Meeting day
Lisa and I had arrived safely in Dubbo where it promised to be a packed couple of weeks, full of excitement and the fulfilment of a dream now coming true.
We were going to go to a café on the Wednesday before my birthday on the Saturday but once K’s parents came, we got chatting over coffee and didn’t go.
Social occasions are never easy for people with Asperger’s and although I can put up a pretty good front for a while it all begins to get too much after a much shorter time than it takes for many other people. The antidote to loneliness and depression for many is supposed to be mixing, finding voluntary work and having a huge social network but psychologists say that only about 150 people comprise a person’s “tribe” before things can’t be coped with at all. I start not to enjoy it once we get past half a dozen, max. Even then there’s a problem if one person seems disagreeable or comes across as sarcastic or abrupt. Of course none of this is aided by no visual clues.
My worries
I had my reasons for dreading meeting K’s parents. They will remain private because relating them will do nothing to enhance the article. I wondered how I would make a connection with them since it wouldn’t be appropriate to bang on about Asperger’s and they would be keen to find out about us and whether we had a good flight and to tell us about what we could expect to see when we were there. Somehow the subject of cooking came up and I expressed my hatred of it by saying I’d be happy to swallow three pills a day, containing all the vitamins and minerals needed and to my joy, K’s mum heartily agreed and expressed her hatred of cooking as well. We then found out her dad is very much a new man since he does lots, if not all the cooking. I knew then that I had found a way in by accidentally stumbling on a common thread which linked our humanity by something other than our knowledge of K either by familial ties or friendship bonds. If one can do that with someone then a person has established a way in and everyone possibly thinks that if we have that thing in common, maybe there’s more. Anyway, it’s a tenuous but important link.
The art of conversation
I was so pleased K was there. We were really excited to be together and her parents chatted to Lisa who seems to find all this sort of thing as easy as falling off a log. Having spent my life asking for the “recipe” I’ve given up that now and realise it’s the brain wiring which makes the difference when baking the social cake and it turning out more like a light Victoria sponge rather than a rock cake which psychologists attempt to drill into rather than geologists, hacking away at stones from the moon or other planets.
I know I have to use my intellect rather than my instinct to make the whole thing work and there were the extra pressures and dreads and all the “what iffing” that we go in for anyway. I had the real worry that once Lisa and I left Australia they would be asking K why it is that she isn’t more like me. My mum was awful when it came to that and the only way to stop her was to compare her with other blind people’s parents and make sure it was unfavourable.
Feeling more at ease
I felt more at ease with K’s mum, probably because of our dislike of cooking. There was still a little way to go and I think K was more worried about whether they would like me or cause me to lose my temper by saying something triggering. It all went fine though and it was nice to have that time getting to know her parents. I told them about that amazing bird we heard which her dad said was an Australian magpie but it didn’t sound like the bird which is the ring tone on his phone.
All in all it looked very much as if it was going to go well and go quickly. Surprisingly I was over the jetlag quicker than I thought I’d be. I’d never gone on a journey that long before so imagined it may take several days before I felt okay but it didn’t. We were set fair to have a really lovely time and we did.