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Notes Toward: Babies,
Bananas, Boxes
by Nicole Callihan
“…for Temple,
clearly, there is a
continuum of experience
extending from the
animal to the spiritual,
from the bovine to the
transcendent.”
—Oliver Sacks
on
animal scientist &
autistic Temple Grandin
The blinds are closed, and I’m staring at a picture of my
infant daughter. La
Leche League websites
tell you to do this; low
light, soft music,
flattering photograph.
If you can hear the baby
crying in the
background, it’s even
better. The letdown will
be strong, the milk,
plentiful.
I’ve fashioned a
corset out of an old
sports bra, and the
plastic cones attached
to the plastic tubes
attached to the sturdy
square machine make me
feel more bovine than
mother. I conjure Eva’s
cry and watch the milk
spray into the bottles,
hardly even three
ounces; I conjure it
again and then it
becomes real. Eva is
crying—upstairs in her
crib—crying because
she’s hungry, and I
can’t go to her because
I’m attached to a
machine that takes the
milk from me so she
won’t be hungry later
when I have to leave
her, when I will label
the sanitized bottles
with a Sharpee and give
explicit instructions to
the nanny about peas
and naps and pooping,
when I will make the
forty minute drive to
Staten Island to teach
twenty autistic children
between the ages of
eleven and thirteen,
when I will get to the
children and they will
look at me—or not look
at me—and I will think
about French toast or
getting pregnant again
or a boyfriend I had in
college or whether or
not Eva is normal
or if I have time to run
into the Gap at the
Staten Island mall.
“Honey!” I yell to
my husband. “Can you get
her? I’m pumping.”
II. Five years ago
My mother picks up a
banana and holds it to
her ear. There is (of
course) sun coming
through the windows
because my mother is the
kind of woman who is
more often than not
recollected in sunlight.
We’re standing in her
kitchen, a beautiful
kitchen, one she’s
worked hard for, one she
earned after dropping
out of tenth grade to
marry my dad and have my
brother and me; after
ditching a shift at the
Weiner King to take her
G.E.D. test then
finagling her way into
college because she
wanted to be a P.E.
teacher; after falling
so in love with Biology
that she decided to go
to med school, decided
to spend the next thirty
or so years working
sixty hours a week in
the E.R.; after saving
so many lives that come
Christmas time we get
innumerable fruit
baskets with
red-and-green-inked
Thanks for giving me
another year with my
grandchildren notes.
By the time we are
standing in the kitchen,
she has five children,
and we are all standing
around her, a willing
audience. By this time
she has also had: four
husbands, four dogs, ten
ducks, three fish, six
gerbils and at least two
guinea pigs. I am thirty
and have only had a fish
but even the fish wasn’t
really mine, just a fish
an old roommate left, a
fish that died not too
long after the old
roommate left.
“Banana,” she says
into the piece of fruit.
“Banana?” she says
louder. “I mean, uhm,
Yell-o!”
I laugh; we all
laugh.
III. Hugs & Kisses
In 1947, Temple Grandin,
now a famed animal
scientist and easily the
most renowned autistic
person in the world, was
born in Boston. At age
two, she was labeled as
brain damaged; at age
four, the label was
narrowed to autistic and
her parents were told to
institutionalize her.
Suffering from severe
Sensory Integration
Disorder, at age 18
Grandin invented a
squeeze-box, or
hug-machine, that helped
her self-soothe and thus
cope with outside
stimulus (imagine being
bear-hugged by your
mother for thirty
uninterrupted minutes).
Grandin later used this
same principle to
promote more humane
practices in the
handling of animals: the
animals, “hugged,” would
be calmer as they went
in for slaughter; calmer
animals result in more
tender meat.
Most mornings, I
bury my nose in Eva’s
neck and get lost in the
smell of her (apples,
yogurt, lavender), and I
kiss her and kiss her
and worry (only
slightly) that maybe
you’re not supposed to
kiss their necks and
bellies, at least not
with such tenderness and
love, that maybe this
will send them to
therapy. “Mama,” I say
and point to myself
[kiss, kiss, kiss];
“Eva,” I say and point
to her [kiss, kiss,
kiss]. Mama, Eva;
Eva, Mama: this is
what the books tell me
to do; at this age
pronouns are
incomprehensible.
V. Sutures
My mother calls. She has
dreamed that she has
stomach cancer. “But
worse,” she says. “I
can’t open my Diet
Coke.”
