Me and John

Barbara is off to Salt Lake City for a long weekend of General Conference and family. On Saturday she and her sisters are throwing a baby shower for one her nieces between sessions of conference. Should be a busy day at the Walkers.

John and I are on our regular routine during her absence. We have already been to the mall today and made purchases at the regular stores. I like shopping with John, we go into the store, he finds what he likes, and is ready to go. For instance, at the GAP today he found two new shirts that were on sale. We were in and out in less than five minutes.



I doubt if anyone actually reads my blog, and if they do if they click on the read more link.

I think a lot of people feel sorry for me when I am alone with John, but I actually enjoy the experience. For some reason he is much easier to handle when the two of us are alone. No head banging, crying fits or public displays. We had dinner last night at IHOP and had an enjoyable dinner. It helps that our favorite server has switched over to evenings on the weekend, we might end up there again tonight.

We are totally accepting of each other, faults and all. Plus we never have to worry about keeping our end of a conversation, so we both are alone in our thoughts a lot.

It hasn't always been this way. I don't if it was because of the times I was raised, or the influence of the church where you always had to look good and in control, but the first several years with John were a real challenge. I still have nightmares of trying to keep John quiet at church. I would take him out during services and walk him up and down the hall. Invariably someone from another ward would come out and tell us to be quiet. I would then end up taking him for rides until church was over. As time went on, it was just easier to stay home from church.

One year Christmas fell on a Sunday and I thought it would be nice for the entire family to go to church. I figured that we could keep John under control for an hour service. We sat down, and John started getting noisy. A man a few rows in front of us turned around and gave us the evil eye. Barbara took John out and they tried to get the nursery open so he could play during church. Being Christmas, the classroom doors were locked, so I ended up driving John around in the van looking for something that was open while he screamed. We went back to church when services were supposed to be over. We ended up waiting in the van in the cold for another 30 minutes because the speaker decided that the best way to spend Christmas for was for him to talk. It didn't occur to anyone in my family to leave even though we were waiting outside.

I guess I sound bitter. The last straw was when Barbara was called to be the Relief Society president in our ward. The bishopric called me in to get permission. I told them that they could call her but that meant I would not longer be able to attend church. They said they could live with that.

The bishop was later excommunicated and one of the counsels a few years later shot himself in the head when he had been stopped by police. It turns out that he was a collector of child porn.

I belonged to a men's therapy group, and among other issues I worked on dealing with being the parent of a child with autism. One week I brought John in, thinking that one session with John present would be worth many hours of explanation. It was a turning point for me. First, the group told me how much they liked John. Second, they told me that they thought I was doing a great job with him.  That was a very big contradiction from what I had been hearing from people at church, and from family members. To be fair, it was what I was hearing, not necessarily what was being said.

Another turning point was when I started taking John to church at University Baptist Church here in Austin. For decades they have had a mission of reaching out to everyone. I had mentioned to the associate pastor that John and I were not comfortable attending services in our own church, and she insisted that we bring him to services there. Over the next couple of weeks, countless members of the congregation and all of the ministers made a point of welcoming us to the services. The funny thing is that for the most part John was, for lack of a better phrase, very reverent in the services.

If anyone is actually reading this, especially members of the church, I hope I haven't offended you.  But these are my experiences.  I suppose a better person would have found a way to stay active in the church.

According to LDS thelogy, when we are all gone John will be among those in the celestial kingdom.  I guess my mission in life is to take care of him while I can and hope that he visits me in one of the lesser kingdoms from time to time.