A Mother's Day Poem

My Parents; Bill and Doris holding me
at Hornsby Heights, NSW 1969

Today is Mother's Day in Australia and apart from presents and food, one of the traditions I have is to put a bit of effort into the card that I give my mother. Often they're hand-made but even when they're not, they usually have a poem inside. They're always intended to be funny because my mother has the best laugh in the world. 

I'm not a brilliant poet and like my blog posts, I don't spend much time editing my work. I prefer things to be original.  As such, there's probably only 10 minutes of work in here - so don't expect Shakespeare.

My mother and I with my sister Maree.

A Mother's Day Poem

Thank you for being there for me,
T'was not an easy thing to be.

When to the shops you would go,
My eiderdown would be in tow

My hands would wander to every shelf
Especially glass - I couldn't help myself

And when I sneeze everything was game.
My sleeves would never be the same.

And then you'd cook and I would scowl,
She looked at it. I can't eat it now.

Then Sunday came and we'd go to mass
The embarrassing altar boy, What an ass

And if I missed my Doctor Who.
You'd have to deal with tantrums too.

When I was angry, I'd just disappear
and leave you paralyzed with fear.

I'd come home with tales of snakes
and bombs and bees, for goodness sakes.

But I survived, you did so well
Dear mother, you were my angel.

I'm here because of all you did.
Yes I am, your cow of a kid.

The Explanation

I wrote this poem intending to just cover a few of the things that I made my poor mother put up with. There were so many more to choose from because I was quite a trying child. It was only when I read it back that I realised how you could almost diagnose autism straight from the poem.

Pretty much all of the verses have a connection to autism in some way but for the sake of brevity, I'll be skipping a few of them.

My eiderdown would be in tow

This was a reference to my security blanket which I held onto for far, far longer than most kids. In my early days, it would need to come to the shops with us but eventually it just lived on my bed. I would fret mightily if it was in the wash and there were major tears whenever it got worn out and had to be disposed of. It was reclaimed from the bin on several occasions. Eventually I had a whole "security blanket family", each with names -- so that when one blanked was unavailable, two could take its place.

It's well documented that kids with autism often form attachments to objects and having security blankets and a bed full of stuffed animals is quite common, well into the teenage years. 

My Parents at my University Graduation

"She looked at It"

As a child, I had major issues with food texture and taste. At that young age, I couldn't understand it myself, so of course, there was no way that I was going to be able to explain it to anyone else.

I'd be happily eating away when suddenly I'd hit something that created a texture problem for me. Suddenly I'd feel like I wanted to gag. Certainly I wouldn't be able to eat anything else. A good example of this was rice bubbles or coco pops which we'd have for breakfast. They're crispy and wonderful when you first put milk on them but as you eat them, the milk soaks into the lower ones in the bowl and they become soggy. That creates a totally different texture.

Since I couldn't explain the reason why my food suddenly when "bad" when nobody had gone near it, I decided that it was because someone, usually my poor sister, had "looked at it".  It got so bad that my mother would tell her not to look at me or she'd put the cereal box between us.  Eventually the problem stopped ... because I started skipping breakfast.

Doctor Who

This is my lifelong special interest and luckily the show is still going 56 years after it started. I started watching aged four and I very quickly became obsessed. In the days before video recording, if you missed a show, it was gone. So of course, I would be desperate not to miss it.

Being young and mostly unaware of the passage of time, this mean't that from Sunday morning, I'd begin to obsess and worry about missing that 6.30pm timeslot. If we were out somewhere, I'd be fretting and wanting to go home before lunch.

... and of course, if I missed an episode, it was as if the world had collapsed.

My Mother, amused by my lack of hair
when I returned from my honeymoon in 1997.

Disappearing Acts

My main response to any kind of strong emotions was to disappear. While many kids simply hide out in their rooms (and I did spend a bit of time in the closet), the main thing that I used to do was disappear down the bush for hours without telling anyone. Going by myself meant that I had a lot of adventures with Australian wildlife and it's a wonder I wasn't seriously bitten, stung or otherwise harmed.

It used to drive my poor mother mad with worry.

Being a "Cow of a Kid"

That last line is just a reference to my mother's favourite trite phrase. She would say "you're a cow of a kid" whenever she was annoyed with me (which was often). Being deaf, I often wondered if I was hearing it wrong but no... that's it. I've never heard anyone else use the phrase and it's certainly a more pleasant turn of phrase than I've heard from other parents. 

Thanks for being such a great mum.