent as he. If I compare his exertions to the effort it takes me to unpack and disregard Andy’s seeming rudeness, mine is quite negligible. Besides which, Santideva also says, “Mental afflictions [mine in this case] do not exist in sense objects, or in sense faculties, or in the space between, and not anywhere else. Then where do they exist and agitate the whole world? This is an illusion only. Liberate your fearing heart and cultivate perseverance for the sake of wisdom. Why would you torture yourself in hells for no reason?”

Resentment over Andy’s Asperger’s symptoms is a hell of my own devising. It’s not going to accomplish anything except make me miserable. It’s not going to mature Andy’s amygdala or modulate his tone of voice or accomplish anything productive. Yes, we can work on those things to improve them, but not in the midst of them. Learning to ignore these behaviors and dissipate my own resentment is the way for me to “cultivate perseverance for the sake of wisdom.”

This beautiful painting called Lilies of the Field is by Paul Crimi who can be found at http://www.paulcrimifinearts.com/

Similarly, Jesus said, “Look at the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.” Luckily, this is something I can do with ease by glancing out the window or walking outside. I don’t think flowers feel annoyance, nor do birds take offense. Feelings such as these, as well as elation and contentment, are the purview of the human, both for good and for bad. Sainthood comes from cultivating the good ones and weeding out the bad.

I’ll give the final words to Santideva, who seems here to be blessing both Andy in neuron-overload and me in fruitless frustration: “May deities protect the dull, the insane, the deranged, the helpless, the young, and the elderly, and those in danger from sickness, the wilderness, and so on. May all beings unceasingly hear the sound of Dharma from the birds, from every tree, from the rays of light, and from the sky.” Amen.