A Warm Place in the Sun

Last weekend, my mother came to Des Moines to visit us, and on Sunday, we decided to go to the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden to wander around a bit, and then have lunch at Trellis, the cafe in the Garden that overlooks the river.

Every winter, Kate tries to get me to go to the Botanical Garden, but I beg off. Plants aren't my thing, so why would I want to go wander around and look at them? She's taken the boys instead. This year, however, it might just be the thing to beat the winter blues, because for one thing, it's warm.

The garden is within a huge geodesic dome, and is kept warm and humid all year round. It had just started to get really cold out, and going into the dome was a welcome change. Also, even though plants aren't my thing, it's really pretty.

The boys bolted forward with Kate in tow, and my mom and step-dad wandered slowly behind me, so I found myself somewhat alone, trying awkwardly to keep pace with the two groups. And that was fine, because I needed some time to process my thoughts.

Earlier that morning, I had scuttled a trip to Mom's hotel, which happened to have an indoor water park. The boys were super excited to go splash around in it. They love going to visit people in hotels, and they love water parks. It seemed like a no-brainer, yet I woke up that morning with a deep sense of dread and anxiety. I didn't want to go. As I wandered through the greenery, I took stock of why.

Part of the past year of taking on and accepting the autism diagnosis has been a lot of reflection on my part on how I'm reacting to things. A couple of months ago, I started taking Lexapro for general anxiety. I’m not really feeling any side effects, in fact, in general I don’t really feel any different than I have before, but Kate has definitely noted a change and commented that I seem more “resilient.” I’ve noticed that I feel less frustrated, which is good, since I seemed to feel frustrated in general.

My mother’s visit was very anxiety producing for me. I wasn’t really anxious before hand, but once she was here, it was rough. Saturday, we had taken Carl to the Des Moines Children’s Museum while Kate and Whit went to a classmate’s birthday party. My mother readily agreed to go, but then spent the entire time not really interacting with Carl. I followed him around the museum, playing with him, while she and my step-father sat on benches and watched us. Eventually they settled on a table in the middle of the room, and began conversing with a complete stranger.

For some reason, this really got me down. I was sitting in a special section for older kids with Carl that was actually really sensory friendly. It was separated from the hurly-burly of the little kids out in the main room, and it was quiet as Carl and three older girls played silently with a huge pile of LEGOs. I sat behind him, and realized that I felt exhausted. Kate said that I looked ready to fall asleep when we got back. At dinner, there was a frustrating planning session for how the water park visit would work, and the more questions my mother asked about it, the less I wanted to do it.

So, Sunday morning I made up my mind that we would skip it. When my mom called to tell us that they were up and we could come on over to the hotel, I told her we weren’t going to do it, and they could come to our house. We had been planning to go to the Botanical Garden for lunch anyway, so they could come to our house first, before we made our way there.

I had debated what excuse to give her about not going to water park, but when they arrived, I decided to own it. I didn’t feel up to going, that it was making me anxious, so I decided to skip it. I explained that my autism was making me anxious about the planning of it, and that I would feel better if we just skipped it. Once I brought up the autism, my mother dropped it. Even though it’s been over a year since I got the diagnosis, my family as a whole really doesn’t want to talk about it.

The boys were disappointed, particularly Carl, so to make it up to them, we went to Donut Hut, our neighborhood donut place. The owner was friendly as ever, and we all had a good time before heading off to the Botanical Garden. Carl proudly managed to turn his “frown upside down,” though I think the sugar helped.

I wandered slowly through the garden alone, trying to keep both my boys and my mother in sight. There was a woman walking ahead of me, also alone, and I watched her as she perused the garden, seemingly enraptured by each plant she came across. I wondered what she was thinking about, or if she was just drinking in the beauty of nature around her, if that was possible for a neurotypical to just turn off her thoughts and be present in the moment with the flowers. I guess it’s prejudiced of me to assume that she was an NT, and I don’t know if a neurodivergant person would have an easier or harder time turning off the stream of consciousness to simple soak in their surroundings.

I watched as she pulled out her phone to take a picture of a flower, and decided that was something I could do as well. I've been getting back into journalling after losing the habit through the dark patch this fall, and this trip to the garden was a perfect thing to document for my journal. As I started to try to take pictures, though, a familiar old doubt raised its head -- I wish I knew how to take pictures.

Someone gave me a camera when I was kid, one of those flat, ice-cream sandwich shaped Kodak Instamatics that used film cartridges and flash cubes. I carried it with me everywhere, trying to document what I saw, and while I don't remember when it happened or what I was trying to take a picture of, I do remember taking a picture of something and my dad commenting that it wouldn't make a good photograph. Before that, I didn't really think about "good" or "bad" photographs. I really had no concept of composition, but later when I got the film developed, I saw what he meant. The picture I had taken didn't really look anything what I had been trying to capture.

It didn't stop me from taking pictures though, even though that criticism lodged itself in my brain, so that years later, as I'm wandering through the garden, it was what I started to become anxious about as I pulled out my phone and started to try to document what I saw that was interesting around me. I've taken photography classes and basic art classes, and know the concepts of framing and composition, but still can't shake the feeling that I don't know "how" to take a picture, and still feel like the pictures I end up with are sub-standard in some way. Now, post-diagnosis, it became something that I wondered if I was incapable of understanding, if there was just something with the way my brain was wired that made it impossible for me to understand it.

But I'm more resilient now. I kept taking pictures as I walked through the garden, even re-took some as I realized that I wanted to frame them differently. I tried to lose myself in the wonders of nature unfolding before me as the woman walking ahead of me was doing, as I was in what was for all intents and purposes a safe space of an autistic, alone with my thoughts in a crowd of people.

Lunch at Trellis was wonderful. It's always been wonderful every time we've eaten there. That'll be something else to look forward to, if Kate and I manage to escape back to the Garden and it's warmth over the winter. Even my mother found little to complain about.

Eventually, they left to return to Illinois, and I collapsed from exhaustion, burnt out from trying to reconcile two different lives: my current life as an autistic husband and father; and my old life, as the undiagnosed autistic son and all the baggage that entailed. I think that everyone, neurotypical or -divergant, becomes a child again in the presence of their parents, to some degree. It's important to build a new relationship with them once you become an adult, or else those old patterns and habits will hold sway, and it's important to that before it's too late, and they've drifted away.

Maybe relationships are like photography, in that there are rules and guidelines for composition and framing, but also, eventually, you just need to own it, and go with what feels right.