I remember the smell of my Dad cooking old fashioned quick oats in a pot on the hot stove and making rye toast or Home Pride bread in the toaster with the burning smell, always with “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”, creamy Skippy peanut butter & Palmer Grape jelly. I just woke up, standing in the hall on top of the stairs, just sniffing it in. When it was really raining & coming down pouring buckets outside, you got more of a warm & cozy, fuzzy, loving feeling inside, especially with the burning toast. I really didn’t even like to eat that stuff as a young adult when I did enjoy breathing it in. I mean, I would eat it, not my favorite, but my Dad had been making that same breakfast since I was a little girl. Orange juice too, remembering when we were poor & I was 4 & he used the frozen canister of O.J, Minute Maid brand I think, I remember him tearing it in half & adding tap water into a big glass old milk bottle that was washed out, the good old 1980’s. I also remember my Mom’s favorite breakfast, cinnamon toast bread with cream cheese, I could smell that too, that’s my Mom & not my favorite, she probably added a smidge of grape jelly on top too, not my favorite. Even after they died a few times I thought I smelled it.
My Daddy once had to crush my medicine as a kid when it was in pill form & he put it in my grape jelly. It was so sour & sweet, bitter, so very bitter, I could never eat Welch’s concord grape jelly again. When I was older, he tried Hunts pudding cups, like lemon meringue flavor & apple cinnamon pie flavor & when that didn’t work, Smuckers maple syrup from Ihop, we just happen to have leftovers in the house, let’s just say I couldn’t ever eat those again either. I get suspension now, back then not everything came in suspension, I couldn’t even get the medicine I needed so much down, it was dreadful awful. The taste was too terrible, we tried everything. What breakfast did I like then, assorted kids cereals, Fruity Pebbles, Trix, but I usually didn’t eat breakfast, just skipped right on to lunch.
I remember lying in my bed waiting for my Dad or parents to pull in the driveway, sometimes the wait was interminable, hours. I was either trying to sleep or feeling sick or both. I’d try to sleep all day until my Daddy came home, that’s when life started, the party happened, it was worth getting up for, my day started whenever my Dad came home from school, for I loved him, lived for him & he was the life of the house. I’d be excited & run down the stairs, we had 2 dogs then, our big red girl Mary was excited herself, I helped by yelling “Daddy’s Home.” Loudly, excitedly, many times, she knew what it meant too, she was my little sister. She would get off the couch for that, even when she was 100 pounds, she loved my Daddy so much, she was the sweetest girl ever, so gentle, listened to everything told to her, so thoughtful & waiting to eat our leftover dinner, what a full house we had, my Mom, brother & Shih-Tzu came in with my Daddy, Mary would wag her tail so hard, she’s knock you down if you came close, she would jump on my Daddy & kiss him too, he’d say “ok, ok, I know, I love u too,” she wouldn’t stop jumping up on him & wagging her tail & slobbering on him, while he was trying to take off his big black winter coat off & put his bags down. She was pretty well behaved in the kitchen, lying on the floor, waiting for everyone to finish, watching intently, especially if someone accidentally dropped something, it was her’s, she grabbed it. C.P.K. she liked their sketti & sauce. My Daddy got me what I liked, Charlie Brown’s, the salad buffet, chopped liver, don’t like it, but how often do you get to taste it? Sunflower seeds, dressing & a bacon cheeseburger with sautéed onions & mushrooms & garlic Yukon gold mashed potatoes, maybe fried cheesecake for dessert.
I remember missing my Daddy in the middle of the night, I wasn’t sleeping & he already moved him & my Mom into my bedroom, because I would sleep in his room, I slept there since I was a baby & my bedroom felt so lonely, rarely would I ever sleep in it. (I played with my toys in it, my Fisher Price cable he bought me, I wrote scripts in it, watched T.V. in it, Mary our big red dog was in it with me, sometimes in her cage when she was younger, then we trusted her by age 2 & no more cage, bye bye cage, my parents idea, just her toddler bed that my Dad & I assembled & put together ourselves, well, I proudly helped, handed him screws & screwed in stuff, I think we still have the white hard plastic Step 2 bed. I loved working on a project with my Daddy, it was for her when she was a puppy or before she came, we had her, my bedroom ready, we originally ordered an apricot standard poodle dog, non allergic & the smartest, it never came, she wasn’t available, I was depressed & upset, we drove to Shake a Paw, I saw her sleeping, she was so sweet I knew that was my baby & we adopted her, $500 in April 1996. It was a good price & the grand opening, talk about luck & timing ) I would crack open the door, I knew my Dad had o get up for school soon & it was a 12 hour day, 6 a.m. -6 p.m. it was dark, my mom was asleep, I sat by my Dads old pale yellow desk & would talk to him, I didn’t want to go in my lonely, quiet room, which was there room.
Oh the day he got the Snow Day call, what a relief on both are parts, he was the last on the list to be called & on a rare & special day when he heard it was a snow day from a fellow teacher, “Whoo-Hoo & Yah-Hoo” Loudly and yelling Yay & SCREAMING WITH DELIGHT at 5-6 am, not thinking, but hoping we didn’t wake the neighbors, I felt more relaxed & safe when he was home, protected, then he said we can go back to sleep, the weight was off my shoulders & I’m sure his, a surprise, unexpected, sometimes most waited for call. I valued his home days even more than he did.