Barring the Diet Dr
Pepper kick she went on
in the ‘90’s, my
mother’s refrigerator
has always been stocked
with Diet Coke. If it
can’t be cured with a
Diet Coke, she seems to
believe, then it can’t
be cured.
“My thumbs,” she
says. “It hurts too
bad.” I already know
what she means. Her
arthritis: hereditary,
early onset, severe.
I’ve never dared to ask
what this means for her
work. I think of thread
pulled through needle
pulled through skin, how
agile and delicate one’s
hands must be to pull
thread through a
stranger’s skin. “You’ll
get it too, she says.
“I’m sorry.”
VI. Yesterday
When I got to the school
on Staten Island,
Matthew was drawing a
picture of a clown and
Kyrillos was chewing on
a baby doll. Rachel sat
in a corner with her
hands over her ears, and
on seeing me, said over
and over, “I hate
poetry.”
“Aw, Rach,” I said.
“Sometimes I hate poetry
too. Come on over
anyway. Today we’re just
going to talk about
dreams.”
Courtney cried for
her mother, and I
thought of Eva, of the
game I play with her in
the moments before I
leave, how I wave
goodbye and go around
the corner, then peek
back around and say, “Hi
sweetie. I’m back.
Mama’s back! Mama always
comes back!” Courtney
yells more, and I want
us all to pile up on the
floor and just hug and
scream and cry until we
fall asleep, but I am
the teacher, so I say,
“Dreams by Langston
Hughes,” and the clouds
crawl across the
windows, and the chairs
scrape against the
floor.
VII. Pictures
According to Grandin,
autistic people think in
pictures, and their
thinking is associative
rather than logical.
Grandin says that when
she hears the word
happiness she gets a
picture of French toast
in her mind. I read
about her online while I
pump. If the letdown
seems too deficient, I
minimize the screen and
stare at Eva’s image
stuck in time at the
bottom of a silver
slide.
I think about
French toast and my own
mind, how it’s never
seemed quite logical,
how it trips and slips
and turns a hug machine
into a pump into the
silver of the slide and
then there are notes,
Notes Toward Something,
I call them:
The hot sun.
A bowl of
spaghetti.
Self-soothing.
(Here, I wonder if I
should let Eva cry
herself to sleep at
night, if it would make
me a better mother, make
her a better, smarter
child.)
Raspberries.
Pencils without
wheels.
Bananas without
peels.
The pump again.
(Maybe Grandin could
invent a more humane way
of extracting milk from
nursing mothers? I guess
the baby itself—the one
that’s crying
upstairs—is the most
humane way but maybe
there’s something in the
middle, something
between baby and box.)
Something between a
fish and a bone.
Between a blade and
a wing.
An apple and its
skin.
VIII. Two Months Ago
My brother calls. He is
laughing. He has
literally just slipped
on a banana peel. “You
always hear that they’re
slippery,” he says, “but
you never realize just
how slippery until
you’re ass-down in a
parking lot with a
broken bottle and a
sprained thumb.”
IX. My New Office
Before Eva was born, I
thought it would be a
good idea to keep my
office in her room. I
could write while she
slept, I reasoned. Eight
months later, I am in a
sunny café up the
street—a solarium of
sorts—with fresh flowers
on the table and a
waitress who doesn’t
seem too annoyed that
I’ve spent the past four
and a half hours nursing
the same cup of decaf.
Beside me, a woman
dribbles honey on her
whole wheat toast. Above
me, a man power-washes
the glass ceiling. I
have waved at him twice.
This is what I do: tear
open packets of Splenda,
bite the polish off my
nails, text the $15
dollar-an-hour
babysitter.
Everything okay? I
write. Let me know if
she needs more milk.
Will come home to feed
her.
I’m not teaching
today but I’ve hired a
babysitter anyway, and I
feel guilty and free.
The glass above me now
glistens wet and clean,
and I think of how my
mother saves lives. To
be away from your
children to save lives
seems reasonable; to be
away to drink too much
decaf and make lists of
words seems
questionable.
Yell-o? Is anybody
there? Yell-o?
