Orange you glad we came?

Salerno was my first and, as sometimes happens, fourth city on my mission. Nestled just south of Naples along the southern end of the Amalfi Coast, reputedly one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. It was one of my favorite cities for several reasons.

The allies landed here during WWII and then slugged it up north where they had a major battle at Monte Casino where Germans had set up their stronghold in a Benedictine Monastery high on a hill overlooking the town of Casino. The battle was one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles in WWII and with the fall of Monte Casino, the road to Rome was open.

For some reason, I confused the old dilapidated ruins of a monastery high on a hill overlooking Salerno with the famed battle site located some 100 kilometers to the north.

In my defense, I blame a lack of interest in World History and that Italians actually believe that the grotto and manger wherein Christ was born was spirited away from Jerusalem by angels one medieval night and is now located in the town of Assisi Italy (Of St. Francis fame). Apparently the lead in the Italian water system causes these types of geographical delusions.

The fact that St. Francis' birthplace and the birthplace of our Lord is now located within a five minute walk of each other should be viewed as a bona fide miracle and we should not fall prey to the cynical assumption that this is just a thirteenth century marketing ploy. (On your way out, don't forget to take a look at our beautiful place mats which feature St. Francis' "Lord, make me an instrument of they peace" prayer in gold leaf on one side with the Holy Family manger scene recreated in stunning 3D reality on the other side....if you keep your left eye open while rapidly blinking your right, you'll see Baby Jesus wink at you)...now, back to our story.

Anyway, when I told my companion that I was certain that the run-down monastery on the highest hill overlooking Salerno was the famed WWII battle site, we made plans to climb the hill and visit it on the very next P-Day.

We started our climb about ten in the morning under a blazing August Mediterranean sun. It soon became apparent to both of us that the hill was a lot higher than we had anticipated,a lot steeper than we had anticipated, and that we should have brought along some water for the climb.

The road to the monastery wasn't anything you'd drive a car up....or even a jeep if it had a nice paint job. It was more of a goat path, complete with the occasional goat bleating out protests against out intrusion into their domain. Both my companion and I were tired, hot, thirsty, and sweaty and I suspect that if either of us hinted at wanting to go back without making it to the top, we'd have turned around immediately...but neither of us wanted to be the weenie and so we soldiered on.

About fifty yards from the top, we stopped to rest on a rock and catch our breath. That was when we discovered that the monastery which we had thought was abandoned was, in fact, inhabited. A party of three monks came down from the top of the hill towards us. They had witnessed our climb, which took the better part of an hour, saw that we had foolishly forgot to bring liquid refreshment, and were coming down to greet us with a couple of bottles of wine.

In Italy, EVERYONE drinks wine...and many Italians view a refusal of offered wine as an insult akin to spitting on their flag. It doesn't matter how much you protest that it is against your religion, they will try every ploy up to and including wrestling you to the ground, forcing open your mouth, and pouring the stuff down your throat.

The monks came up to us and introduced themselves. One of them told us that he was the prior of the small cell of monks that was living in and restoring the old monastery. When he offered us the wine he had brought to us, we politely refused, telling him that we were missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and that drinking wine was against our religion.

Given the Italian's sensitive feelings about their wine and the fact that we were Mormon missionaries on Italian soil, we fully expected to be shown the way back down the mountain. Instead, the prior inclined his head and whispered something to one of the other monks who went running back up to the monastery with the two bottles of wine.

The prior then invited us to lunch and asked us to sit and rest ourselves on a large rock overlooking the Bay of Salerno until we were refreshed and could continue our journey. After about two minutes, the monk that had left came hurrying back with a couple of cups and a pitcher of the coolest, sweetest spring water I had ever tasted.

