In The Pool

(Note: I’ve used the pronoun They/Them to describe my child in this piece. I’ve capitalized those instances for clarity.) 

So my child was standing at the lip of the park pool, along with a group of about a dozen other eight and nine-year-olds. For the previous six weeks they and the others had been in it daily, practicing their Australian Crawls and Dead-Man Floats. Also there was choreography that had been the focus for the past week. That bit involved a lot of standing and putting one foot in a hoop on the ground on the pool deck, and then pulling the foot back, and then moving into the hoop and clapping once, and moving out of the hoop. The baker’s dozen of them had finished the pool deck moves and were supposed to be getting into the water. 

The noise in the room was verging on incredible: Not only were there parents with tripods lining the big tiled room, moving their creaky metal folding chairs and talking, and not only were there camp assistants and life guards yelling instructions at everyone, and also more kids waiting for their deep-end display, there was music, and it was fucking loud. My child’s group had the indignity of having to swim in unison and in neat rows to “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” by the Black Eyed Peas. To compensate for the crowd noise, someone had turned the music up so that the reverb could be followed as it bounced from one end of the almost hundred-year-old pool deck to the other. The back wall had been demolished a few years before to transform it into a movable glass enclosure, and those panels were open to the brilliant daylight. It was dazzling, and the audience was constantly shuffling around with their cameras and their whispering. I was sitting upstairs, where it was more humid but less crowded. I watched my kid, the others watched their kids. I could see that mine was barely holding it together by Their fidgeting hands and feet, and Their tense, inward expression. I could see how hard it was to just be standing there among all this tremendous noise and air and intent, much less moving in time. I told myself that it was inevitable that They would run for it. It didn’t occur to me to be angry about it or embarrassed: It was all I could do to sit there myself, and I was safely on the balcony. 

The pool guard whistled and my kid's group all jumped into the water. Once there, the kids held onto the sides and kicked then flipped over and kicked again, which mine didn’t do. I started to collect my things so that I could meet Them when They flung themselves up and out. I wanted my lovely child to run but not cry, but I expected that They’d do both. As we watched, though, my offspring stood still in the middle of the shallow end, where the group was getting ready to swim in lines. The group leader tried to get mine to move but They stood easily, the tallest in the section. I saw Them smile beatifically. Then They started to lip sync “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night.” 

The child got Their arms into it, gesturing while the pool mates adapted, as if this was planned the whole time. The two assistants in the pool with the rogue swimmer, tasked with wrangling the entire camp population, made a few passes at getting Them back into formation but not very hard- there were other small people in the water who were in larger danger of drowning, so they focused on that. In a few seconds- five, no more than ten- my only child was the star of Their very own Esther Williams movie, complete with supporting swimmers and contemporary soundtrack. I stood up to get a better look: They were smiling at all of us, welcoming, so happy we were there with Them in that moment. 

I couldn’t see as well as I needed to. Some audience members were reacting: a few people were pointing, there were smiles on previously bored or annoyed faces. I decided to risk losing a few seconds of my only child’s moment to run downstairs and get a seat near the back. The song changed and my kid changed with it, mouthing every word perfectly, waving their arms around like a contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race. The other kids did a different stroke, my child held Their spot in the center of the shallow end, the older kids were given the signal to dive into the deep end in pairs. A few in the audience clapped along, and a few of the kids waiting for their group’s turn started to sing along, even though they’d been instructed not to. I’d brought my camera but I decided after a few fuzzy far-off pictures to just let it go so that I could watch this amazing, clever, perceptive, inspiring young person own their overwhelm: my kiddo has ASD. 

Having ASD means that everything carries the possibility of being too much, literally too much. Those on the Spectrum hear the buzz of fluorescent lights so keenly that it’s like a needle in the ear, and things that smell just a little rotten can make them throw up. This isn’t just being sensitive: the world of someone with ASD is a much more intense one than the world the rest of us live in. A lot of people who aren’t in the ASD community already know this; what most people don’t know is how long it takes someone on the spectrum to de-escalate from that state. It can take days or weeks to come down from an event like the camp’s pool show. The emotion that level of life invokes takes days to come back to the normal level of intense that many ASD kids feel constantly, and it’s a rare kid who doesn’t get physically ill from it, having to deal with stomach cramps or opportunistic viruses or migraine or all of those at once. Talking about it to other parents, even supportive ones, who don’t have neurodiverse children is grueling, because just telling them makes you look like the worst kind of stifling parent who wants the rest of society to provide comfy couches in all corners and forgive those children for their yelling or hair-pulling or whining or need to lick everything they see. The short response to that is Yes. Yes, I do. Make with the couches, community! Provide quiet corners in every classroom for the overwhelmed to retreat to, and a fridge for the gluten-free smoothie they need to drink cold! It tones the Vagus nerve, dammit! I don’t ask for this shit lightly- no one but the family of an autistic child understands how much focus is pulled from regular life, no one- but everything I ask for is, really, better for everyone. Who doesn’t need a quiet corner with a bean-bag chair for decompressing after a tense Skype meeting with the boss, or some special smoothie after being trapped in an epic traffic jam? So let’s dim the lighting in public spaces like malls! In fact, let’s tear down the malls and plant woodland parks instead, and populate said parks with the kinds of furry creatures that make humans smile, like bunnies and shit! And what I find most profound about these needs is how they are basically the needs of the planet, now. Those quiet spaces and wild spaces and places with sensitive planning that allow everyone- EVERYONE- the freedom to be alive and well are what we as a species should have been making with our busy little hands all along. 

The autistic kids have been right the whole time. 

At the pool, the songs ended and my kid’s group got out. When mine got out of the pool some of the adults clapped, and they half-turned and waved. I waited for everyone to take their turn, patient as a tortoise, and when it was finally over and the clapping sound was bouncing back and forth so loudly that I couldn’t hear the person next to me when they leaned over to make a comment, I looked for mine. They were nowhere- They’d obviously skipped out on the part where They had to sit on the concrete deck and watch all the older kids go down the slides. I went around to the bigger outside deck and found the offspring in a corner, scratching at the ground with a stick. 

“Hi, honey,” I said, touching Their shoulder gently so that I didn’t startle Them. 

“Mom!” They cried, but didn’t run into my arms as They did when they were happy. “I’m sorry about singing in the pool-” and I hugged Them, trying to make Them stop feeling like They had to apologize. A part of me wanted to cover the kid’s mouth with my hand so that I didn’t have to hear it, because They were already spending too much time doing that when all They’d done was deal with Their environment, right? 

“You were amazing,” I finally got to say. I relished my beautiful child’s face as it changed from worried to delighted- I watched the anxiety dissipate like it was CGI mist. There was still music playing. I don’t remember the songs, but I do remember that we danced in the sunshine and we sang along to them, mumbling where we didn’t know the words, not bothered in the least. Catastrophe had been averted, so now there was dancing. I thought of the planet, of the humans, of how much we had to learn.