Parenting Aspergers
As we sat at the stop light on our way to the hospital, I knew that something was very wrong. I just knew. The sense of impending doom was all encompassing. Everything was dark and heavy, the cold Canadian air, the muddied snow on the ground, my belly, my heart, and my attitude, and I couldn't will the feeling away. I felt every moment was crueler than the last. When the sonogram was finally completed and the death of my much wanted, much loved baby was confirmed, I braced myself for the necessary birth with steely resolve. I would do it, and I would never ever forget it. It was about four months after the stillbirth of my first baby and I was 38 years old when my husband and I joined another couple for dinner before catching a baseball game at the newly constructed Dome Stadium in Toronto. Anne, a former business colleague of my husband, had recently married a Canadian physician and had relocated from Los Angeles, as we had, to begin a new life there. As it happened, Anne's husband was a practicing Obstetrician who had a 22-year-old patient who had decided to put her soon-to-be-born baby up for adoption by a family of her choosing. He asked if we were interested in adopting this babe, and we assured him we would be thrilled to do so. The wheels were set in fast-forward motion for obtaining legal representation, home studies, and the necessary drills for closed adoption (preferred by all parties). Then, we waited for the birth mother's approval to release her newborn to us. Once she gave us the thumbs up, we were elated. The only concern for the health of the babe was that Mom had almost zero pre-natal care and smoked five cigarettes a day. Her two-year-old child was healthy and doing well, so we felt confident that her second child would be fine, and at first, he was perfect! We had done everything ... We had wanted to assure my own pregnancy for more than nine years of tears. We finally relinquished that hope and focused on how to shake up our lives with a new objective. My parents spent much of the year in Switzerland and the notion of living in another country, leaving the past behind us, and creating a new future was not a frightening or odd consideration. We were in our thirties, confident of our business savvy We had two wonderful dogs to consider and had to research the rulings for their incubation time within several countries before compiling a short list of options for relocation. Canada looked good enough. The language would be no problem, and it allowed our dogs to enter without detainment. While our move to Canada was triggered by our strong desire to exit L.A. and its trappings, the ultimate push to move was the opportunity presented to my husband by his Los Angeles advertising firm to develop a division of automobile advertising in Ontario, Canada. We then took a quick trip to Toronto and the surrounding communities and fell in love with a house in a small town that was everything good that we could not find in L.A. We purchased the house and promptly listed our San Fernando Valley house upon our return. It was a seller's market and we sold the house immediately, packed up, and drove our two cars and two dogs across America to our new home in Canada. The world was our oyster. Every good thing was possible for us. It was a true adventure! After our move, I successfully transferred my position as a manufacturer's representative for Applause to work with their Canadian division. At that time, Applause was a highly profitable United States manufacturer and distributor of plush toys and gifts. The company enjoyed the benefits of the timely acquisition of the licensing rights for many products, including those from Disney, Sesame Street, Smurfs, and the hugely popular California Raisin figurines (a mid-eighties television ad campaign featuring dancing raisins as jazz musicians "playing" the 60's hit song by Marvyn Gaye "Heard It through the Grapevine"). I absolutely loved my job, had been very successful in L.A., and now the opportunity to learn about my newly adopted Canadian home was enhanced as I traveled the unfamiliar roads leading to interesting cities and small towns where I truly enjoyed meeting with the kind and courteous owners and buyers of the retail establishments where I sold my goods. These people were so unlike the L.A. fast-talking, deal-making toughies I had worked with in the fast-paced Los Angeles regions. These lovely Canadians were refreshingly authentic unique personalities. I quickly realized that my previously successful hard-sell strategy had no place here. I liked that, and I liked myself better at the end of the day because I became more genuine, more me, I was far more content in my soul ... My husband of ten years and I were enjoying a comfortable lifestyle in our new home and lived in a beautifully renovated Victorian mansion with exquisite gardens, a guest house surrounded by maple trees and tulips and peonies and lilacs (none of which I’d seen before in my previous 35 years in Los Angeles). Our house was up a short rise from the Grand River, which changed color with each season and nearly froze in the cold winters. We frequently saw canoes traveling downriver in the warmer months of the year. There was a bridge across the river that was wide enough to accommodate a nice restaurant with plenty of windows for river watching, and it was popular among the tourists and locals alike. My husband grew up in New York and was accustomed to the change of seasons and the lush natural beauty