Post Office

Yesterday, against my better judgment, I took the girls to the post office with me.  I wanted to mail this sweet dress to a friend of mine who has a baby girl.  The dress is like a black watch plaid, with red, and has matching bloomers and her daughter is 6 months old and I just thought it would be great for a holiday party.  Anyways, I had to mail that and a package to my friend Brenda, who just had a baby girl.  The post office was PACKED (early in December, what the heck?) and I had to wait for a parking space, so I opted to use the machines out in the lobby rather than try to stand on line with the girls.  I was tapping away on the machines and sticking postage stickers on the boxes and some lady started talking to Maria.  She said, are you a big sister?  Are these your little sisters?  How old are they? So Maria said yes, yes, we are 4, 3 and 1!  The lady said you must be a great big sister and Maria said I have a big brother, too.  He's seven.  I started to perk up my ears.

Maria said, his name is Anthony.  The lady said, he must love having all those girls around!  Maria said, and I could hear her start to waver, um, he likes us okay.  She said, um, he doesn't really talk too much.  The lady said he doesn't?  Maria said no, AND he walks on his toes!  He wears BRACES!  On his LEGS!  Finally I turned to the lady and she said, he wears braces?  I said, he has autism and is a toe walker, so he wears braces.  The lady - well, she just changed everything.  I mean, she was being so nice and really keeping the girls busy while I packed up everything, but she sort of melted and I could tell she felt so sorry for me.

She said to Maria, he must be so special.  And Maria said, "kind of!".  Ha!

I hate for people to feel sorry for me because Anthony has autism.  I was reading a friend of mine's Facebook the other day and she said some girl asked her about Fragile X, which her twin boys have.  The girl asked what is it and my friend said it basically makes them have autism and the girl said too bad, or something, and my friend said well, it was too bad and now it's just life.  And that's how I feel too.  It's just life.  The girls are sort of bad at the post office, and it always makes me nervous because somehow I feel a federal offense will be involved if they are too bad, and Anthony has autism.  It's just life.  So don't tilt your head at me, lady!  We are fine!

P.S., I don't always feel like we're fine, sometimes I feel like we're NOT fine, as a matter of fact, but mostly I do think we are okay, or we will be.  But I am reminded of how fine we are when Maria looked so confused about that lady saying how special Anthony was.  She was like, what?  Anthony?  She doesn't relate him not talking much or wearing braces on his legs meaning he's special.  Who knows, she might think every boy named Anthony does.  Anyways.  It was funny, she's funny.  People are well meaning but not always the comfort they mean to be.  That's my update!