Patients

A seven-year-old girl told her mom, "A boy in my class asked me to play doctor today."

"Oh, dear," the mother said nervously. "Tell me exactly what happened!"

"Not much. He made me wait in a chair for 45 minutes and then double-billed our insurance company."

Patients waiting for a doctor really need patience. So do those of us who love an Aspie. It can be trying.

Sometimes it seems as if I have four children instead of three. My husband most likely be able to live very well on his own, though now that he has been in a family for so many years I’m quite sure he would be lonely. Being alone is just fine with him as long as we are in his life in some way. All it takes is a weekend away, leaving Steve to his own devises, to make him realize how much he loves being part of our family. We certainly do miss him when we are apart.

I recently saw a YouTube video of a couple giving their young daughter a new tee shirt. Since the girl was a beginning reader, the mom and dad helped her carefully and patiently sound out each and every word on the shirt. It spelled out “I’m the big SISTER”. The video was five and a half minutes long. I wasn’t bored. I was intrigued and excited for this young family’s news. I was fascinated by their method of communicating with their daughter. Genius. I was happy for them.

If it took me five and a half minutes to relay information to my hubby, on the other hand, I’d be irritated, and perhaps even grow irate, which makes me pause to ponder why I would react that way. I don’t even know the family in the video, yet I expected the hesitant but persistent working out of words. The girl was young. I didn’t expect her to read as her parents could. Even when she finally read through the message I was holding my breath until she worked out what that message meant for her, which she did. She was going to be a sister!

Yet if I tell my husband something, I expect an immediate response. He is a grownup, well educated, functioning in a work environment for many years. I grow upset when I’ve told him something and he stares at me blankly, making me repeat myself. 

Many times, I now realize, Steve is thinking about something else and he doesn’t hear me. Or my words trigger a totally different message from my intent and don’t make sense to him. Sometimes he thinks that he has spoken out loud to me when he hasn’t. (Which must make up for the times he speaks things out loud when he doesn’t mean to.)

I love my husband. I have no affinity to the family in the video. Why in the world would I not give my own husband the courtesy and care with communication that I’d give entire strangers? I know that those with Aspergers Sydrome have problems with communicating to others. I’ve been reading about it over and over.

I hope you will be patient with me as I figure this out…