Aspergers. What’s Your Excuse?
If you’ve met one of us; you’ve met one of us…
This is the chapter the professionals weren’t expecting.
One of the most pushed theories about AS is: we are fixated on our mothers. At the same time, they also push the refrigerator mother theory. I haven’t figured out, why they haven’t figured out; these two theories clash rather badly.
The brother to these theories is abusive or neglectful fathers.
I have photos of Mom going back to when she was six years old. Her facial expression never changed—one of those AS variances I like to think of among Asper Girls as a Mona Lisa smile.
She was, despite the frozen countenance, one of the warmest human beings I’ve ever known.
My dad’s face was along the line of the flat affect, unless something happened, rating a different look.
Hans Asperger described this as the Princely Countenance.
This is a long way around to say that the countenance did not necessarily depict their mood as a normal person’s would. Under the flat affect of each of my parents was a warm and nurturing person.
My dad was a product of the tough environment of the inner city during WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, and other mind-numbing events in the early half of the 20th Century. And, although his father had apparently been something of an abusive brute, as were some of his siblings, he remained a calm, patient, and nurturing gentleman.
Dad was also creative and could draw; he was trained as a cabinet maker and teased creations from wood; he was a watchmaker, so he could fix just about anything, and he could also dance, sing, and play the trumpet.
As he had relinquished his retail jewelry and appliance store the year I was born, he was now engaged in the conversion of thousands of row house carriage garage doors into the newest and latest, overhead garage doors.
He would also replace the old double-hung wood windows in people’s homes with the newest aluminum innovation, and he installed front doors and storm doors.
Every night, after a day of physical exertion and unloading the station wagon of old doors, tools, and wood, he would come to my room to read children’s books and sing songs from the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s…
This is just a glimpse—there’s much more to uncover in the full book.