“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.”

- Aesop

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

- Oscar Wilde

I tend to be a careful person – the kind who has a back up plan for the back up plan. When we bought our house, this tendency guided me away from the adorable cottages in Hollywood Heights until we eventually wound up in a not-so-cute, not-so-old, much less expensive, slightly bigger house that needed a lot of cosmetic work. The floorplan is logical, so I am not scooting sideways past furniture or walking through a bathroom to get to the kitchen – I’m happy, and we only had to borrow about half of the amount for which we’d qualified. A friend once described our house as a starter home. She wasn’t being mean – it’s just how a lot of people think these days. When we bought this house, we were surrounded by original owners who raised 4 and 5 kids here. They didn’t add on to the houses. The kids shared bedrooms, and they made it work. It was HOME.

I was working from the house, but I knew that it was a temporary situation and was unsure if I would return to work or not when my company did the annual re-org. Returning to work was a back up plan, but as it worked out, I have been unable to return to work due to my son’s health and, eventually, his school situation. It’s better than it was before now that we have the Texas Virtual Academy, so I’m pleased and want to continue making it better. Minimize the suckage, as a friend of mine likes to say.

In addition to being a cautious tightwad, I am also stubborn, and I love the idea of HOME. We moved several times when I was a child, and there is a sort of sadness when we drive past those houses today and I try to share memories of my time there. When my husband and I bought our house, this was in the front of my mind. It was the ugliest house on the street, and our initial goal was to one day be the second ugliest house on the street. Make it better. Keep moving forward. Minimize the suckage. But most importantly, to stay. We’ve been here 10 years now, and I still love this house like I did the day we moved in. Two of our three children have never lived anywhere else, and it’s truly our HOME.

Gas is very high now, and we already didn’t drive much – so there is not much room to cut back on driving and the prices have impacted our family. Food, of course, has also gone up, and it’s to the point where there is no more Casa Linda grocery trip. I have begun trying out Fiesta in Pleasant Grove (love it!), Terry’s on Gus Thomasson (not bad) and the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on Easton (weird, but okay for some stuff).

When I do the grocery shopping my son is usually with me since he does his schoolwork at home and I do not currently have a respite provider coming one morning a week. A few weeks ago, he was with me at the Wal-Mart on Easton, and I was trying to unload the grocery cart, keep an eye on the prices to make sure things rang up correctly and make sure my son didn’t get lost in his thoughts and do something kooky like poke holes in all the candy bar wrappers or wander off. In the middle of this, a boy about my son’s age ran across the store from the do-it-yourself checkout lines. He shoved past my son, didn’t even glance my way as he tore between me and the cart, picked up a Payday candybar and ran back to his mother. He had his shorts pulled up to his armpits, and he was wearing very tall pale blue girl knee socks covered in pink and purple stars. His gait was a sort of lopsided gallop. My son looked at me and asked why that kid was dressed that way. I had my suspicions, but I wasn’t sure. Before I could say anything to my son, the screaming began. It’s all so familiar and awful, and he was so loud and on the floor kicking and hitting – a complete autism freak out. His mother must have said no to the candy bar. He was an eastern Indian child, and he left the store, still screaming, with 2 amazingly calm women who were smiling apologetically and ducking his punches as they guided him toward the door. They were speaking another language. I wanted to talk to them and find out where they live and where he goes to school – to know, but also to see if they knew about anything I don’t already know about that could possibly make things better. This is how it works. But I had to get back to watching prices, unloading my groceries and watching my own son. It was 11am on a school day, so I wonder if that boy even attends any sort of school.

Today I went to Harry Stone Recreation Center to vote, and it wasn’t yet open. I decided to go around the corner to Terry’s to get some food for the week. My husband was home until he had to leave for work at 1:30, so it was a rare moment when I could shop with no kids. I did my shopping, unloaded the cart, eavesdropped on the cashier and bag boy talking in Spanish about their home towns in Mexico, paid and left. I dropped off the groceries with my husband, went back to the rec center to vote for Bill Keffer, then rushed back to the house so my husband could get to work. That’s when I realized the meat hadn’t made it into my cart. They must have bagged it up, and since it was the first 5 items on the receipt, the gabby bag boy had probably put it in the cart of the woman in line ahead of me. I took a deep breath, explained to my son what we had to do, begged the girls to not get him wound up while we figured out what had happened to the meat, and off we went.

In an attempt to avoid any autism moments, I had called the store ahead of time to let them know what had happened. They would not commit to giving me the meat on the phone, so I said I was coming up there and to have the manager standing by. Lines and waiting and autism DO NOT MIX. When we got there, we found not one but three manager types standing around. The rudest of them was in charge, naturally. After he had failed to speak to me and had walked away to pow wow with the other two manager types the third time, I did something I don’t normally like to do. I barged in and said “My kid has autism, and I need to keep him moving. Who is going to replace this meat?” My son’s autism is usually invisible to all but other autism parents, but I could see him getting antsy, and we had to get cracking. The managers elected someone to help me, and we walked back to the butcher counter to figure things out. On the way back, he asked me some questions about autism and told me his son has severe ADHD. Long story short, we made it home with our meat and without incident, but my stomach is still unknotting itself, because I could have easily been that mother in Wal-Mart in a situation like this. The one with the child completely freaking out on the floor.

Scroll down and look at Truett Elementary again. I have three children. Dallas ISD did such a number on the oldest – the tricky one – that I am not planning on letting the district have a crack at the easy ones. Color me crazy.

This is my HOME.

I dragged my husband to east Dallas from New York City when we decided to get married, because I love it here. The greatest luxury in my life would be to send my children – all three of them – off with lunch boxes and backpacks to the public elementary a block away from our HOME, but we cannot do that. Our oldest girl attends a private school that reminds me of the way elementary school was when I was a kid. It’s small and the education is good. The building is about the same age as Truett Elementary, but the school fits in it and isn’t crumbling. The tuition is a little more than half of what Truett Elementary would receive in per-pupil-spending if we were to enroll her there. Better education, safe environment, less money.

Autistic children are more expensive to educate, because they usually need smaller class sizes and very individualized instruction. My daughter’s school is not right for my son’s needs. There is probably a program that is perfect for my son in DISD, Mesquite ISD or Garland ISD. I know there are private programs like St. Anthony’s that would be wonderful for my son. But we cannot access them. Texas Virtual Academy came on the scene about 6 months after we had completely run out of educational options for our son. It’s BETTER! It minimized the suckage! I want desperately for Texas to continue in this direction of creating more public education options and allowing children access to existing programs.

Currently I have lost my back up plan of taking a job if things get too tough, and that worry takes up a part of my mind that could be put to more productive use. If something were to happen to me, my husband would not be able to stay in our home and take care of the children – again, because of the school situation. I am not whining – don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to return to my comfort zone, where we’re always okay if a few things go wrong. With a school, I could handle life’s little situations – like missing groceries – on my own without every moment of his childhood having to be so stressful. I could just go to the store like a regular mom and know that he was safe at school and learning.

I used to sing a song by Bjork to my son when he was a baby. I had painted his room like he lived underwater, and the song went:

I live by the ocean

and during the night

I dive into it

down to the bottom

underneath all currents

and drop my anchor

and this is where I’m staying

This is my HOME.

Minimize the suckage, east Dallas. This could be a great place to call home.