I’m jumping ahead a few years, but it’s a great story.

A newsletter from Wright-Locke Farm (the local farm that runs the camp where Mia fell in love with chickens) happily announced that a few new creatures were coming to live on the farm, namely, forty thousand bees! They were filling up their new beehives and wanted the townsfolk to come watch the fun! Mia had just turned nine. A few years prior to this, the board of directors had nearly lost the farm to developers, so any farm-happening was a joyous event. Sally Finn—a locally beloved left-wing radical with wild, hippie hair—tirelessly rallied the town to save the farm. The farm had done so much for our kids, and was a jewel of the tiny town, so I quickly signed us up. What a great educational opportunity for Mia, who loved insects nearly as much as she loved owls and chickens. It would be a daddy-daughter dance, just Mia and me.

A week or so later, Mia and I arrived at the farm, excited to witness some hot pollinator-rehousing action. We said hello to Sally and the gang at the quaint old farm stand where they sell hot coffee and fresh eggs, and joined the small but exuberant bunch of fellow bee aficionados. Surprisingly, Mia was the only kid in the group, which made me feel like the best dad in the world. Hadn’t any other parents wanted to expose their children to this wholesome educational opportunity? I guess not! Presumably they were too preoccupied with some other frivolous Sunday morning activity, worshipping the Lord and whatnot. The group was composed of folks like me: full-grown bee nerds. Standing with them all just outside the farm stand, we could hear the bees buzzing but couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. Mia was smiling widely in anticipation, further proof of my superior fathering. Sally welcomed us to the farm and motioned we were about to begin:

“Congratulations, everyone! Thank you for joining our Official Wright-Locke Farm Bee Welcoming! You are the official Wright-Locke Farm Bee-Welcoming Committee. The kind of experience our new bees have moving into their new home is up to you! They can have a wonderful experience or they can have a traumatic experience. So, listen up! We’re going to start by taking the bees down the hill to the hives.”

Mia jumped up and down in excitement. This was already so much better than the Audubon Society Nighttime Owl Walk I took Mia on a couple years ago. We didn’t see (or even hear) a single owl. We just walked around in the moonlight, staring up at the giant spruces for an hour until our necks were sore and they led us back inside for tea and cookies. “Sometimes you see an owl, and sometimes you don’t,” the Audubon lady said. But this experience could not fail. We were about to watch the farm’s experts transfer forty thousand pollinators into their new home! Mia and I would forever remember this magical experience we shared together, and we’d be able to come back to the farm and visit them whenever we wanted! I was getting emotional. Look at me, everybody! Father of the year over here! Let the show begin!

Then the shit got real.

Sally handed me a small wooden box about the size of a cigar box. Two sides of the box were made of wire mesh to allow the passage of light and air.

The box was buzzing.

”Be careful,” she said. “There’s ten thousand bees in there.” Then she announced, “Listen up, official Bee-Welcoming Committee! When we get to the bottom of the hill where the hives are, you’ll all suit up so everyone is fully protected.” She turned back to Mia and me. “You guys are really lucky,” she said. “I just so happen to have a child’s suit with me. It’s just her size.”

Wait, what?

The possibility we would be active participants in this bee-transfer ceremony had not occurred to me.

Remain calm. Everything is going to be OK.

Sally slapped me on the back. “You and Mia are going to install your bees. You’re okay with that, right, Mia?”
Mia nodded emphatically. She was definitely okay with that. As Sally said, they were our bees now. Why wouldn’t we help them move into their new home?

Remain calm. Crap. Did we know if Mia was allergic to bees or not? Nuts, yes, but bees? Obviously, I can’t call Megan and ask her. I’ll never hear the end of it!

“Can you believe how amazing they are?” Sally said, bending to Mia’s level. “Look how they all get along even though they’re completely squished together in that tiny box. Do you know why they’re so calm in there? They’re all so calm because they’re so close to their queen. As long as they’re with their queen, they know everything’s going to be okay. The world is as it should be. It’s really a miracle.”

Mia and I agreed it was pretty amazing.
Sally chucked me on the shoulder.

“Don’t drop it.”

As we started down the hill, I noticed several bees crawling on the outside of my box and on my hands. I told myself to relax and keep walking, which was all I could do, anyway, since both hands were busy holding the box.

Remain calm. Don’t drop the box.

