Read Online A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story by Eustacia Cutler - Free Book Online
Authors: Eustacia Cutler
Ads: Link
recognize her caution as my own.
Temple’s birthday is August twenty-ninth, and her birthday party is always a big summer feature. In the past, old Mr. Grandin has given parties for the Vineyard children, so he enjoys being part of Temple’s celebration. Katharine Noonan, his cook, always bakes and frosts a beautiful birthday cake, decorating it with blossoms from the Rose of Sharon bush in his garden.
This summer when Temple’s birthday rolls round, the striped bass are running early. It looks as if a fishing expedition with Roland Otier would make a great birthday party. Roland is the local fishing expert; he always knows where the stripers are running.
August twenty-ninth dawns gray and windless, but we take off in Roland’s boat anyway. Alas, we soon find the boat is rolling from one listless sea swell to the next. Fishing lines droop. Children droop. The heaving ocean is making them seasick. Roland and I look at each other. Should we give up and go home? No, says Roland, let’s hold out till the tide turns. It seems Roland knows something I don’t know about the nature of tide and fish.
We hold out for the tide-turn and with it, everybody’s line gives a jump. We pull in fish, the like of which none of us has seen before nor will again—one after another, hand over hand, huge stripers, too feisty to reel in with a rod, too weighty for the children to haul in without Roland’s help. The children squeal and hop up and down. The stripers leap to break free, their black dotted backs and silver bellies glistening in the boat’s wake. We have supper of striper for days.
At the Saturday night Vineyard dances, children and grown-ups dance together and play games. Temple’s favorite game is musical chairs. Musical chairs demands no sportsmanship, only those Grandin traits of attention, speed, and timing. However, she has a formidable opponent in a distinguished old gentleman whose enthusiasm for the game sometimes gets the better of his sense of fair play. At such times, a father is delegated to tap him on the back and remind him that, though we all play musical chairs, the game is really for the children.
Once when the gentleman was locked in fierce competition with a child—I like to think it was Temple—his elderly sister rushed to her brother’s defense.
“You have to understand,” she explained to the delegated father, “Gerald wasn’t born in ‘givvy’ weather.”
Indeed he wasn’t. No believer in fair play, he had amassed a vast fortune by never giving an opponent a sporting chance.
Beyond musical chairs and double solitaire with her father, Temple’s a child who never likes to join an organized sports activity if she can possibly avoid it. Summer projects outside of our home have to be devised in order to help her make a connection to other people.
Knowing that Temple likes to sew and is good at it, I visit a dressmaker in Edgartown who alters clothes. I tell her about Temple’s skill with the needle, but I also tell her about her problems. If she’ll take Temple on, she will work hard for her, but, if Temple proves difficult, I will, of course, pay her for having given Temple a chance.
“No pay. I’d be happy to do it,” the dressmaker says. “I could use some help, and I got a kid with problems myself.”
Temple goes to work for her hemming dresses and doing whatever sewing jobs she’s asked to do. The dressmaker pays Temple handsomely. I demur.
“No, sir. Temple earned that money. She worked hard. She was a real help.” Temple is so proud. After she’s grown up, Temple will embroider herself a cowboy shirt with a steer head. I bet she still has it.
And so on and so on. The days of Temple’s childhood in the comfortable, Leave-it-to-Beaver world of Dedham and the Vineyard could be the days from any privileged childhood. What was unique for her was the safe cocoon they provided. There would be other later environments, but those two habitats were Temple’s greatest
Temple’s birthday is August twenty-ninth, and her birthday party is always a big summer feature. In the past, old Mr. Grandin has given parties for the Vineyard children, so he enjoys being part of Temple’s celebration. Katharine Noonan, his cook, always bakes and frosts a beautiful birthday cake, decorating it with blossoms from the Rose of Sharon bush in his garden.
This summer when Temple’s birthday rolls round, the striped bass are running early. It looks as if a fishing expedition with Roland Otier would make a great birthday party. Roland is the local fishing expert; he always knows where the stripers are running.
August twenty-ninth dawns gray and windless, but we take off in Roland’s boat anyway. Alas, we soon find the boat is rolling from one listless sea swell to the next. Fishing lines droop. Children droop. The heaving ocean is making them seasick. Roland and I look at each other. Should we give up and go home? No, says Roland, let’s hold out till the tide turns. It seems Roland knows something I don’t know about the nature of tide and fish.
We hold out for the tide-turn and with it, everybody’s line gives a jump. We pull in fish, the like of which none of us has seen before nor will again—one after another, hand over hand, huge stripers, too feisty to reel in with a rod, too weighty for the children to haul in without Roland’s help. The children squeal and hop up and down. The stripers leap to break free, their black dotted backs and silver bellies glistening in the boat’s wake. We have supper of striper for days.
At the Saturday night Vineyard dances, children and grown-ups dance together and play games. Temple’s favorite game is musical chairs. Musical chairs demands no sportsmanship, only those Grandin traits of attention, speed, and timing. However, she has a formidable opponent in a distinguished old gentleman whose enthusiasm for the game sometimes gets the better of his sense of fair play. At such times, a father is delegated to tap him on the back and remind him that, though we all play musical chairs, the game is really for the children.
Once when the gentleman was locked in fierce competition with a child—I like to think it was Temple—his elderly sister rushed to her brother’s defense.
“You have to understand,” she explained to the delegated father, “Gerald wasn’t born in ‘givvy’ weather.”
Indeed he wasn’t. No believer in fair play, he had amassed a vast fortune by never giving an opponent a sporting chance.
Beyond musical chairs and double solitaire with her father, Temple’s a child who never likes to join an organized sports activity if she can possibly avoid it. Summer projects outside of our home have to be devised in order to help her make a connection to other people.
Knowing that Temple likes to sew and is good at it, I visit a dressmaker in Edgartown who alters clothes. I tell her about Temple’s skill with the needle, but I also tell her about her problems. If she’ll take Temple on, she will work hard for her, but, if Temple proves difficult, I will, of course, pay her for having given Temple a chance.
“No pay. I’d be happy to do it,” the dressmaker says. “I could use some help, and I got a kid with problems myself.”
Temple goes to work for her hemming dresses and doing whatever sewing jobs she’s asked to do. The dressmaker pays Temple handsomely. I demur.
“No, sir. Temple earned that money. She worked hard. She was a real help.” Temple is so proud. After she’s grown up, Temple will embroider herself a cowboy shirt with a steer head. I bet she still has it.
And so on and so on. The days of Temple’s childhood in the comfortable, Leave-it-to-Beaver world of Dedham and the Vineyard could be the days from any privileged childhood. What was unique for her was the safe cocoon they provided. There would be other later environments, but those two habitats were Temple’s greatest
Similar Books
