Clyde and I went to an evaluation a couple weeks ago.  It’s a part of the process for him to continue to get the services that help him in this world that is so foreign to him.  The psychologist and I spoke while Clyde ignored us, until he didn’t.

He’s a beautiful child.  As much as he stresses me out he makes me laugh and he reminds me of what love truly is and why being a mother is so important to me.  Motherhood is not for everyone but I understand that I could not be the woman that I am in this moment without Clyde.

There are numerous people who evaluate our household.  There are always people with letters running through here attempting to determine if Bonnie and Clyde are happy and healthy.  A lot of it focuses on Clyde though.

The evaluation was at the home office of his number one service provider, and it was like any other evaluation, except it kind of wasn’t at the same time.

Clyde was doing his thing which was pretending to ignore us, while quietly protesting that I was spilling all of his secrets.  We got to the point of the interview process that I dread the most: what does Clyde know.

If you’ve spent any time reading the Bonnie and Clyde chronicles then you have an idea that they keep me on my toes.  There is rarely a dull moment and if I am not careful they will complete their plan for world domination.

Yet when I comes to explaining the layers of Clyde I fall short more often than not.
I explain the usual… he is bright, he is loving, he is demanding, he is complex.  There is no way to determine what he does and what he does not know because he holds his cards very close to his vest.

There are things that are obvious.  He likes pretty girls.  He likes to ride his bike. He thinks that McDonald’s french fries are a food group.  He is in many ways a normal kid, with normal needs, normal reactions to the world around him.

And then there are moments like yesterday….

In the throes of my illness and the weeks of recovery Clyde’s school attendance suffered.   He can’t make his own breakfast, or lay out his own clothes, or pack his lunch so on the days when sitting up took my breath away, he stayed home.  The thing is although he doesn’t hate school – he also doesn’t hate getting to stay home in his pajamas watching Elmo and harassing the cat.

My alarms went off like usual yesterday morning, but after the school bus departed and I began to reach out to the world that is not these four walls something was ….. off.

I was sending and receiving text messages but there was no audio notification.  I checked and re-checked my ringer button.  Still no audio, and then I noticed that there was an icon on the screen that as unfamiliar to me.  It was a crescent moon.  I had to Google what it was because I had no clue.

Turns out that the moon was a do not disturb sign.  The settings on my phone were altered so that no calls would come through and no audio notifications would ping.  I’ve never used the do not disturb function, and had no clue where to locate it until I consulted the Google.

My conclusion?  At some point, in the middle of the night, in the hopes of getting a head start on his weekend Clyde changed the settings on my phone. Now… the explanation of how he cracked the NEW security code, and knew to go to settings, and understood that do not disturb would make the phone quiet…oh and that he can read words like settings and do not disturb… I have  no answer to that.

The same way I have no answer for how he came home that day with 17 singles.

As I tried to explain to the psychologist Clyde is all there when he wants to be, and Autistic when he wants to be.  That is a part of the beauty and the pain that comes with being his mother.

This is a kid who can put the chicken in the microwave when I am taking too long, and who can summon up all of his I don’t understand I have Autism when I try to teach him how to shovel the snow.

He’s kind of like his momma… complicated.

I would not have him any other way.

 

Aphrodite Brown