At first I thought the bees were escaping somehow, but this wasn’t the case. Rather, local bees from the area were landing on my box and having a word with its ten thousand inhabitants. Somehow they sensed there were new bees in town. How did they find my little bee box, I wondered. None of the bees that visited seemed agitated or hostile. What information were they exchanging? Were they the real Bee-Welcoming Committee?

Remain calm. Don’t drop the box.

At the bottom of the hill, I set the box down and we all suited up. Mia got into her bee suit easily and without hesitation, as if she’d done it a thousand times, but I was clumsy and slow getting into mine.

“Let’s go, people!” Sally snapped. “We want to do this as quickly as possible so as not to stress out the bees any more than necessary.”
“Hear that, Mia?” I said. “We don’t want to stress out the bees.”

Once we were suited up, Sally performed the first bee transfer to demonstrate how it was done. The process was surprisingly messy and primitive. She showed us how inside the bee box was a tinier box about the size of a box of matches. This box contained the queen. First, Sally carefully reached into the bee box, which was still full of bees, mind you, removed the little box with the queen in it, and placed it into the hive. This next part you might not believe, but I swear to you it’s true (even though, as I’ve said, this is entirely a work of fiction and nobody in this story has any resemblance to anybody in my actual life). The next thing Sally did was she literally just shook the open bee box into the top of the hive until all the bees fell out.

“You’ll need to be pretty aggressive with your shaking in order to get all the bees out,” she said. “Don’t worry, though, the bees won’t mind. They’re just eager to get out of the box and into their new home.” Sure enough, the bees remained focused throughout the exchange. They didn’t fret about being shaken up, and they knew instinctively where they were supposed to go—wherever their queen was. The queen, meanwhile, was still trapped in her tiny box, now stuck inside the hive with ten thousand of her humble servant bees milling about. How does the queen escape from her tiny box prison, you’re wondering? It’s so simple you’ll never guess. One wall of the queen’s box is made out of candy. I’m not making this up. To free the queen, the bees eat through the candy. And in the time it takes to eat the queen out, all the bees are bonded and happy in their new home.

Sally came around and opened our boxes, one by one, with a tool. As I readied myself to pluck the queen from our box, she shook her head.

“Let Mia do it.”

I shrugged and handed Mia the box, and she did just as we’d been told: she dipped her gloved hand into the box, extracted the queen, and carefully placed her in the hive—as gentle as you please. Mia’s hand and arm were now covered with bees and my heart was aflutter in palpitations.

Why didn’t I think to bring an EpiPen? What is wrong with me??? I must be the worst father in the world!

As the group all shook out their respective bee boxes, the situation escalated. Thousands of stray bees swarmed around us, apparently confused about where they were meant to be. Sally reassured us this was all perfectly normal, and that they’d all find their hives. Mia remained focused on her task, never so much as flinching or uttering a peep of distress as the swarm buzzed violently around us. She calmly but firmly shook the bees out of the box into the hive as I sprayed them with a sugar-water mixture to keep them calm.

“Mmmmm, sugar,” Sally said.

I regretted not bringing something harder than sugar along to settle my own nerves, and attempted a slow breathing exercise I learned back in hypnobirthing.

In through the nose for one…two…three…four, hold for one…two…three…four…five…six…seven, exhale for one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight.

Bees were everywhere! All over our suits, our helmets, our face-veils. And were they loud! lt was terrifying. But Mia was completely at peace, and all our bees eventually found their home.

“How awesome was that?” I said, helping Mia out of her suit. “Were you at all anxious with all those bees flying around?”
Mia shook her head.
“I mean, I don’t think the average nine-year-old could’ve done what you did without freaking out.”
“But she told us exactly what to do,” Mia said. “I just did what she told us.”
“And you did great,” I said, “But all that buzzing was starting to get me a little freaked out. It was pretty intense! I even did a breathing exercise at one point. Didn’t you feel anything like that? You weren’t overwhelmed at all?”
Mia shook her head. “I knew I was safe because I had the suit on.”
“So, you trusted the suit would protect you…and that kept you from feeling anxious?”
Mia nodded. “It’s a bee suit. Also, I love bees! Honeybees don’t want to sting you. That’s the last thing a bee wants to do. If a bee stings you, it dies.”
”Sure,” I said. “You and I know that. But do the bees know that?”

