Processing 2

Finger
Mine
Miracle
Gray brown
Bark
Becomes me

What smell
Wet
New leaf
So bright
Touching it
Hurts until
I grasp it softly.

Voices blend
Wind
Tree boughs
Bird calls
Spring peepers
Plane! Shiny!
Voices
Gurgling water
So pretty
Voices
Found.

Why
didn’t
you
answer
us?

And leave
The joy
Of exchange
Vibrating
Color softness?

I go with
The voices
The Tree
Inside me
Deflects the pain.

Processing .1

I am behind my wall
The angered think they see me
They cannot touch me
Not with their red wounded hands

Phooshing air moves with
A paddle, a wooden spoon, a yardstick
Anger is a noise
My wall is dense, muffling

I watch from inside
Wasn’t I cute once
Anger is black, red forgetfulness
I am the Cause
I am my own fault

So small so far away
A worm, a bug of fear
Tickles layers of skin
Deep in the shadows I lurk
I dive into metal self

Anger surprises
Fear repels
Why should I respond
Can song words change them
Change the battering

Words from the outside become noise

No answer
Light flickers but not
Like sun through shiny leaves
Light shrinks
Small hole, mouse versus viper

I can be still so still
Invisible to myself
Still present to the wounded wounders

The strap, the yelling
Be still, be small
Make it go away

Can happiness be found in black?

Processing

These are a series of poems about childhood. For the first time I am sharing about the pain. Each unit of Processing is a specific memory, but not in chronological sequence.

Standing in the Yard at Night

[What is the speed of Light? A million galaxies, a quantum leap? The scientists tell us space travel is impossible. Truly?]

(April 21, 2009) Jaffrey, NH

Three fingers

Three stars

The scientists are wrong

Close, I see them

Close, I touch them,

Close, heart beats

Flicker in time

With their shimmer

Three stars

Touched

Home

McMommy

June 2, 2009

That quick pinging is the French fry timer. It is time to shake those fries so they do not stick together.

The longer ping is the basket on the left side of the fryer. Those fries are done and need to be drained and gently emptied into the bin. And that other steady bell that is a half pitch lower in musical tone? That is one of the alerts to let the grill team know that they need fresh-cooked hamburgers.

The shake machine has a soft low tone. The back grill buzzes when hot, when cooking, when done. The pie oven dings when the pies are baked. Near the front counter the reach-in refrigerator fan turns on, followed closely by the motor for the ice cream mixer.

These are the normal noises that flow through the day at my McDonald’s restaurant. They happen frequently and often in synchronicity. They have no respect for my customers. Through this noise I need to be able to focus on my patrons, I need to accurately hear their orders, direct questions to clarify their needs, and then speedily enter this information into the computer system so that their food products are communicated to the grill team.

Fast food, not instant.

Friends who know me marvel that I can not only survive but thrive in this sensory magnified environment. I regularly field the question “You are so smart—how can you work at McDonald’s?” It is true, I am smart. I have taught at the university level. I give workshops to professionals about autism. I am published. I am a member of the Freedom Writers’ Foundation and a contributor to their recent book, Teaching Hope. I have written dinner theater, acted, directed and designed for the theater.

Yet I love my “McJob.” After 3 hours serving customers during a busy lunch rush my hearing is compromised. It is difficult for me to filter out all the sounds, to filter and distinguish the vowels and consonants in shared speech between me the server and my customer, the served. If I am not cautious about creating a sensory break, about renewing my ability to discriminate sound bytes, then I fail in providing a quality service.

There is also the social side of working the front counter at McD’s. The rules of engagement are clear: 1. Smile; 2. Greet the customer, personally if possible, making eye contact (if possible); 3. Encourage the visitors and listen to their order; 4. Ask for and receive payment; Thank the customer; and 5. Present hot food with a smile.

Now that is a simple social pragmatics program! I get to practice this pattern over and over, changing my smile, my one line quips, the way I tilt my head to show I am listening, and enjoying every moment. The exchanges are short. I do not have to continue any complex social chatter. Dialogue is short so I do not have an opportunity to soliloquize about my favorite and arcane topics. Perhaps best of all my quirky mannerisms—quoting lyrics from 1970’s love songs, imitating famous film lines, creating goofy faces—invite laughter and easygoing banter.

This is great. I have had many types of employment. I have worked in accounting, data entry, marketing, personal care, and entertainment roles. I have developed curriculum, written and graded exams, and worked in desegregation programs.

Nowhere has there been a position where I can smile the entire time I am working and get smiles back most of the time. Not only do I have short but happy interactions with my customers, I work on using my unique way of thinking and perceiving to create relationships with my crew members.

Back in high school at my very first McD’s job, I was a social misfit who was good at the rules, fast with service, and shy. Eight years ago I took my children on a tour of my hometown. Unbelievable, but the store manager remembered me, and offered me a job. I worked at a store in Atlanta and in St. Louis. When I needed a bit of extra income (dratted car payments) I took on the store here in southern New Hampshire.

Of course I am much older, quite a bit heavier (was I really a beach bunny?), and my hair is so gray it no longer holds hair color. I have come to peace with my oddness. I no longer care if I fit in with people.

I do care if I fit in my clothes.

I do care that I fit the profile of a hard worker, and a compassionate co-worker.

Now, not only do I work at this restaurant, but when I first joined the crew my eldest son also worked at this restaurant. That was five years ago. He worked at a store in Pennsylvania where he attended college and now in Florida he works for a corporately owned restaurant where he is learning management. Now at the small McCafe in rural New Hampshire my daughter is an award winning employee, my middle son works in the grill area, and my fourth child who is 15 wants to know when he can apply.