When we got to the monastery, we saw that a table had been set up in the courtyard and the rest of the monks, about twenty in all, were busy setting up a simple, rustic meal of freshly baked bread, goat cheese, tomatoes, olives, vinegar, appricots and oranges, all made there in the monastery by the monks that now waited on us hand and foot. We were told several times how it was a pity that we could not drink wine which was also made there and, reportedly, quite wonderful.

Towards the end of the meal, the prior again bent his head and whispered something to the monk who had brought us the pitcher of water and sent him scurrying off on yet another errand. When he returned, he was holding two dusty bottles. We thought that we were, again, going to have to refuse an offering of wine when the dust was blown off and we discovered that what was being offered to us was aranciata...simple orange soda. Aranciata is the second favorite drink in Italy right after wine and coffee. When the rest of the monks at the table saw the bottles, they hastily drained the wine from their glasses in anticipation of the treat. There was just enough for a small glass of orange soda for each of us.

As we sat around the table and talked, there was no arguing over religion. Instead, we openly envied each other. My companion and I envied the amount of time afforded to the monks for study and prayer while they openly envied the fact that we were actively involved in bringing souls to Christ.

The hour was late and we had to be back and dressed in white shites and ties before 5:00 in the evening and so, after much hand-shaking, hugging, and a little more cheek-kissing than either my companion and I were comfortable with, we said our goodbyes.

As I related that story to our branch president, he told me that the monks on the hill were very poor and that they normally only ate very poor fare. "That meal they gave you was probably like their Christmas feast...and those two bottles of aranciata were probably donated and saved for a special occasion. They usually only eat what they grow or make and only come into town only twice a year and what little money they have is spent on building supplies"

The very next P-day, my companion and I and the two other missionaries that served in Salerno with us trudged up the hill to the monastery once more. The climb took a little longer this time because each of us were weighed down with shopping bags full of cheese, bread, olives, vinegar..and orange soda...lots of orange soda.

We probably could have brought one or two bottles more but we just had to have room in the bags for twenty bars of chocolate.

Hi Dad

Having a child with autism under your roof hones your senses in a way that few imagine possible. One of the things that changes is that you can spot another person with autism a mile away. There are various and sundry nuances to the way a person with autism will hold their head, react to a touch, walk, talk, make a noise....it really is uncanny. Kerry and I have been in the supermarket and she will prick her ears up at a noise made one aisle over and say to me, "That person has autism". Sure enough, when we turned the corner, there would be a person holding their head at the precise angle or moving their thumb and forefinger together in a way as to suggest that they are counting imaginary money. One of the key signs is the avoidance of eye contact. A person with autism will most of the time answer a question posed to them as if they are being distracted from some unseen attraction that commands their attention...physically in this world and yet, mentally, engrossed in some other world that is far removed and distant. People who are not intimate with this disease have no idea how much Dustin Hoffman deserved that Academy Award he won for 'Rainman'.

The hardest part of finding out that your child has autism is the death of all of the hopes and dreams and expectations that had unknowingly taken root in your heart the minute that child arrived in your life. You have to learn to say goodbye to that child and start learning to love the child that you have...and yet...somewhere behind that unseen and impenetrable wall...you have an inkling...a hope that the child you thought you had is still waiting there...biding time until the day when The Great God will make all things right and you will enjoy him as he really is, unfettered and free of all mental restraints.

Fortunately, for Kerry and I, Heavenly Father has given us brief glimpses into what this will be like. It's happened to each of us at different times and in different ways but we've each had the opportunity to briefly meet and converse with our son when he has been completely free of his autism.

For me, the occurrence happened about ten years ago when I was recuperating from my accident. Kerry had gone off to the store with John-Ross and Sarah and Daniel and I were at home by ourselves. I was busy with some project at my desk and Daniel was in the room watching television.

As I worked, I slowly became aware of a different feeling in the room....almost the way you become aware that the weather has suddenly changed outside. It was very subtle but very palpable.

