Skylar and Seamus Steal a School Bus! (not really)

My daughter Skylar is the type of magnetic kid who most adults are not only happy to receive attention from but grateful.   There have been many occasions where I’ve arrived at her school or a place where she’s receiving professional services to find BCBAs, teachers, clinicians, therapists, and other highly educated people alike doting on her with “big tickles” and fully engaging in whatever topic she’s fixated on at the time.  The same doting holds true for grown up members of the general public, who have often surrendered a cell phone or driver’s license to my daughter following just a single request or nuzzle from her. I keep waiting for this superstar treatment to end now that she’s no longer a little kid but it remains just as prevalent at age ten as it did when she was a toddler. Like many kids with autism, however, Skylar’s willingness to engage doesn’t extend to peers.  It’s in no way the fault of the kids but, rather, her brand of autism which pushes them away and leaves her, in the strict sense of the word, friendless. For her, kids speak too fast and are too unpredictable to allow her to let her guard down enough to be around them.  There are two exceptions to this in the world.  One, as previously chronicled, is her younger sister Alyssa.  The other is a boy named Seamus she’s known since the age of four.  In a world that in many ways neither child is comfortable being a part of, I believe them to be soul mates.

Skylar setting up a game of Monopoly to play by herself. My daughter has a deep desire to play with other kids but no confidence to do so. Seamus has always been the one child besides her sister Alyssa she’s felt at ease around.

Skylar and Seamus were in the same pre-school class and hit if off immediately.  Their wonderful teacher, Miss Lisa, would tell me about how the two would often go off to a quiet corner of the room and play next to one another, neither quite capable of playing with another child at the time but finding fulfillment through the rare person they believed they could trust. I observed them to not have the exact same personality (Seamus is a lot more social with other kids than Skylar but strikes me as more guarded around adults) but, nevertheless, about as similar of one as two people within a spectrum can in terms of temperament, a love of danger, brilliance frequently disguised as nonsense, and a certain It Factor that made it impossible for anyone with a pulse not to become instantly smitten with them. Skylar, as she tends to do, revealed her feelings through song when she ran around singing “Share a Mame-us, share a Mame-us” throughout the Winter of 2008, substituting her then-pronunciation of “Seamus” for “Story” in the Sesame Street song “Share a Story”.  When the school year ended, I was saddened by the thought of them no longer being together but through fate, they both ended up at the same school for kindergarten in the district at the last-minute.  For this school, not only would serve Seamus and Skylar be brand new but kids with autism as well.

Skylar and Seamus have a quiet, calming effect on one another that has run extremely deep since they met at the age of 4.

The school did the best it could but didn’t have the resources five years ago that it does today for kids like Skylar and Seamus, who need specialized help at times. It was a learning curve for many but the soul mates found comfort and solace in the other’s mere presence. As had been the pattern in pre-school, they rarely played or conversed with one another but together, a potentially overwhelming situation for each was somehow manageable.

Their bond continued into third grade when both hit the wall behaviorally and academically.  Skylar and Seaumus realized this and formulated their very own behavioral intervention to soothe one another during tough times by meeting at the back of the classroom to read together until everything was okay again.  Despite their deep bond, a change of scenery for both was desperately needed.    Never was this more evident  than one day when their class was short-staffed and understandably forced to simply maintain two kids who no longer fit into a mainstream educational situation.  Both chose to spend their time drawing while other kids worked on curriculum items. For Skylar, this meant an intricate, color-coded floor plan for a health club, complete with a urinal right out in the open and next to where a rack of dumbbells were to be located.  As for Seamus, his drawing detailed the mother of all elementary school heists: driving a school bus to Gerardo’s, a local bakery, with a smiling Skylar riding along (the picture is at the very top of this blog entry).

The longtime partners in crime never got to pull off their caper, as he moved to another school halfway through the school year.  The loss was significant for Skylar, as my little girl who seemed to crave solitude was, all of a sudden, truly alone in her mind for the first time ever at school.  Her lip would quiver at the mere mention of Seamus and the only way to cheer her up was to joke about them stealing a school bus and going to Gerardo’s.  Several weeks went by until a St. Patrick’s Day assignment, of all things, brought her some closure.

The front of our Team Skylar t-shirt from a run/walk to benefit a local autism resource center last year was inspired by a certain soul mate of hers.

The kids in Skylar’s class were given the task of writing about an Irish legend.  Seeing a potato in our refrigerator sparked something within her. Combining her imagination, heart, and the projection of some Only Skylar autobiographical details, my daughter penned the following:

Famous Seamus was a potato who loved to swim in the pool at the YMCA. He also loved to use floaties and splash the lifeguards. One day, the lifeguard told Famous Seamus he couldn’t swim at the Y anymore because he splashed her. Famous Seamus was sad.

Famous Seamus needed a new way to exercise. He started to walk. He didn’t like it at first because it was too slippery. Then he got to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade because he was Irish. He didn’t like walking in the parade, either, until he heard the songs “Don’t Wake Me Up” and “This Girl Is On Fire” playing. This made Famous Seamus happy. He now loved to walk.

Famous Seamus wanted to walk on Team Skylar. He practiced by walking on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays to the college. Famous Seamus started walking faster and faster until he was ready to walk at the autism walk.

He was calm on the day of the walk. His friend Skylar asked him if he wanted to walk and he said, “yes, no, maybe.” But then the directional came on a car that was parked and he changed his answer to “yes.”

Famous Seamus had fun at the walk. He was there for five hours. He can’t wait to be on Team Skylar again next year. He is proud to be the only potato to ever walk. This makes him a legend.

The creation of Famous Seamus provided Skylar a sense of closure when he left to attend another school and perhaps introduced the concept of Potato Therapy to the world, as well.

Skylar and her Mom decorated the potato to create arguably the most fetching root vegetable to ever walk this or any other planet. Speaking of other planets, the two friends who often seem to have a great inner-life going on driven by a galaxy far, far away, have stayed in contact. They see one another practically every Sunday at church and have gotten together not to play but, nevertheless, feel contented in one another’s presence a few times. Plans exist for them to go out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse but such a pedestrian undertaking still pales in comparison to Seamus’ Gerardo’s scheme. This became clear last summer when I had the audacity to ask Skylar if she wanted to stop for a cookie at Gerardo’s. “No,” she snapped angrily. “I want to go to Gerardo’s with Seamus on a school bus on May twenty-third two-thousand-sixteen, not you!” Part of me wonders if Seamus would throw out the same seemingly random date if asked about their proposed adventure. They do, after all, speak the same unique language of soul mates.