As we headed back to our car, Sally called out to us, “Thank you all so much for helping us welcome our bees to their new home!! I thank you, Wright-Locke Farm thanks you, and most importantly, the bees thank you. I hope you all had a wonderful experience and not a traumatic one! And don’t forget, next week we have a special guest coming to the farm to do a special class on chicken raising! Bawk bawk Bagawk!!!“

Mia stopped walking and turned to me, smiling, her eyes wide.

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Though it may sound like a Harry Potter spell, Auspicium ex Tripudio (or Divination from Birds) was a superstitious practice of the ancient Romans. They believed chickens were a blessed, prophetic animal that could predict the future and provide guidance by acting as a conduit for Jupiter, the god of the sky. For instance, the chickens of Capitoline Hill were regarded as possessing sacred prophetic powers that could be interpreted either by the way they flew (Augury) or by the way they ate (Alectryomancy). In 44BC, Cicero’s On Divination described how the birds were revered as oracles and regularly consulted by eminent statesmen on matters of critical importance.

Ancient Roman commanders even used Auspicium ex Tripudio to determine military strategy. The magistrate would pose a question to some chickens in the form of a prayer, after which they would feed them a pellet of flour. Refusal to eat the pellet (or hiding upon leaving the coop) signified an ill-omened day. However, if a chicken ate so that exactly four crumbs fell from her beak, this was a Tripudium Solistimum. A great sign, indeed!

During the First Punic War (around 250 B.C.), Publius Claudius Pulcher was set to engage a Carthaginian squadron at the harbor of Drepana, but the chickens aboard his flagship would not eat. The commander shouted, “Since they do not want to eat, let them drink!” and hurled the birds into the sea. The chickens all drowned because, unlike waterfowl, a chicken’s feathers become waterlogged and heavy, dragging the bird under. Similarly, in the ensuing battle, Pulcher lost nearly his entire fleet.

Prophecies were also believed to be found in the patterns made by a disemboweled chicken’s entrails, though the exact details are unknown.

The First Assessment

Mia’s isolation from friends and classmates was becoming more frequent and more obvious. She continued to have trouble making friends. Rather than playing, she spent recesses alone on the playground: exploring and collecting rocks. This would seem sad to any parent, I think. It was certainly sad for Megan and me. But since this was how Mia chose to spend her recess, I didn’t think I was in a position to judge. As parents we tend to judge our children based on our own ways of moving through the world. Mia’s behavior wasn’t too far off from my own at that age. I can recall squeezing myself into a half-buried truck tire at my elementary (I was that small) and staying in there for the entire recess period, reading until someone came looking for me. But Megan (being far more social than I am) was more distressed by Mia’s social avoidance. She thought it was a warning sign and called for swift correction. And maybe she was right. It did seem like things were getting worse.

Mia had begun refusing to go to the little girl’s room, opting to use the single bathroom in the nurse’s office instead. Last week, one of Mia’s teachers found her crying in a paper closet. We never learned why. Perhaps she was overwhelmed with everything going on at school. Or upset by her inability to form relationships or find other kids who were more like her. The teacher said it wasn’t the first time Mia had sought refuge in the closet—though it was the first time they found her in tears.

Raegan pushed for a professional assessment but the response from Blue Cross Blue Shield was a stumper:

March 4, 2014
Mia Berman
Case Number: XXXXXXXG00

Dear Scott Berman:

We are writing to share the results of our medical necessity review for coverage of neuropsychological testing with Dr. L— on 2/28/14 for Mia Berman.

Our Behavioral Health Physician Psychologist Review Unit reviewed clinical information provided by neuropsychological testing request form. We received the following information regarding this request: Your child is a 6 year old girl described by Dr. L—, test and requesting provider, as having difficulty interacting socially and becoming argumentative with teachers and without indication of cognitive impairment and in the context of possible anxiety. We could not approve coverage of this service because the member did not meet the medical necessity criteria required for coverage of neuropsychological testing. Coverage was denied because there is a lack of evidence of suspected or confirmed specified acute brain insult or pervasive developmental disorder, and of specified other neurologic condition and cognitive impairment is not suspected or confirmed. The Behavioral Health Physician Psychologist Review Unit utilizes InterQual® criteria for Neuropsychological Testing to determine medical necessity.

