Debriefing
DR. MEREDITH CRANDELL majored in English literature and creative writing at Harvard College before becoming a Harvard-trained pediatric cardiologist. After the birth of her high-functioning autistic son, she left clinical practice to pursue clinical medical research, writing, and parenting her son more intensively. She has published two creative nonfiction essays in the Journal of the American Medical Association and has recently finished her first memoir.
“DO YOU REALLY KNOW what you’re getting yourself into?” my husband, Tom, asks me. We are eating a mixed grill of steak, asparagus, and corn out on the back deck one June evening, enjoying the early summer air. Benjamin, our five-year-old son, is frolicking in the yard, which we’ve fenced in to keep him off the street behind the house. The little-kid wading pool is still deployed just below our deck, and I keep craning my neck to make sure Ben is not drowning in it. A savvier parent would have known to take this apart and drain it before dinner so that a little child couldn’t silently perish.
“It’s just a train ride,” I say.
The school year has just ended. Ben qualifies for “extended school year services,” which is essentially special-education speak for summer school offered to students deemed “at risk for substantial regression.” But it is still three weeks until the program will start—three solid weeks of unstructured Ben time. Since Ben is a serious train enthusiast, I think a day of riding the rails sounds like a good plan.
“Just don’t wear your Yankees caps.” Tom says this with a threatening sort of scowl, but I know he is just entering into protective mode, predicting and anticipating Ben’s interactions with the world. We both do it. He is just better at it than I am.
“Why not?” I am always looking to stretch Ben’s comfort zone, to bring him back to
