Crazy is as Crazy Does" in the first place. So, I can live with and understand my Crazy a little better because of this quote from C. S. Lewis. But, I don't know how to explain to my husband that our marriage would be better if he were a bit more stable than he is and I can't ever "just say no" to him. At least not until we have kids that don't give us much choice about what to do anyway. But what if I don't really want to have a kid, but he insists? But maybe that isn't something that would have bothered me when I was a teenager, but now it would feel awful? Am I so sure I would never change my mind on that matter? I guess I am making things too complicated, especially because it is likely that our kids will not be having kids anytime soon. But I do worry about the situation of young marrieds, and the sense that they are still looking for something, some kind of fulfillment. They're so young. If our son ends up being a little autistic I wonder if having kids ever will be a good idea. What will I do if he is an autistic adult? How can I even begin to make a life for myself with a kid like that? Our son's autism is something that has affected our marriage, already, but in ways that haven't been immediately obvious. If anything, though, our family relationships are deeper and more complicated because of it, more full of love and concern and worry. We don't really know what kind of man our son will be, but I wonder what kind of a mother I would be? A mom who would give up anything, even the health of her own family, to protect her autistic child. And I wonder about how he will learn how to act in a world that seems so strange to him because of his differences. He has always had a hard time dealing with feelings, and sometimes with the concept of people thinking he is being mean or unkind. I see what he does as "being different" or "acting strange," not deliberately ignoring or ignoring people, or hurting people. He's like a really good actor and actor's child—he can act anything, but that doesn't mean that it is true. I see it like that, but he doesn't, and he has been learning to be less of an actor. But it is hard to know what a child will be when they grow up. I don't like our chances, but what if things would be better? What if he would be able to grow up to be something better than we are? We are so far from knowing, but I feel like maybe that's why we are so scared. It's like we don't dare think anything good might happen, and so we don't say anything about the problems and problems that are in our heads because our son is autistic. And we don't think we can cope with anything more than we can cope with now, so we don't try to fix or prevent anything. We're just trying to live well in the present, and our kid is going to be an autistic adult—one way or another. What do I think he'll be like? I guess it really depends on how things turn out. Maybe we'll have a kid who is fine and then another who will be like us. But there are too many factors, too many ways things could happen, and we have no idea which way is going to end up happening. I just don't want my son to think that he is the problem when really there is nothing we could do to change him. ## Part III: **When a Child Becomes Autistic** The story of my mother's life and mine is a story of one great failure. I was a failure in marriage, in homemaking, in parenting, and in friendships. As the years pass I only become more confident about this failure. My only success in life was as a student. NINETEEN NINETY-SIX My mother married when she was only twenty years old, at the same time as a male friend of hers had come home from the war in the Pacific and they married. It was wartime and my mother was only a child. My brother and I were born before she was twenty-two and she had no desire to be a mother before then. But my father insisted that she marry my father, who seemed to my mother to be an idiot, but who was young, handsome, and ambitious. His ambition was to succeed in business and to make my mother a wonderful homemaker, even though she could barely take care of him. My mother did not go to college and was not much of a reader, but the years in which she made her home were not without their pleasures. My sister and I were born when my mother was twenty-three and twenty-two and she loved us desperately. My brother, of course, resented us from the beginning and from time to time I was to feel that same resentment and envy toward my baby brother. My brother was almost a year older than I, but he had been born one whole year after I was. When we played together, he always made me feel like the baby. But I was not a baby, although in the eyes of my mother, mealtimes, my brothers, and all the rest of the family, I was. In the later years of his life my father told me that he never thought I was his child and he often asked me about the exact date that I was born. He said that he thought I was older than I really was. Maybe his mother was already dead when he had his children, but maybe it was a difficult birth and he thought that the little girl I called my mother had lost the baby. "You must have been older," he would say, "older than seven years, older than ten years. You should have been born twenty years later." And it bothered him, I think, that I was so beautiful as a child. "It was so difficult for you, being as beautiful as you were. It would have been easier for you if you had been ugly." But he said that again and again. I think that at the beginning he thought that my mother had made me, as a husband would have in the same situation. My mother was not interested in mothering or homemaking—she did none of those things. My father, on the other hand, took great pride in the fact that he could make a fine soup and could cook for other people, could dress her with care, could make her well dressed. He was very good-looking and had a very handsome wife when he married. And I know that he told my mother repeatedly how beautiful she was, even after he found me. As the only daughter in the family, I felt very insecure, and I wanted to make my mother feel as proud of me as she felt of my father. But how could I do this? I never had my father's good looks and physical appearance, and so although I had many people who loved me and wanted to help me, I often felt lonely and I didn't have the talent for being a movie star that my father seemed to have. I was a good baby, I was pleasant to children, and I had an interest in being a good girl. But how could my mother really be proud of me when she would rather I was the one who was dead and buried? I felt that something terrible was wrong, but I never knew that a little girl could talk so much. When I was little I would talk to myself, but it seemed as though my mother only heard myself and I felt that I was invisible when it came to the things that really mattered. But I couldn't help myself, I had to talk, and I told myself stories. My grandmother didn't like the stories I told. I remember that when I was six, my mother told my grandmother, my mother's mother, that I should learn how to speak English, and she said that I was no good and that I talked too much. I liked it when I talked to myself, but when people laughed or told me not to talk so much it embarrassed me. And when I was being spoken to, whether by an adult or by a child, I knew that what I was saying was wrong, but I would just keep on talking. My grandmother laughed when I told her that I could talk in three different languages. I couldn't do that, but I could talk like I was in a movie—when I got older I became a great talker, but I always spoke quietly and with feeling. I often remember my grandmother telling me that I was too good for my mother. She told me that I was spoiled and that it was my fault that my mother didn't understand how to keep me in check, how to be what I would call "firm" with me. My grandmother was very smart and very funny, and I loved her dearly, but she could be a hoot—I often said that I was so lucky that I had such a marvelous old grandmother. My grandmother was not pleased when I talked with her, and though I always tried to use pretty words, the way she talked made me want to hide under the bed. I remember as a child lying on the bed, my grandmother on the floor below and me hiding under the bed so that I couldn't hear the things she was saying. My grandmother died when I was only fourteen years old, so she was still there when I would need her most. And for years I wished that I could stop having my mother's baby.