We have sent a letter regarding this decision to your medical professional along with information regarding his or her right to seek reconsideration. You have the right to appeal this decision. You may file an appeal within one year of treatment, event or circumstances, such as the date you were told of the service denial or claim denial.

Sincerely.
Hugh C—, PhD
Psychologist Reviewer, Licensed Psychologist, Clinical Neuropsychologist

”What does that even mean, Megan?”
”You went to med school, you should know!”
”I must’ve missed the class on denying pediatric mental health care. Why would they deny us when Mia’s doctors asked for it?”
”Where have you been? That’s all the insurance companies do now!”
”Yeah but it’s just a test. It’s not like we’re asking for a boob job!”
”Okay, now you’re not making any sense. Why would Mia get a boob job?”
”I’m just saying. It’s only a test.”

We left a message with our doctor to make sure she knew we’d been denied coverage. Who knows what she told Blue Cross to get them to change their minds, but three days later we received another letter.

March 7, 2014
Parent of Mia Berman
Case Number: XXXXXXXG00

Dear Mr. Berman:

This letter is to inform you of the decision following a provider reconsideration of our initial denial of 12 units (hours) of neuropsychological testing with Dr. L— on 2/28/14 for Mia Berman. For reasons described below, we have overturned our initial decision to deny coverage for this service.

The Physician Review Department has reviewed the submitted clinical information received from review of prior clinical notes from Dr. Jessica L— on 03-07-20 14: Your child is a 6 year old girl described by Dr. L—, test and requesting provider, as having difficulty interacting socially and becoming argumentative with teachers without indication of cognitive impairment and in the context of possible anxiety. Based on the information provided, 12 units (hours) of neuropsychological testing with Dr. L— on 2/28/14 for Mia Berman will be reimbursed according to the terms of your child’s subscriber certificate.

Remember, if you have questions about your benefits, coverage or if you would like a copy of your Subscriber Certificate, please call the customer service number on your ID card. Please refer to the fact sheet you received in your initial denial letter.

Sincerely,
ME K—, M.D.
Physician Reviewer

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Ultimately, what does it matter if Mia’s on the autism spectrum? We’ll love and cherish her no matter what. My hope in telling Mia’s story is that it may help other confused parents feel better knowing their kid isn’t the only weirdo in the world.

Mia used to whisper a lot. Under her breath. To herself. The whispers were different than my brother’s constant echolalic mutterings (classic to severe autism): the same few words repeated over and over. “Fire alarm, fire alarm” or “white sweater, white sweater.” These weren’t nonsensical, though. Rather, they were triggered by his desires or by traumatic episodes in his life. We always assumed “fire alarm” was from the fire drills they would hold at his residence. Either the sound of the alarm, or the sudden interruption of sleep by staff insisting they Move, now! Get out!! was scary enough to etch itself into this forever place in his brain. “White sweater” was a happier echo. It was the only thing he ever wanted for his birthday, so this was likely a sly reminder meant for my mother. Though, how could she forget? Sometimes he also mimicked the talking animated typewriter from the Sesame Street cartoons. “Noo na noo na noo.” Since we watched Sesame Street together, I may be the only person who knew that’s what he was doing. But Mia’s whispers were very different, more notes-to-self. Mia whispered complete sentences to herself, like something out of a horror movie: “Mommy tells me not to do that. Mommy doesn’t like when I do that.” Does that sound normal to you? Creepy whispering? That can’t be normal.

I may need a support group.

And then there’s the nighttime crying, all the nights Mia woke up crying. Like my brother’s obsession with white sweaters, Mia also has some OCD that tended to lead to the crying. For instance, if one of us neglected to give Mia a goodnight hug and kiss, or if she forgot to brush her teeth, or if her nose needed to be wiped, or if she needed to be covered up, or if she forgot to ask us if it’s ok if she climbs into our bed in the morning. If any of these conditions hadn’t been met, Mia would wake up in the middle of the night and release a series of piercing cries until we stumbled in and offered enough reassurance to help her make whole whatever piece was missing.

And Scott, what about you? Is there anything you’d like to discuss with the group?
What? No, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.

