A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story (19 page)

Spring 1949 - Temple at twenty months.

Christmas 1951 - Temple is five, her sister is three.

Summer 1952 - Picnicking. In both pictures, note the position of Temple’s sibling.

1952 - Temple playing with her father.

1956 - Mother’s Day. Temple is on the far right.

Fall 1957 - School picture.

*
C.P. Snow,
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
, Cambridge University Press, NY, 1961.

*
Probably undiagnosed Asperger.

*
Recently I asked a trained psychologist cop if he thought Charles Manson was autistic. “No,” he said. “Just anti-social. But I think Jeffrey Dahmer was.”

Chapter 7

The End of Childhood

Though Temple is close to entering puberty, she still yearns to go to summer camp like the rest of the Wampatuck Gang. I find a camp with top recommendations, tell the director Temple’s story, and ask her please to talk to Mrs. Dietsch at Dedham Country Day School before she decides to accept Temple. All to no avail, it soon plays out.

A week after delivering Temple to the camp I get a phone call from the director. Temple’s had a fever for three days, they’ve put her in the infirmary and given her an antibiotic.

A fever for three days and you haven’t told me. Why not?

The director sweeps my question aside. Would we please come immediately and fetch Temple home.

Dick goes with me to the camp, and when we arrive we learn that, as well as the three days of antibiotics, Temple’s been kept under heavy sedation.

“We had to,” the director announces, voice hushed, eyes filled with shocked reproach. “She has a vaginal infection. The nurse painted it with violet gentian, and there’s violet gentian on her hands. See? There’s the proof. Temple touches herself.”

Temple, groggy with drugs, can only say, “My peewee hurts.” The nurse hurries to gloss over any error on her part.

“Temple’s quite the little artist,” she announces in a cheery voice. “Would you like to see the picture she drew for me?”

No I would not. I want to get the hell out of this witches’ coven.

We drive Temple directly home to Dedham, to her own pediatrician. He says Temple has a mild infection, but that he’s never seen a child so heavily sedated. Mercifully, the drugs have kept Temple too zonked to have a clear recollection of her three-day imprisonment in the camp infirmary.

It’s our first family encounter with overt prejudice. Perhaps if Temple’s small sin had not involved sex, the director might have been a little less Puritanically hysterical, but I doubt it. When I talk to Mrs. Dietsch, she shakes her head. She’d told the director that Temple was autistic, as had I, but clearly the director hadn’t listened to a word either of us had said.

The world being what it is, perhaps something like this was bound to happen. Thus far, Temple’s life has been so protected that it hasn’t occurred to me to be wary of sanctimony. Dick is so angry he wants to sue the camp, but I persuade him not to, which shows the difference between us. I hide and he explodes.

I think it must be about this time that Temple asks me, “Why am I different?” She doesn’t ask, “Am I different?” but “Why am I different?”

“I don’t know why,” I tell her, “but don’t worry about it. We’re each of us different, each given traits that work for us and against us. What’s important is to understand the traits so you can run them, and they don’t run you.”

Temple appears to take this in, but in later years she’ll say she she didn’t take in her difference until her teens. I think we all come to certain understandings only when we’re ready to accept them. God knows I’ve hidden understanding from myself for years.

“I can’t love,” Temple announces to me suddenly.

“Love isn’t all that squishy stuff, you know. All that hugging that makes you feel suffocated. That’s not what love is.”

“What is it then?”

“Love is wanting to make things grow: plants, animals, yourself.” She looks interested. “Remember how you plant a seedling? No rough handling or you’ll snap the tender shoots? And young animals. If you want the puppy to grow up to be your friend, handle him gently, so he’ll know he’s in a safe place.”

Temple nods, remembers all too well how she yanked the puppy’s ears, even though I told her not to, how finally I’d yanked her ear.

“Ow!”

“That’s how the puppy feels.”

“Oh.” She got the message.

“The same goes for you. Love the best in yourself, treat yourself tenderly, carefully, help yourself to grow. And as you grow, you’ll find you want to make the best grow in those around you. And in doing this, without really knowing why or when, we each gain a stake in the other. That’s love. It’s the glue that holds us together.”

Temple appears to understand this, and shortly afterwards she comes to me with a confession. She and another girl have smashed an entire trash barrel of glass bottles on Mrs. Neal’s garden, breaking her birdbath and leaving a welter of broken glass in the flower beds. For the first time, a little out of control and laughing her nervous laugh, Temple is deeply ashamed, in fact horrified at what the two of them have done. She doesn’t know quite how they got into it. They threw a bottle at the birdbath and broke it, and from then on they couldn’t seem to stop. She hopes Mrs. Neal, who is one of her teachers, won’t find out that she did it. Her usual quirky indifference melts; her shame is heartfelt. She likes Mrs. Neal and wants Mrs. Neal to like her.

Once again I write to her Viennese doctor.

Often when life gets difficult for Temple, she gains an oddly mature insight about herself.

The next time I see Temple’s doctor, he looks puzzled. “Why is there no sign of Temple’s behavior in your other children?” he asks.

Temple’s school classmate, Claudia Howlett, was born with an open heart valve. Claudia’s lips are blue and her breath comes in low wheezes. She can only undertake a very quiet project, one that won’t tax her doll’s teaspoon of energy. Temple understands this and for the first time accepts another child’s project over her own. I see the two of them in the garden setting out a pattern in the grass with leaves and flower petals.