made possible by the harsh winters, which later brought forth the splendid bright flowers and greenery of springtime. I was stunned by the awesome beauty of springtime in Canada. We even had a raspberry patch and rhubarb plants to tend in the summer, which I later made into all sorts of tarts and pies. Our home overlooked a spacious park where many of the local families often spent hours sledding and snowboarding down the modest slopes or cross-country skiing during the winter months. In the summer, the old wooden grandstands would be filled by cheering fans of the local baseball teams, and every summer the park served as the venue for the local fair. There were rides for children, pie contests, and sheds erected and filled with the soon-to-be-judged horses and cows and goats and what have you, for their tenancy during the weeklong event. The assortment of homemade sausages and treats were sold to the fair-goers with pride and delight by their makers. The music flowed and there was an overall good feeling of calm and quiet gaiety at this fair that I had never before experienced at any time in my life. While I loved the fair and the joyful activities going on across the road from our home, I was glad to see the removal of the animal sheds and their odiferous contents after several days. The emptying of the crowds and their loud happy voices gave me my peace and quiet once again. In the weeks following the fair, the leaves began to turn and the sight from our front windows was a miraculous explosion of beautiful colors - all the shades of earth, the colors my Mom loved and saved when she came across a particularly pretty red or orange pod or leaf. As a child, our house was filled with assorted baskets filled with her collections of nature's colorful gifts. After she passed away and I sorted through her possessions, I came across dried stems and pods, some having been carefully tagged with a date of acquisition and the locations of her finds. I have them still, and when I look at them, I like to be reminded of her respect and value of nature's treasures over diamonds and pearls. I hope that I have some of her respect for nature's miracles and really notice the beauty of the earth's precious bounty. It’s all there for the viewing.
Real winter coats were an entirely new realm of fashion for me, and the lovely woolen scarves knotted just so at the neck were no longer a fashion accessory, but for warmth in Canada. And hats? I looked terrible in hats! Bad hair days became a minor fact for me in the freezing outdoors. After figuring out the proper wardrobe, I was ready to get to work. I marked out my new sales region and reviewed loads of AAA maps. I began to drive and learned the lay of the land, meeting new clients, neighbors, market vendors. The learning to drive aspect of my job as I motored through My personal survival list was growing by the day. Indeed, I was so distracted that I had no idea that I had become pregnant. What I did notice was that my weight was climbing slowly and steadily toward 120 lbs. (my personal weight limit) and that a diet of carrots and lettuce did not (for the first time in my adult life) make the pounds disappear in the usual week's time. Finally, I saw an MD and to my utter astonishment, my pregnancy was confirmed. Having the surname of Smith gave me pause because it is such a common American name. I figured there was a very likely chance that my records had been mixed up with a "real" pregnant woman named Smith. I suggested politely that a review of records was in order and was stunned to learn that it was the "ME" Smith who was expecting a baby. I was elated, my husband was thrilled, and so I began to make enormous dinners for us to dine on after a long day's work. I eliminated my yummy wine but loved eating great food; I tossed out the carrots and no longer maintained a bird-like appetite or physique. I worked throughout my much wanted pregnancy, and my clients often remarked about me being the happiest human being they knew. They were right on. Life was wonderful in every way for me during that time. After the stillbirth, I took several weeks off work to lick my wounds and heal my heart. I was the saddest I had ever been and didn't know if I would ever recover or feel hope or joy again. My faith in God was pretty well shot. The only solace I could find was in reading books written by other women who had experienced the death of their babies and what they did to heal themselves in order to continue living. I contacted my brother's first wife, Donna, who had a late miscarriage a few years prior and asked her for advice. She promptly sent a book to me that she found helpful in her recovery and then proceeded to give birth to a healthy baby boy a year or so later. Not only did the book help, but also her successful birth gave me a whisper of hope for my own desperate longing to become a mother. I slowly began to take charge of my body and lose the baby weight that continued to remind me of my loss and failure. I began to meet clients again, but their genuine sadness for me was more than I could bear. I would end up crying because I did not know yet how to receive condolences and move on to the purpose of my visits. It was during this time that I acquired the skill of keeping my private life to myself. I closed up like a clam to everyone, including my husband, who was coping in his own way and became a clam himself ... to everyone, including me.
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This Is How It All Began