“Mom, I have something to tell you.” Goldie had come near to my reading and looked at me with wrinkles in her forehead and wide opened eyes.
“What is it?” I looked up from my book and waited in wonder about the story she would tell.
“She got upset. She threw things, tore paper, and banged her fists on the wall, and yelled!”
“Wow! That is what I call upset.” I said with wrinkles in my own forehead and my own eyes big. I looked out the window and saw a flashback. Goldie was stomping around and screaming. I can’t remember her throwing anything or tearing anything up. But the door was closed so that the sound of her “tantrum” was somewhat muffled. Was she throwing a tantrum because we told her we were going to the store instead of going to the post office? Was it because we made her try ONE little piece of broccoli at dinner? I am too old to remember and Goldie’s temper has been coated with sweetness now.
“I don’t think her mom was upset. She was probably just trying to figure out the best way to help her daughter ”
“She said, she wanted to go into the squeezing machine.” Goldie was extremely serious. She didn’t smile. Her eyebrows were still and straight. “Did I have a squeezing machine?”
“No,” I said, “Here is what we had” I opened up my arms and wrapped them around her.
“Ah, mom that’s way too tight.” she said.
“Sorry” I said dropping my hands to my sides.
“The doctors told her mom to send her to a school that was also kind of like a hospital and live there for the rest of her life!” Goldie stomped one foot. Her eyes seemed to pop out of her face.
“But her mother didn’t listen. She got her a lot of help. She didn’t belong locked up in a school all the time. ” I patted her shoulder and smiled.
“Was I supposed to go to a school like that?” Goldie’s face blushed a bit
“Absolutely not! You learned right along with everyone else! Right?”
“Yeah that’s right!” Goldie’s smile was ear to ear.
“But, her friends laughed at her sometimes. That is not good.”
I knew that some of Goldie’s friends had teased, scolded, bossed her around, excluded her, and done nothing but “not good” things.
“Yes, that is not good. But did she say “I am not good? Did she give up and not even meet anyone and say ‘nice to meet you’. ?
“No mom! She had a friend from school that was really nice to her!” Goldie cried.
“That is a good thing.” I smiled and counted on two hands the many friends Goldie had met and that were nice and did good things.
“Mom, Is she a cowboy?” Goldie wore scrunched up eyebrows.
Every picture of Temple Grandi that I have seen, she is wearing a shirt with a scarf pinned down with a bolo tie.
“I suppose so. She knows a lot about cows. She helped her relatives on a cattle farm.”
“I don’t like cows. I like art. ” Goldie’s nose pointed upward a little and she crossed her arms.
“That is perfect” I told her with a big smile.
“Temple Grandin has autism you know .” Goldie pressed her lips together and looked out the same window I was looking out of. There, we both saw a world that at the moment was green, and sunny, and full of blue sky.
“Yes, I know. ” I said.
“She has autism like me.”
“Yes, she has autism.”
Goldie didn’t say anything more about the Who is Temple Grandin? Book.
We just stared out the window at the summer day knowing what we knew.
storytellertellsall 