Crystal Clean
Page 30
Again, I started reading blogs, looking at thousands of pictures and YouTube tutorials, and again I started experimenting and sharing pictures. Today I work for myself at my own company, Kimbo’s Cookies, making custom designed sugar cookies.
During the time I’ve worked on this book, Andy’s become quite a writer himself. He makes what he calls his lists, which are actually endless pages in a notebook filled with his writing. At first, he was copying words out of magazines, but he quickly grew bored with that. Lately, he’ll pop in a DVD with the sub-titles on, press “pause,” and copy down the words on the screen - complete with cues.
“Luke,” mechanical breathing, “I am your father.”
Every few paragraphs or so, he comes to me and has me read aloud what he’s written. The problem is that in the past few weeks, he’s started turning on the foreign language sub-titles. The Spanish I can work through phonetically. When it comes to French or Italian, I just fake it.
Lately, he’s been watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which makes for very interesting “lists” indeed.
These days, I bake and I write. I sit upstairs in my little writing room every day, looking out on the commons and the playground, and most days I think of how lucky I am to have made it through those years and come out the other side largely intact.
When I work on this book, I write until the memories are too painful, then I bake until the pain passes and I can move on. My days are quiet. Andy still has long days with school and therapy, so from seven in the morning until shortly after six, it’s just me.
I’m actually pretty good company.
It’s Friday, and the playground is full of children. I write sporadically because the flippers are out. That’s what I call this group of little boys who seem to defy gravity. They flip everywhere: Off the playground equipment, off the sides of trees, off the ground and out of each other’s hands. Over and over again, they spend close to an hour flipping. I watch this little flip-clique and try to imagine Andy as one of them. Sometimes I wonder what he would be like if he didn’t have Down syndrome. I think he’d be pretty much the same, but easier to understand. I think he’d make a fantastic flipper.
He’ll be home soon, so I go downstairs to pre-heat the oven for his little pizzas. I take a bag of frozen peas and pour some into a pan, and as I shut the freezer door, I hear the best sound in the world: “Oh hi, Mom. It’s me. I’m home.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editors Paula Berinstein and Eliza Dreier for making this book better and helping me become a stronger writer. Thank you to Jeff Yeager, my mentor. Thank you, Brad Peachey (the only man I know who can rock a bow tie five days a week) for your critical eye. Thank you to all the writers and artists who’ve shared their own struggle and in doing so inspired me to keep going. Thank you to all my friends who’ve been so supportive throughout my journey. Thank you so much, Mom and Dad, for always being there for me and not giving up on me. Most of all, thank you to my bug-in-a-boy-suit, my perfect person and the best human I’ve ever known: Andy. Being your mom is the best thing I’ve ever done or will ever do. I love you, sweetheart.