My Autism Insights

Prompt by Mo at Manic Monday .

The bite of cold air pierced my spine as I stood at the bathroom doorway watching a silent child staring back at me.  He took a drink of water and then waited.  I knew the look on his face, calculating, looking around me toward my bedroom.

Oh no you don’t, mister, I thought.  I wrapped an arm around his shoulder to lead him back to his own room, but he tried to dodge.  But I’d anticipated the reaction, so I got a grip on him and got him back into his room.  He promptly curled into a ball on the floor, not wanting to get back into his own bed.  It was 1:30.

Got him back to bed, still freezing without my robe on, and he didn’t want the light off.  I learned that the stupid CFC bulb we put in his ceiling light doesn’t work on a dimmer, so I plugged in an extra night light, told Gus to go back to sleep, and got back into my own cooling bed.

I should have been glad - he woke me from a nightmare about water mains all over New York City breaking and causing massive flooding. If I’d stayed asleep any longer, there would have been a tidal wave for sure.  That’s what happens when your downstairs bathroom springs a leak just before dinner.

I lay in bed, listening to the thumping of my own heartbeat, not soothing, just loud, and eventually drifted back to something resembling sleep.  And wouldn’t you know it?  I wouldn’t have expected inspiration to bite me in the brain stem at that hour, but it did.  It was a weird stream of consciousness thing going on, but I came to the conclusion that Gus’s sleep problems started about 6 months ago - when I changed his room around!  Duh!  Of course that would have disturbed him!  If this sounds like middle-of-the-night brilliance, also consider that I started thinking that I’d arranged the furniture in a way that didn’t work with feng shui.  It was 2 a.m.; cut me some slack.  So, I decided that if I am ever going to get a full night’s sleep again, I will have to put the room back to its original state.  Then I went back to sleep.

For half an hour.

I heard a door open then slam shut again.

Damn.

The light was on and he was huddled back in the corner on the floor.

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yes.”  Talking was good; now we could get somewhere.  “It was about a man with a sting ray tail for a face.”

Uh huh.  I’ve often heard that Aspies don’t lie.  Someone should tell Gus this.  It’s not that he doesn’t lie, he just really stinks at it.  I knew he was making up Sting Ray Face by the little half smirk at the right side of his mouth.

I coaxed him back to bed and then asked, “Would you feel better if we moved your room back the way it was?”

His face was a sun rising over the mountaintops.  “Yes,” he breathed in relief.  Who knew?  I promised to do it today.  And then I was graced with three hours of unbroken rest.

To an Aspie, change is not always good, even 6 months later.

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