I looked up from my work and into the eyes of my son. Everything about his visage had changed. The ever-present grin that is so endearing and yet, so indelibly reminiscient of a person with mental illness was gone. It was replaced with the calm serenity of a person who is completely confident and free of any remorse or regret. The eyes that would only briefly meet mine now locked onto me and seemed to penetrate deep into the depths of my soul.

There was a moment of silence as it dawned upon me that I was looking at my son, completely free of the prison that had held his mind and kept him away from me.

"Hi Dad"

I was afraid to speak for fear that anything on my part would shatter the moment and so Daniel and I stood locked in each other's gaze until I finally said, "Hello son.".

"I just wanted you to know that I'm not crazy"

"I know you're not"

"Good"


And with the utterance of those words...he was gone...The crooked smile returned to his face and his eyes clouded over and my son retreated back behind that wall that he had briefly pierced. Gone to a place where I could not follow.

One day, the wall will be forever torn down. The prison doors will be flung open and I will again see him as he truly is, majestic, unblemished, unfettered...divine. And he will retreat no more to a place where I cannot follow. I will bask in his company and learn to love him all over again...and I will have to say goodbye to the son I have now.

How I will miss him.

Sesame Street has been brought to you by the letters 'D" and "P"

My wife and I often observe that we do not have three children, we have three only children. We state that because they are so completely different. We have our son, Daniel who has autism. We have our daughter, Sarah who's gifted in music and dramma and math and...(well...she's a girl)...and we have our eldest son, John-Ross.

John-Ross is a genius. There's no other way to put it. A lot of people abuse that phrase when they want to tell you that their kid is pretty smart so let me elaborate. When John-Ross was three, he taught himself to read. Before he started Kindergarten, he had read the entire collected works of Lewis Carroll and was working on Melville. He absorbed knowledge, particularly literature, not like a sponge but more like a black hole would absorb light. By the time he was eight, he was up to reading the books they give literature majors in college...usually three or four at a time.

As a young father, I often made the mistake of confusing intelligence with maturity. So when John-Ross came to me at the tender age of six and a half and wondered where babies came from, I thought to myself,"What? Vonnegut hasn't covered that for you yet" I was about to give my son a volume written by Kilgore Trout, one of Vonnegut's alter egos whose prose served when what Vonnegut wanted to say exceeded the poetic license he granted himself, thinking..."there ya go, kid...that ought to explain it to you " when my wife caught me and told me I had to man up and do it myself.

Like I said, it is easy to mistake intelligence for maturity and so, since my son was using big words and talking like an adult...I talked to him like an adult. I told him exactly where babies come from; the whole process. What he wanted...what he needed at the time was a simple, "When mommies and daddies love each other..." and here I was whipping out charts and graphs and full color illustrations out of the encyclopedia.

When I finished, I felt proud. I had just passed one of those seminal moments (excuse the awkwardness of that particular phrase here) between a father and a son. I patted my six year old on the head and asked him if he had any questions.

John-Ross looked up at me with those beautiful brown eyes of his like he had been pole-axed. Then, without another word, he turned, went into the bathroom, and began to throw up. When he emerged from the bathroom, he again turned those sweet brown eyes up to me. There was a pleading in them, almost as if he wanted me to say "Ha Ha....just kidding!. You see, there's this stork and this cabbage patch..." We stood there in silence for a moment.

When he finally spoke, he said, "Surely, you don't do that to my mother!"

That was when my wife and I instituted, "The Jar" Let me explain "The Jar". It operates along the same principle as a swear jar that many families use to punish daddy when he hits his thumb with a hammer and lets fly a few expletives to which tender young ears ought not be exposed. Only the swear jar is a mayonaise jar with quarters and nickles in it. Once the jar got full, the family would all go out for pizza.

Our jar was a five gallon water jug stuffed with tens and twenties and its intended purpose was to pay for whatever future therapy our children would need due to the ham-fisted way in which I handled myself as their father. "The Explaining Incident" (as it later became known) cost me a weeks pay.