X. The Squeeze Machine
Since Grandin’s
invention of her squeeze
machine, some sensory
integration researchers
have used it to help
comfort autistic
children. At first,
children pull away from
the pressure but
gradually they learn
that touching can feel
good. Grandin writes
lovingly about the
machine, about its
“softly padded neck
opening” and its
“soothing…gentle”
pressure. To be so
utterly contained for
those few minutes
affords Grandin the
opportunity to function
more peacefully
throughout the day. What
is essential, however,
is that she is in
complete control of the
pressure applied; this
is where the squeeze
machine differs from the
bear-hugging mother;
this is where the
squeeze machine is
simply a machine.
XI. The Refrigerator
Mother & Other Theories
Before Eva, when I
worked from home I
wandered to and from the
refrigerator. My day
looked a little like
this: string cheese,
fudgesicle, sentence,
tortilla with melted
cheese, sentence,
chicken strip, carrot,
delete sentence, chicken
strip, frozen banana
chunk, sentence, more
string cheese, period,
make that a semicolon,
cracker, period. Having
her changed all this.
Now there are mashed
plums and forgotten
phrases, pureed sweet
potatoes and drinkable
yogurt, words that I
don’t even remember to
jot down and glass jars
of strained peas; the
fridge seems to be
bursting from her seams.
Since I can’t write I
talk incessantly.
Microwave, I say.
Pears, father, feathers,
elbow. Eva looks
around as if trying to
understand how each
thing has been given a
name and then tries to
eat it.
Our shadows fall
behind us as we stand
(she in my arms) in the
glow of the tiny fridge
light. Refrigerator,
I say, Mother.
We are deep in summer,
and the cold feels good.
But not A
refrigerator mother,
I tell her, and we
laugh. I think I’m
funny; she thinks it’s
funny when I laugh.
In his 1943 paper
that first identified
autism, Leo Kanner
called attention to what
he called a “noticeable
lack of warmth” among
parents of autistic
children. In a 1960
interview he pushed the
theory even further
describing these parents
as “defrosting just long
enough to produce a
child.” Thus was born
the Refrigerator Mother
Hypothesis. Kanner
believed that because
the children were
rejected by their cold
and distant mothers,
they turned inward to
“seek comfort in
solitude” and thus
became “autistic.”
[Ah, to seek
comfort in solitude;
solitude in comfort; to
crawl inside a squeeze
machine; to be squeezed;
to be machined; to have
sought comfort; to have
sought solitude; to have
found them side-by-side
in the crisper drawer.]
There are other
theories too: the
vaccine theory trumpeted
by funny-girl,
ex-Playboy-bunny-cum-mother
Jenny McCarthy, the
cord-clamped-too-early
theory, the
poisons-in-the-milk-of-meat-eating-breastfeeders
theory. There is also
the Mahler theory in
which the child is
unable to differentiate
from the mother, and
thus, as described by
Silvano Arieti, the “you
remains a you” and is
never “transformed into
an I.”
XII. Solids
For the first five
months of her life, Eva
consumed nothing but
breast milk; this is
what the pediatricians
recommend. It was
strange to stare at
fourteen pounds of flesh
and bone and blood and
realize that I had grown
her inside of me and
that since she had come
into the world she had
survived on me
completely. But then, of
course, she got hungry.
She wanted more. We
started with rice cereal
then gave her bananas
which she never took to
then avocado which she
loves.
When she was four
and a half months old,
we sat in an
all-you-can-eat pizza
place in North Carolina,
and my brother tried to
give her an ice cube.
“What are you doing?” I
said.
“Ice,” he said.
“Just touching it to her
lips.”
“But she’s never
had anything,” I told
him. It seemed silly to
add “anything but me.”
Months later, she’s
had plenty but me,
plenty of me too,
it seems. I sit in the
solarium, writing and
deleting sentences,
finishing soup and
motioning for tea, and
wait for the text that
tells me Eva’s
inconsolable that I MUST
come home NOW, that even
the pumped milk and
drinkable yogurt will
not quiet her, that only
I will. It never comes,
and so I do what I must:
I take comfort in my
solitude. I relish it.
In hours, I will be back
with her. It will be
hard to remember this
“I,” the one who sat in
this almost too sunny
room and penciled out
her shopping list (bananas,
she wrote), before
finally—in that
universal gesture known
as asking for the
check—she raised her
hand and scribbled the
air.
Editor's Note:
Portions of this essay
were first presented at
the AWP conference in
Denver 2010 and were
subsequently published
in Teachers &
Writers Magazine. |