Some days I woke up hungry & wanted my Daddy to stay home with me & make me food & play with me. I didn’t like sleeping all day waiting for him to come home. Once or twice on days he didn’t feel good, he did take off, but my begging him made him, he felt guilty I tried to keep him home & kind of annoyed at me for doing that too. I loved my Mom too, but had a really strong connection, bond with my Daddy. My Mom would call his school once in a while to try to reach him, before iPhones. The switchboard lady sometimes had to go looking for him to call me, not all the time, if I was sick & not feeling good or just missed him a lot. I spoke to her a lot too, she knew me when I visited a few times. When I was younger, I would be clingy to my Mommy, my parents didn’t realize this was one of my symptoms of autism. Separation anxiety, it’s also partly my personality, kind of needy & dependent at times.
Like when I was 25, I woke up early & didn’t want to go back to sleep, 4-5 am, I ate a Mcdy’s cheeseburger we had in our fridge, got dressed nice & he took me to work with him to spend the day there, everyone loved seeing me, it was fun, but long, really long, tiring, I xeroxed my hand & medical bracelet, low blood sugar & heart problems. I cut snowflakes out of red napkins, it was near Thanksgiving or Christmas break, they had those Mr. Sniff scented markers, the girls in the bathroom said it was “So cool” I was Dr. Berman’s daughter, a boy in his class rolled up his sleeves, because he saw mine were rolled up like that, couldn’t even wear my baseball cap, there was a rule, “hey, did u ever meet my daughter, let me introduce you to my daughter,” he said to his teacher friends, showing me off, I wore a kids R Us Bomber Jacket & I braided a thick strip my long hair down on one side, my hair was more than halfway down my back too. I took out pizza & Oreo pie for later, A tuna salad plate too. I even had to sit & watch the movie “Love Story,” Mishca was crying, his student, the movie of course, I drew in class in the morning, I kind of tuned out what my Dad was saying to them too, by accident. By 3-4 p.m. he had to tell his boss I wasn’t feeling well & he couldn’t stay late for meetings, his boss always said “Well, You Gotta Do, What Ya Gotta Do.” he walked into my Dads office when I was making red paper napkin snowflakes. Snippets of red pepper pieces all over on my Daddy’s desk & me cutting up more, yeah it was a mess, a fun, colorful mess. It was kind of funny too & my Dad had his own office at one time, isn’t that cool. I colored in my handprint with the sniff markers, they were keeping me awake by sniffing them & not yawning as much, I was like for sure I’m going to get cancer from huffing kid sniff & small markers or something, they’re non toxic, but I didn’t know that then. I felt a headache coming on from sniffing the different flavors so much, this was a high school too & I felt faint for real, my Dad took me down to the cafeteria for an Aquafina water bottle, I’d been sipping coffee all day, I felt very faint, the water helped a lot & everyone was saying hi Dr. Berman or Hello Dr. Berman, I left some of my hand photos in his file cabinets back at his office , maybe took some, never knew what happened to those, I was a pretty cool kid. I wore Lands End kids corduroy tan pants size 14 plus, I like room in my slacks & a Gap Kids striped long sleeve tan & orange shirt, like Justin Henry wore in Kramer vs Kramer, another movie my Dad would often show his class.
On the way home we stopped at this kiddie clothing store, it had a lot of Bling, Yesssss, Bling, I said Bling, it was a little too cool & expensive for little old me. I tried on a few outfits, banged my head on the metal door in the changing room, but I survived, I think I cut my hand too in there, it was quite a day, I didn’t tell him I think, didn’t want to ruin our specialness, but we got nothing, father / daughter day type thing, then went to Pizza Hut & got a thin crust half meatlovers, half veggie to go with a Dasani water. I was so tired & starving, it was after 6 p.m. by then, it was a great day I spent with my Daddy, he was well then & could walk fine too, healthy. I’m sure we called my Mom & brother a few times to tell her about my day at school, I wish we had photos from then, they had cell phones back then, but we couldn’t afford them & got them much later like in 2008 I think.
I’m lonely & I love my parents & miss my Mom & Dad so much. Even what you would think bad, boring days were, weren’t with my parents, even on the worst days & I’m talking really bad days, my tantrum days, run away days, there were many of those to go around too, I was a full blown kid you know, good, bad, honest, my sick days, being admitted to the hospital days, depressed days, eating disorder days, when we were all very sick & depressed with a bad stomach flu days & it’s Christmas vacation days & the days & nights were the same & everyone’s doing nothing but sleeping it & not eating much. Even all those bad things was way better than having no parents at all to be there for you & comfort you. You always knew you were safe & loved & go to them & apologize & they would still love you & forgive you. I wasn’t the perfect kid all the time, yeah, I kept it interesting, when I was upset sometimes, the fridge got ketchup squirted on it, if they left me home alone too long, before cell phones, then they started leaving me notes where they went out & when they’d be home, they weren’t perfect either, so it worked out ok. Man I miss them, now they’ll never be home no matter how long I wait. Having Asperger’s I had many meltdowns on & off. It was just the deep love, warmth & safe feeling you had in the house, even if it was messy, even on rainy days, even on I’m sick with stomach pains & I need to go to the E.R. at 2 am & have 101 fever, because the doctor on call said my food poisoning from take out, might actually be an appendicitis. I just felt so loved, wanted & cared about always. When I did have a meltdown, my mom always said kindly, ” She must be hungry ” Daddy would ask me what I’d like to eat & take my blood sugar, blood pressure & then put me on his lap sometimes & tell my Mom & Larry to go get me the food I asked for, like Chinese, chicken & pine nuts. I was a little spoiled at times because they loved me so much.
Christian Berman is an Autistic artist. She has a YouTube Channel called “The Adventures of the Little Harmonic”.