What could it have been that roused Mia so suddenly from her sleep, as effectively as my brother’s fire alarms? What triggered her realization that something was missing from her bedtime routine? Did it bubble up subconsciously over the first few hours of sleep? Perhaps she was aware of the absence at first, but not bothered by it. Maybe she was even proud of herself for not letting it bother her. And then as she slept, or tried to sleep, the discomfort grew until she could no longer contain it, and must cry out.

This brings back another memory: we were at my sister-in-law’s in Geneva, Illinois. Mia was about two years old. I was trying to put her down for a nap, but she was acting crazy. Freaking out. I was exasperated. I lay down beside her, running out of options. Not sure what else to do, I tightly embraced her as she flailed and grunted in protest. I maintained my grasp until she finally gave up and fell asleep. Maybe this strikes you as cruel; I was haunted by it for years. But maybe I’d been too hard on myself, beating myself up for no reason. Because a few years later I invented a thing called “the big squeeze,” which was basically where I’d give Mia a tight bear hug that lasted about a minute. She liked it. It helped her relax. Hell, maybe it even brought her back to that day in the basement. Maybe that was a good experience for Mia. Maybe I’d done the right thing after all. Think weighted blankets. Think Temple Grandin’s hug machine.

I mentioned this to Megan.
”That’s your terrible memory?” She said. “Don’t you remember how we were constantly fighting with Mia?”

“Kind of,” I said. “Not really. I remember the times I had to literally drag her down the hill to Lynch Elementary. That was never fun.”
“How are you going to write a memoir if you can’t remember anything?”
I shrugged.

Another memory: Mia at maybe eighteen months. We were in a hotel in Western Massachusetts (at least this is how I remember it). Mia and I were looking out the window overlooking the courtyard or the parking lot or whatever it was.

Mia turned to me and asked, “Is it a day?”
“Yes, Mia,” I said, chuckling. “It’s a day. See how it’s light outside?”
Mia nodded.

“Here’s how it works,” I said. “The Earth is a big ball that travels around the sun. The sun is a giant fireball that keeps everything bright and warm. And the Earth spins around and around and when the sun’s not pointed at us anymore it will get dark and then it will be nighttime. And then as the Earth spins some more it will get light out again and then it will be another day. Understand?”
Mia nodded.
“Whenever it’s light outside, that means it’s a day. That’s how we know when it’s daytime.”

Another memory. It’s early morning, presumably dawn. Let’s say 5-6 AM. Megan and I were still asleep. We are not early risers so we’re not all that familiar with what goes on at this time of the morning. I know fishing happens that early. Morning jogs. DPW have already been at work for hours. But I’m not a runner or a fisher. I’m a sleeper. I exercise only begrudgingly. I recognize the necessity, but I derive no joy from it. I’ve never felt a runner’s high, that self-congratulatory endorphin rush, though this is most likely due to the fact I’ve never run. I just had a scary thought. Do people actually go for a run before they go to work? This sounds like a nightmare scenario.

At one point Megan and I signed up for a yoga class but took issue with the instructor when we learned he was moonlighting as a prosecutor. We were convinced it was bad for our karma. Then we acquired a used set of P90-X DVDs off Craigslist but found the host’s coked-up obsession with core improvement to be too off-putting. We were artists, musicians. We stayed up late smoking and drinking. That was our exercise regimen. Our cores were already adequate for those pursuits. Anyway, the reason I said all that was so you’d understand that we’d potentially had a rough night and were still hours away from waking up and taking on the day. But eventually, through the fog of still-deep sleep, my brain registered a humming sound. A moaning or chant of a single held note. What was it? Some tinkering, too. Someone milling about. A presence in the room. Who was there? Slowly waking, I heard, “Hoooooooooo. Hooooooooooooo. Hooooooooooo” and realized it was Mia.

Rather than climb into our bed, Mia was standing at the end of it, hooting in singsong like an owl (her favorite animal at the time). We pulled her into our bed and we all fell back to sleep. The problem was, once Mia realized the success of this strategy, she repeated it every morning for about a year, no matter what alternative arrangement we offered her: morning TV or an iPad. Mia only wanted to hoot.

Yet some mornings, Mia would forgo the hooting. She’d slink into our room and stand silently at the foot of our bed for however long it took us to wake up and take care of things. Adorable or creepy? You be the judge.