The reason you need to know all of this is because you need a foundation for the story I am about to tell. When John-Ross was two and a half, Sesame Street was his main diet. Our home had more Sesame Street stuff in it than a PBS gift shop. There were two reasons for this: First, like I said, John-Ross was absorbing knowledge at an alarming rate and Sesame Street's sole raison d'etere was to stuff knowledge into little minds, and second (and perhaps more important) we had just moved to California, into the only apartment we could afford there which meant it was in a seedier part of Freemont. While we were moving in, I witnessed a homeless person relieving himself in the ally across the street and made the patriarchal declaration that, under no circumstances, until we could move into a better neighborhood, would our son be allowed to play outside by himself.


So, while we barracaded ourself into our eight hundred square feet of stucco-finished, Pepto-Bismal pink, Heaven on earth...the characters on Sesame Street became John-Ross' closest and dearest friends. Really..his only friends.

When Daniel was born, Kerry's father took ill and we flew her across country with our new baby so that she could care for her dad and show him his new grandson. I took a couple of weeks off from work to care for John-Ross.

My wife had carefully written out and placed in a binder explicit instructions on the care and feeding of our son. She even entitled it, "The Care and Feeding of John-Ross" (I tossed the book as soon as my wife got on the plane)

Instructions??? we don't need no stinkin' instructions! John-Ross was my buddy, my pal...we were going to have two weeks of fun while mom was gone and I had carefully planned out my own agenda...with a final Saturday crescendo and climaxing with our sitting front row and center at "Sesame Street Live"

My wife had caught me once slipping Dr. Pepper into John-Ross' sippy cup and I got a lecture that lasted for...(let's see....today is Friday....) on why we should NEVER give caffiene to children. I had no idea at the time that the reason we don't give caffiene to children is for our own safety's sake. So when the wife boarded the plane, John-Ross and I stopped off at the 7-11 and I bought him his first Big Gulp...filled to the brim with Dr. Pepper. (Heck...I was raised on the stuff....if it was good enough for me, it was good enough for my son)

The next thing that went out the window was that namby-pamby box of Cheerios. I went to the store and got REAL cereal...MAN cereal....."Son, let me introduce you to a friend of mine...his name is 'Captain Crunch' Oh...and here's some chocolate milk while you're at it!"

By the time two weeks had passed, I had completely destroyed any chance my wife ever had of ever getting our son to eat anything green (unless it was an M&M) and John-Ross was sleeping ...oh...I'd say about two or three hours a day.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the picture show watching "Return of The Jedi" ...More movie food. Two troughs of Pepsi. (They don't serve Dr. Pepper at the movies outside of Texas....I'm telling you...outside of The Lone Star State, people live like animals) The next best thing would be whatever you have that is brown, carbonated, and caffienated.

By the time we left the movies and headed for Sesame Street Live, between the caffiene, sugar, and special effects brought to us in surround sound Dolby, I had my little toddler strung up tighter than an 'E' string on a Stratavarious. He was one Skittle away from a diabetic coma.

We got to the auditirium and took our seats. I bought John-Ross a souvenir, one of those thick felt "Ernie's" that was about half the size he was and sat atop a 30" dowel. Ernie was John-Ross' favorite....his best friend in the whole wide world and he was about to see him live and in person for the first time. I was almost as excited as he was.

When the lights dimmed and the spotlights began to play across the stage, John-Ross went into a kind of trance. If you've never been to one of these shows, what they do is keep the excitment level just short of the children wetting themselves...which is fine if you don't have your toddler all strung out on kiddie crack. In fact, I think that they ought to print a huge warning on the ticket. "DON'T EVEN THINK OF BRINGING YOUR KID IN HERE IF HE'S EVEN SEEN A DR. PEPPER IN THE PAST WEEK!"

They bring out the characters one by one..First the minor ones...Then they work up to The Count. By this time, I was having to physically restrain John-Ross from leaping to his feet and going up on stage to play with his friends.

