A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story by Eustacia Cutler Read Free Book Online Page B

doesn’t speak, still won’t look at me, and if she does, she appears to look beyond me into some private land of enchantment. She no longer plays with her feces, but she still has tantrums, still goes into wild giggling and spitting. Though I must clean up after her, I’m not allowed to join her in that enchanted land.
    Tantrums are hard to handle, and fecal smears are smelly, but exclusion breaks the heart.

    I ride horseback early in the morning before anyone is up. The groom from the local stable has to exercise the horses then, and he knows all the bridle paths. Together we ride through the leafy woods and across an open meadow, later to become a mall.
    In the meadow, a mother pheasant flutters in front of us trailing her wing in the long grass to fool us into thinking she’s wounded, enticing us to catch her, leading us further and further from her nest in the clover where her young are hidden. I feel a sudden love for her this soft green morning. She keeps on with her trick, dragging her wing, improvising a wound, risking her safety for the safety of her young.
    To Hell with Bettelheim—and diagnosis—and myths! I, too, will improvise for the safety of my young.

    June 1952. Miracle of miracles. Temple’s been with Mrs. Reynolds a little over two years, and she’s learned to speak! Not just single words, whole sentences are tumbling out! She’s also learned the rudiments of kindergarten: a little group discipline, a little waiting your turn to recite, your turn for a glass of juice.
    Though Temple is not yet five, Mrs. Reynolds and the social worker from the Belmont School System both feel she’s ready for a month at St. Hubert’s, a camp for special children run by Mrs. Huckle, an English woman.
    It’s a blazing hot afternoon. Dick, Temple, and I rattle down a dirt road through the pine woods and out onto a stubbled clearing. Long trestle tables are set under a solitary apple tree and behind them lie a cluster of low wooden buildings. From one of the buildings, her arms held wide to greet us, emerges Mrs. Huckle, the epitome of matriarchy in a vast pair of flowing, black velvet pajamas. Tilted on her gray shingled bob is a floppy black velvet tam, which gives her the look of the old British actress, Margaret Rutherford. I trust her from the start. Not only does she resemble Margaret Rutherford, she gives out the same aura of authority, good sense, and theatrical timing. She claps her hands, and a flock of children come running out. One by one, she makes them introduce themselves—easier for some than others. Next, she looks at Temple.
    “Temple, you may come to my camp, but by the end of the summer you must have learned two things. You must learn to say the Lord’s Prayer and you must learn—always—to do your veddy, veddy best.” That’s a tall order for a little autistic girl who’s only just accomplished the nearly impossible feat of human speech.
    Mrs. Huckle soon charms Dick with a description of her long-gone school on the Riviera for the sons of maharajahs. He, in turn, charms her with his story of World War II tank service in the Battle of the Bulge and his French girlfriend in Nancy.
    Behind Mrs. Huckle, pacing amiably under the apple tree, is her small, white-haired, and totally silent husband. After introducing him, she gives him no further reference, so what role he fulfills, I haven’t a clue. Mrs. Huckle doesn’t say why or how her Riviera school ended, nor why she’s come to this country and not to England. But I feel certain that whatever her fortunes and whomever her enemies, she’s met both in her black velvet pajamas and tam, undaunted and unimpressed.
    What a splendid influence for anybody.
    By the end of the summer, Temple’s learned to say the Lord’s Prayer and to do her “veddy, veddy best,” something she’ll pretty much stick to from now on. In September, Mrs. Huckle feels that she’s capable of entering regular kindergarten in a small school, if the school