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Backyard chickens are known to suffer from a number of common, correctable medical conditions, any one of which you are likely to encounter as a chicken-raiser. For instance, chickens frequently take on a condition known as “curled toe” or “crooked toe.” Crooked toes that appear in chicks around the time of hatching may be caused by genetics, by a nutritional deficiency in the mother, by a sudden shift in incubator temperature, or by poor chick positioning in the egg. Crooked toes that appear later in a chicken’s life are most often the result of injury or malnutrition, specifically a lack of riboflavin. If desired, curled toes may easily be corrected in a day or two through the application of adhesive vet-wrap bandaging tape. However, know that in all likelihood your bird is not actually “suffering” from the condition, uncomfortable as it may appear to the casual observer. In most cases, crooked-toed chickens barely seem to notice there is anything afoot (if you’ll pardon the pun). Apart from aesthetics (or salability), the impact of a curled or crooked toe (or toes) on a chicken’s ability to run from predators or to scratch for bugs is negligible.

When we received the email to sign up for a parent-teacher conference, my initial reaction was surprise. Preschools hold conferences? But in our case, we actually had something to talk about. We were keen on finding out what the deal was with Mia’s teacher (not what the teacher thought the deal was with Mia).

To pregame for the meeting, Megan and I stopped at a local bar. Megan reminded me about Dr. S—‘s warning and told me to hold my tongue. After our nerves were settled and our resolve steeled, we made it over to the school where we waited uncomfortably on metal folding chairs with the other confused and inconvenienced parents, all of us desperately avoiding conversation by pretending we had important matters to attend to on our phones. For some reason, parent-teacher conferences never start on time. Though we have been on time for all of them, and never went beyond our time, to this day, I have not been to a single parent-teacher conference that was not at least ten minutes behind schedule. This parent-teacher conference was no exception. By the time our names were called, twenty minutes past our allotted slot time, my courage was gone.

Ms. S— was a dark-haired woman of indeterminate ethnicity (not that that matters). I immediately noticed her inclination for avoiding eye contact. While talking, she’d look at Megan and me for a half-second, then avert her eyes and look down at the floor. She was nervous and fidgety. I wondered if she felt embarrassed by our situation or by her own recent actions, to wit: she had told new parents their first-born was autistic after just two weeks of class. Of course, she was unaware Megan and I had both grown up with a severely autistic family member (along with my brother, Megan has a close cousin who is also non-verbal) but the bluntness of Ms. S—‘s diagnosis was upsetting nonetheless.

Fortunately, none of the stuff Dr. S— had warned us about was proving to be true. She was clearly nervous, worried for her job, perhaps. I was finding it impossible to remain angry, especially once she cast aside our concerns about Mia being on the spectrum (though not until we asked).

“So,” I said, “about that thing you said about Mia being…”
“Oh, no no no,” she said. “No, no, no.”
“So, you were wrong, then?” I pressed.
“Oh, yes.”
“The last time we talked, you seemed pretty sure of yourself,” Megan said.
“Which we thought was weird,” I added, “since you can’t even technically make that diagnosis until a child is 3 years old.”

I’d read that in a book somewhere. Or my mom had mentioned it, I can’t remember which. Anyway, I don’t think it’s true anymore, now that it’s a spectrum.

“So, how is she doing with the other kids, then?” Megan asked.
“Oh great, great,” she said.
“She interacts with the other kids?” I asked.
“Yup,” she said. “Uh-huh.”
“And what made it really hard for us,” I said, “and maybe this is the part you didn’t realize…was that Megan and I both grew up with autism in our families…”

Ms. S— clasped her hands.
“I understand completely,” she said. “My son is also autistic.”

The teacher’s response was confusing. This was not the direction I foresaw the conversation taking. Was she asserting her expertise? Was she still trying to reinforce the validity of her diagnosis, even though we just spent the last few minutes debunking it? Or was it simply a slip of the tongue, an unconscious attempt at bonding? In any case, it was turning into some kind of ‘tism-off: pitting kid against kid. Suddenly we weren’t allowed to be upset at being told our child had autism because the person who made the claim actually had an autistic child.

Perhaps she meant it in the best way. As in, the same expertise that initially made her think Mia was autistic eventually led her to reverse her opinion (along with, one would presume, the additional time she spent with our girl). Still, it was a total Michael Jackson move: dangling her child over the porch rail for us to gawk at.

The teacher motioned to a snapshot in the window: “That’s him.”

