This post was written a while ago, for Father’s Day, but it has taken all this time to obtain the relevant permissions. (Son number three was the problem, for reasons that will become apparent.) This is not behind a paywall because if it were, two of my sons would demand to know how much income had been generated as a result of me posting it, and then ask for a cut. So there is joy to be had from giving it away.
I have three sons, one of whom is severely autistic and non-verbal but sometimes very eloquent anyway. The other two are very verbal, and no more autistic than the rest of us. On Father’s Day, I spent time thinking about all three of them - that’s the deal with Father’s Day, I guess. They are supposed to be taking me to the pub and buying me Led Zeppelin records, but none of that ever happens. They are busy people, and there’s a football tournament on, so my thoughts turned to them. And what I was thinking about was conversations (or interactions) I have had with them over the years that best represented them as people. OK, let me modify that: I was thinking about conversations I have had that best represented them as people while also making me laugh a lot.
Danny.
Danny is the one with autism. He’s thirty now. He lives in his own apartment and is cared for twenty-four hours a day, in the neighbourhood where he grew up and where his parents live. But he stays with me and his brothers and a carer on a Friday night.
He tends to fascinate people - he is so aloof, a lot of the time, and yet sometimes, unpredictably, you can be the recipient of intense eye-contact and the most dazzling smile. Or sometimes a chuckle, or a mysterious whoop of joy. One Friday, Alvi, an old friend of one of my neurotypical sons, came into Danny’s part of the house to say hello. He reached out his hand as a greeting, and Danny took it. It was, for Alvi, a magic moment. Alvi had known Danny for a long time, since he was a little kid, and suddenly, after all these years, there seemed to have been a breakthrough. Danny held his hand gently and then, unexpectedly, stood up. He led Alvi very calmly towards the door, opened it, shoved him gently out of the room and closed the door on him. No breakthrough after all.
On Father’s Day he sent me a card. He didn’t really send it, of course. All cards are sent, in a rather roundabout way, by his ex-nanny, who now lives in New Zealand. She looks after all his social media still. She is texted photos throughout the year, and then she emails them to an English company which turns these photos into greetings cards. They always arrive on the day, or ahead of time. This one said ‘Happy 31st Diddle Day ‘. One of his words is what sounds like “diddle”, which, I am pleased to say, means “daddy”. I very rarely here him use the word. Danny only uses words - consistent sounds, anyway - to get what he needs, and if I am there, he doesn’t need me, so the word is no use to him.
Lowell.
He was probably seven years old. He’s twenty-one now. We were walking to school.
“Dad…Will you be here on my birthday?”
His birthday was months away.
“Of course.”
“What if you have to go away for work?”
“I won’t go. That’s the good thing about my job. I can say ‘I can’t make that date. It’s my son’s birthday.’”
“What if they made you?”
“They can’t.”
“What if they did?”
“They couldn’t.”
“OK. What if they said, if you don’t go, we’ll put you in prison.”
“Yeah, I don’t think they can do that.”
“But what if they could? What if they told you that unless you had to do this thing in America on my birthday, they’d take away all our money and put you in prison for a year?”
“I still don’t understand how…”
“They can, OK?”
“Well. I’d buy you a whole ton on stuff on Amazon so you had amazing presents. And I’d call you during your party and sing.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course.”
“So…you’d just go? And miss my birthday?”
He is outraged and disappointed in me.
On Father’s Day he gave me this card (no envelope). He’s being rude. He knows I can do nothing at all. Oh, is that a fork? I can eat. And write with that pencil, I suppose.
Jesse
It’s a Friday night. Jesse, aged 18 or 19, is watching football with his brothers, me, and our friend John, Danny’s beloved carer. Except Jesse is deeply involved with his phone.
“What are you doing, J?”
“Nothing.”
“So watch the game.”
“I’m trying to make some money.”
“How?”
He pauses for a moment, unsure of whether to tell me.
“I’m setting up a Sugar Daddy account.”
He was very matter-of-fact about it.
“What’s Sugar Daddy?”
“It’s a website where girls try to get looked after by old guys.”
There is an appalled silence, followed, I regret to say, by much laughter.
“Which old guy is going to look after you?”
“I’m not me, am I? I’m a pretty girl called Kimberley J. I’m a US college student in London and I need my plane fare home.”
He had found a photo on the internet which proved beyond doubt that he was a pretty girl.
We have various follow-up questions. I decide, as a parent, that even though I disapprove intensely, he will do what he wants to do when I’m not supervising him, that this scheme is unlikely to get him into terrible trouble, and that in any case in the eyes of the law, he is a responsible adult, hilariously. Later, I look at the Sugar Daddy website. There are, depressingly, thousands of hopeful girls on there. It seems unlikely to me that anyone will find Kimberley J. I couldn’t. (As a result of attempting to look for Kimberley J, I was bombarded with email messages from her co-workers.)
A couple of weeks later, I ask him how Sugar Daddy is working out for him. He shakes his head, sadly.
“I’m nine pounds down,” he says.
“DOWN? How can you be down?”
He chuckles ruefully.
“Well,” he said. “This guy seemed very taken with me, and he said he was going to put me on the payroll of his company. He needed nine pounds for administrative costs.”
“You got scammed by a sugar daddy? You got scammed by someone you were trying to scam?”
“Only nine pounds.”
“But…did you seriously think he was going to send you a monthly allowance? You thought a guy who was going to send you a monthly allowance needed nine pounds for admin costs?”
“Not really, no. But then I thought, what if he was going to put me on the payroll? What if the only thing stopping him was the nine quid for administration? It was a long-odds bet, Dad.”
Jesse is clever, although he is also eccentric.
For Father’s Day - quite late in the afternoon, it has to be said - he handed me this card (no envelope). I suspect there was nothing else left in the shop. He was not announcing his own impending fatherhood.
He also bought me a packet of chia seeds. I didn’t express an awful lot of gratitude.
“I thought you put them in your overnight oats?”
“I do. But…They’re not very sentimental, are they?”
“It was those or nothing,” he said.
I don’t quite understand how or why he was only presented with one choice - was he in a chia seed store? - but I let it lie.
My son Jesse is 7 and the conversation you had with Lowell is one I know well. He sets me up, it's a trap, there's nothing I can do. I'm pretty sure this is what they call being "gas lit"!
Awesome story! You must be so proud of your boys. 👏❤️