Last Gasp of Summer

Well, summer's not officially over, but once school starts, for all practical purposes, it seems to be. Noah's in middle school now, which I'll get to in a bit, but I can't bear to lose the strands of summer just yet, so let me recap.

Noah split his summer, with mornings in classes at one of our middle schools, and afternoons in the recreation program at one of our high schools. I wasn't sure how Noah would handle three hours of morning classes, but he came through just fine. He took cooking, sculpture and computer art, and I was thrilled when I got notes telling me how much he enjoyed making certain foods, and how many of them he tasted--including chocolate cream pie! The computer teacher seemed so taken with Noah that she made a copy of one of his artworks (a drawing of a computer, actually) to put in her office at school during the year, to cheer her up when she's having a tough day. Those stories mean the world to me. It's Noah spreading his magic yet again.

In the afternoon, Noah swam, did gymnastics now and again, participated in arts and crafts and computers, and generally seemed to do well. But it's when he transitioned to our town's outdoor camp program that he really impressed us. Noah went sailing!! Noah played tennis!! Noah continued to jump off the diving board at the town pool. One of the counselors at this camp commented on the changes in Noah compared with last year. Any parent of an autistic child will tell you that hearing about (positive) progress, especially when the comments are unsolicited, is more than music to our ears. It's what we live for.

We followed camp with a family trip. Noah loves the Berkshires, and off we went for four days. He loves to go walking on the rocks in the brook near the house we stay at. This year, for the first time, we let Noah and Ariel go down by themselves. We could hear them from the porch and see them, up to a point, but they were on their own. It's wonderful to give them that kind of freedom just to be kids.

We even pushed the envelope a bit, taking the kids to an outdoor reading of Shakespearean monologues by a group of teens at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox. Noah sat fairly well for most of the time, but since it was in a tent, coming and going a bit wasn't an issue. And you could have knocked me over with a feather when Noah last 4.5 hours!! at MassMOCA, where he participated in an art-making scavenger hunt for half the time. And he and Ariel loved a Jenny Holzer installation in a giant, dark, hangar-like space which had words projected on the walls and gigantic beanbags on the floor. Len's always apprehensive when we try things like this, but my feeling is that we've got nothing to lose. Either they'll work well, or they won't.

Niagra Falls and Toronto were fine too. The highlight there for me was watching Ariel take Noah under her wing in swimming, trying to teach him stroking and kicking. Not sure how successful she was with that, but he was a willing student. Best part of all was watching them hold hands and jump into the hotel pool together. Sheer joy!