She had us. I didn’t have any pictures of my brother on my phone to respond with. I doubted I had more than ten pictures of him at home. And Megan didn’t have any shots of her cousin, either. It was our word against hers.

We’d been outplayed.

“I’m calling bullshit,” Megan said on the ride home. “Her kid is not autistic. Did you get a look at that picture? He was all jumping around on the playground.”
My mind was preoccupied. I was pondering if it would be weird to ask Mia to take the autism quotient test.
“Not really, no,” I said.
“You didn’t look at the picture?” Megan asked. “The picture of her son?”
Probably too weird, I decided
“I may have,” I said. “I really don’t remember.”
“How could you not remember? That was like five minutes ago. Anyway, the kid looked totally fine.”
“Fine like Mia?” I asked.
“Like Mia, exactly,” Megan said.
“He’s probably spectrum or whatever,” I said.
“Like Mia?”
“Probably like Mia.”

The thing is, just because Mia’s behavior is weird—somewhere between adorable and disturbing—doesn’t mean it’s diagnosable. Our pediatrician says she’s “just being a Berman.” Here’s another example. Megan and I were hanging out in the kitchen one morning when Mia came in, proudly showed me something she’d made, and said, “My mommy made this with me.” Which sounds totally normal…only her mom was standing right there. Right next to her. Right next to me.

At the end of the year, Mia’s preschool teacher wrote the following in the Rockland Montessori School Student Evaluation for 3 to 4-year-olds (2010-2011):
“Mia is a very intelligent and curious little girl. She really enjoys her time at school and has learned so much. Mia is comfortable with all tasks and challenges presented to her. She has fun with “her girlfriends” and with the boys as well. Mia has been a pleasure to have in class!”

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m sensing a little overcompensation.

What’s the point of putting all this down? Should I just go on social media and ask my fake friends if it’s normal for a three-year-old to be this weird? Isn’t that what three-year-olds are known for? Or I could just try Googling it. But for now, anyway, that NPR dude was right. The true nature of Mia’s condition can’t be found on the internet. The answer only lies within.

Two years later, Mia’s kindergarten teacher at Lynch Elementary left these comments in her “Watch Me Grow” Development Profile:
“Mia is a sweet girl who seems to enjoy school and her peers. She is creative and imaginative. Mia has many academic strengths. We will continue to support Mia in social settings. She will continue to attend lunch bunch and practice ways to appropriately express her feelings and emotions. Mia is a delight to have in class!”

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27. I find it easy to “read between the lines” when someone is talking to me.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I actually think I’m pretty good at this, though I never thought it was something anyone did on a regular basis. For instance, if Megan and I are the last ones at a party and the host suddenly lifts his arms up and yawns and looks at his watch I know that means it’s time to do some shots. That one’s pretty obvious.

28. I usually concentrate more on the whole picture rather than the small details.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I’m more of a big picture kind of guy, though as a writer I should probably be more cognizant of the details. That said, if I see a cool-looking bug while I’m consoling someone after their dog just died, I will point it out.

29. I am not very good at remembering phone numbers.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I used to be good. I had a trick. I used to visualize how the phone number looked when you ‘dialed’ it on a push-button phone, and I’d memorize the path my finger took. Is that weird? That seems like it might be an autism thing. In Thinking in Pictures, Temple Grandin describes her own thought process similarly. I don’t do it anymore, though, so maybe it’s not a big deal. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t dialed a phone number in the last twenty years.

30. I don’t usually notice small changes in a situation, or a person’s appearance.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    What kind of changes? Like, they removed a street sign? Most notably, in the past, I have gotten into trouble for failing to notice some seemingly subtle yet surprisingly expensive hair modifications. So, yes, there’s that.

31. I know how to tell if someone listening to me is getting bored.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I’m a comedian (though obviously not a very good one) so I’ve been kind of trained to suss out boredom. It always leads to heckling, right? “You’re not funny!” “Get off the stage!” My problem isn’t figuring out how to tell when someone’s bored, my problem is figuring out how to prevent them from getting bored in the first place.

32. I find it easy to do more than one thing at once.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Again, it depends on the things. For instance, I prefer to not wash dishes while I’m spot welding the exhaust of our Westy.