When Big Bird came out, he walked right by us and didn't even look down at my son who called out, "Big Bird!...it's me...John-Ross!"

This time, merely holding my son in his seat wasn't going to do. He was creating enough of a ruckus that he was causing a scene and I had to remove him from the auditorium until he calmed down. I had no idea at the time just how much these characters meant to my son and how much he viewed them as his only friends in the world. I tried to calmly explain to him that he needed to stay in his seat or we would have to go home.

Well....John-Ross was having none of THAT! He tried to run past me into the auditorium so I grabbed him and took him to a side alcove where he spent ten minutes trying to run past me, over me or through me. The tears in my son's eyes wear not tears of sadness but of rage. I had never seen that look in a kid before (well, I had in horror movies but not in a real kid) A security guard passed by and asked if he could help. For a moment I had a vision of John-Ross whipping the security guard's service revolver from its holster, emptying into me, then standing over my lifeless body asking the guard if he would kindly show my son how to reload the thing.

By some miracle, I got John-Ross calmed down enough to go back inside. We had no sooner taken our seats when the announcer introduced my son's favorite Sesame Street character, Ernie. When Earnie came down the aisle right beside us, I couldn't believe my eyes. John-Ross was sitting perfectly mannered in the seat next to me and waved at his friend, who waved back.

Ernie went on stage and started doing a little song and dance and asking us to clap along with him. My son was acting perfectly well at the time and so I unclenched my fist from his shirt onto which I was holding tightly and began to clap along.

It was the moment John-Ross was waiting for. Like I said...the kid's a genius and he was biding his time until I let my guard down. The second he felt me loosen my grip on his shirt, he shot out of his chair and onto that stage like he was on fire! He actually made it all the way up to Ernie who bent down and hugged John-Ross before the security guards pried him loose and handed him kicking and screaming back to me.

If I thought my son had gone berzerker on me before, it was nothing compared to now. I never knew what caffiene actually did for you, based on my own observation from trying to quit drinking Dr.Pepper, it keeps your head from caving in. Apparently, however, for kids it has a different affect and acts pretty much like gamma rays do to Bruce Banner. John-Ross turned into the Hulk...right up to and including super-toddler strength. I had to hold him by his belt, away from my body, as we made it to our car.

I strapped my son into his car seat in the back and buckled him in as tightly as I could. All the way out of the parking lot he was cursing at me in some dead language and whacking away at me with his felt Ernie-On-A-Stick.

When we got onto the freeway to Fremont, it was under construction and so they had narrowed the lanes down to a single lane...to my right were orange cones and workmen, to my left was a temporary concrete rail. I had about 6" on eith side of my car to drive.

In California, the rules are different. It doesn't matter how congested the traffic is, if the freeway is under construction or you have the narrowest of passages in which to navigate, if you're not driving 80 mph, the driver behind you will MAKE you go that fast. I had to do all of that while my hopped up kid in the back seat was intent upon beating me to death with a starch-stiffened PBS character impaled upon a 1/4" dowel!

I drove with my left had while fending off the assault with my right. I finally grabbed Ernie out of my son's hand and flung him beyond my son into the far back of the station wagon..thinking that the fight was over. I was wrong...that was just round one.

John-Ross manifested his Houdini skills then and somehow teleported himself out of his super-industrial strength Toys-R-Us escape-proof child seat and flew at me, balling himself up on my head, biting my ears, and pounding me with his fists. If you want a visual idea of what was going on, rent the Disney movie, "The Incredibles" and fast forward to the last five minutes where Jack-Jack goes berzerker and dismantles Syndrome. That's as close as I can come to what my child was doing to me as I drove 80mph down a congested California highway.

When my wife came home the next day, I had to explain to her the dowel-marked bruises on my face and neck and bite marks on my ear and why our son no longer took naps....

You want to know something? I got no sympathy from her at all.