We are now the McEdscorn’s. Where I once was the shy, cautious customer service crew member, I am now the laughing and playful expert. I am the oldest front counter person, and by that virtue (and the compassion and experience I project) I have been adopted as McMommy by my much younger cohorts. They confide their hurts, their worries and their concerns to me. They know they can get a hug from me. They know that if something goes wrong, I am logical, calm, and knowledgeable and that I take action to solve personal and customer relationships.

Somehow, the gangly awkward young adult, the peculiar young woman with language idiosyncrasies, has become cool.

I answer those who wonder how I can possibly work in the noisy, fast-paced environment, that this is the only job where I can smile at people for 4 or more hours straight out and have people smile back.

McMommy…I’m lovin’ it.

END

Civil RIghts and Civility

At the ripe old age of 55 I am finally reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I read the first half of the novel in 2 hours but found myself stretched between needing sleep and needing to mourn the departure of my eldest son, who left March 22nd for Florida.

My middle son is reading this incredible story for high school literature, and I am being supportive. He has the book on CD so he can listen to it while driving about town. I rented the film featuring the superb Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. I am reading the volume so we can dialogue about the language, themes, characters and plot.

Wondering about this literary gap in my life I cast back through my memory: why should I have avoided this classic? Then I remembered that the premise of the book was a small town lawyer doing the Right Thing in a rape case involving a black man. My parents would not have let me read this book in 1970. I must have read a substitute assignment. And racism never came up as a discussion.

But I was not unaware.

He was a gorgeous shade of deep chocolate, the first black I had ever seen in person. An adult, he seemed to suddenly appear at my church one Sunday as a cantor. He introduces himself prior to worship, and then he sings.

I love singing in church, but I preferred to listen to him, enrapt, sure I was hearing echoes from Heaven. After a few Sundays I sang with him, inspired, and I promised myself that I would always sing. Then our family moved and I began a new life in a new school.

Moving from New Britain to North Haven felt like a total upheaval. On the map it is a mere 30 miles. School life was no better. I watched from the trees on the playground during recess, I ate lunch alone.

Then I met Garth. He was very dark, beautiful, with long fingers and I knew he could play piano whereas my fingers are short. I envied him. I adored his hair which he let me touch, and his deep eyes that glistened with an inner light.

My fourth grade classmates stared at him in a similar fashion as they stared at me, placing us in a relationship affirmed when Mrs. Burns seated us side by side. Garth was a meticulous artist, and he taught me techniques to improve my drawings. In return, I taught him to knit. I am certain that neither activity endeared us to our competitive peers. With hindsight, I believe prejudice was active and ingrained in southern Connecticut. A student boldly labeled me “nigger lover” when Mrs. Burns left the classroom one time. I had heard the word nigger, but had no framework for interpreting it. I knew the word lover. So the intent was not received, it actually had the opposite effect. I was happy to love this young man who accepted me and interacted with me in a gentle, kind manner.

In the mysterious manner of school boards, the school zones were redrawn and I went to a different school for fifth grade and when I returned to grammar school Garth had disappeared. It was years before I saw another black person.

My family moved to New Hampshire for a year, and relocated to Rhode Island for my eighth grade adventure. I was in tenth grade when Debra and her family moved into town. She was striking, poised and articulate. She joined the cheerleaders so I was not in her circle, but she was in many of the advanced courses with me so I got to know about her. Her parents were professionals, well-educated and involved in the community. In the spring of our junior year I discovered that racial meanness was strong in southern Rhode Island. When Debra did not show up for school one day it quickly came out that a large cross was placed on her family’s front yard and set ablaze.

This awareness set me on a path. I become involved at a young age in the Civil Rights movement, and this has remained close to my heart.

It is in The Constitution of the United States—all men are created equal. This includes the elderly, sequestered in institutions. Youth trapped in barrios and ghettoes are excluded from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The population we brazenly label ‘disabled’ are the final frontier in Civil Rights, and this shall be a long battle as our society and culture is deeply embedded with presumptions, prejudices, fears and misnomers. It is one thing to choose to be a maverick, a loner. It is another issue when an entire mindset needs changing.

So I read To Kill a Mockingbird 49 years after it was published. It is the only novel that Harper Lee wrote. It is powerful, her characters full of life, of human glitches, of love. It is powerful, unafraid of exposing small town traits, small people, and large evil. It is powerful, using touch words, tightly Southern dialects, images built up in the heat of Alabama, the relentless slowness that builds decades of dark secrets. I can read and digest and glory in Lee’s written legacy.

I hope I can share that with my young son.

I wrote this in response to a criticism. Someone did not think I was "autistic enough" as she did not notice me quoting from television. As I have not watched much television in 25 years I had to recall the common phrases I used as a teen. This was written in October 2008.

Articulate Aspergian Quoting

I am California Dreaming
As I reach out for Good Vibrations
And With a Little Help from my Friends
I will gleefully Sit on the Dock of a Bay
And my mission-should I choose to accept it-
Will be to Never Give up, Never Surrender!

I do not look for trouble
But trouble always seems to find me;
When I am Lost in Translation
I Phone Home so I can Be Good;
And my mission-should I choose to accept it-
Is to Boldly Go where No One has gone Before!

Being a Stranger in a Strange Land
Allows me to Quantum Leap through time
Although I do not know
What Not to Wear, and
Apparently what not to say,
My mission-should I choose to accept it-
Is to Reach out, reach out and touch someone.

If life is just a bowl of cherries
Then are we not all Fruit Loops?
And if Time can put in a Bottle,
Then what is the next thing that I should do?
My mission-should I choose to accept it-
Is to be a Myth Buster!

Can I Sing Clearly now?
While Walking on Sunshine,
Putting a Little Love in My Heart,
I will Never Walk Alone.
My mission-should I choose to accept it-
Is if music be the food of Love, I will play on.

I just do not want to be an Oscar Mayer Weiner.