33. When I talk on the phone, I’m not sure when it’s my turn to speak.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    First, who even talks on the phone anymore? Second, what’s to be sure of? When the other person stops talking, it’s my turn. Am I missing something? Okay. I think I’ve got this quotient thing figured out. I’m noticing the questions that involve an element of uncertainty are the ‘bad’ ones. As in, if you don’t know how to do X, it’s because you’re autistic.

34. I enjoy doing things spontaneously.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    For whatever reason, I’m finding my answer to most of these questions is “it depends.” Many things would be horrible to do spontaneously. A colonoscopy, for example. If Megan woke me one morning and said, “Let’s get our colons scoped!” I’m guessing my initial response would not be positive.

35. I am often the last to understand the point of a joke.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Hey, that’s weird. This one kind of relates to the Kay Jewelers thing I mentioned. Though again, as a comedian, I have to definitely disagree. Also, come to think of it, I heard a new one, just today, from my niece. Arby’s is called Arby’s because R.B. stands for roast beef. Hello? Earth to Scott! Of course it does.

36. I find it easy to work out what someone is thinking or feeling just by looking at their face.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    As I was saying, “disagree” here probably means ‘spectrum’ (indicating an insecurity about doing something). This is getting pretty obvious, even in spite of my deficiencies with Arby’s and Kay. I can always tell what my wife is thinking by looking at her face: some variation of: “Stop doing that.” Most times, I don’t even have to look.

37. If there is an interruption, I can switch back to what I was doing very quickly.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    This one gets a double ‘it depends.’ First, it depends on what I was doing at the time, and second, on it depends on how I was being interrupted. For instance, if my wife and I were having sex, and Mia ran in the room…but she was on fire…well, you can figure out the rest.

38. I am good at social chitchat.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Didn’t we see this question already? What’s that about? Did they really need to rub it in? So I’m not good at social chitchat, okay??? I’m not even sure what that is! Talking about the weather, maybe, or my commute to work? Who cares! Isn’t that what apps are for? Let’s talk about how crazy everything is!

39. People often tell me that I keep going on and on about the same thing.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Is this thing almost over or what? Are you even still reading? Speaking of going on and on, this quotient test feels like it’s never going to end! Also, isn’t it fairly common knowledge that people on the spectrum tend to go on and on about the same thing? Way to be obvious, Mr. Obvious quotient creator!!

40. When I was young, I used to enjoy playing games involving pretending with other children.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Still do. What of it? You got some kinda problem with that? Oh wait. I get it. People on the spectrum have trouble pretending. Is that it?

41. I like to collect information about categories of things (types of cars, types of birds, types of trains, types of plants, etc.).
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    At my age, my brain is done retaining information. Memorize types of trains? I’m lucky if I can remember which train I’m supposed to take!

42. I find it difficult to imagine what it would be like to be someone else.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Again, not good at something? Must be autism! For the record, I spend literally hours each day imagining this: my life as a successful comedian, my life as someone who didn’t get kicked out of medical school. Did I mention they kicked me out of medical school. Want to know why? They kicked me out because I accidentally brought my cadaver (wait for it) back to life. Badoomp boom.

43. I like to plan any activities I participate in carefully.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Not in the least. I leave all that up to my wife. She’s from the midwest. And possibly on the autism spectrum if this quotient thing is any indication.

44. I enjoy social occasions.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Though it depends on my mood at the time. But generally, sure. Even if I didn’t feel like going out initially, when I get back, I’m happy I went.

But seriously, can we wrap this thing up already?

45. I find it difficult to work out people’s intentions.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    This feels like another blatant autism red flag. Though I did misinterpret someone’s intentions one time. It was my first time in Manhattan. I was traveling to hang out with an old high school buddy; we were going to write up some bits to send to Letterman, so my mind was occupied with comedic possibilities. I had just gotten off the bus at Grand Central Station when a dude came up to me and said he knew a quicker way to get to a cab. For some reason I assumed he was on the level and just wanted to help out a random lost stranger. Maybe he’s from the Midwest, I thought. End result, I wound up in a literal tug-of-war with my cash, though I gotta give the guy some credit. He did actually take me to a cab. My naivety seems unbelievable to me now, but at the time I must have been on the spectrum.

46. New situations make me anxious.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I’m going with yes on this one. But not all new situations. Just the anxiety-provoking ones. Which is like 95% of them.

47. I enjoy meeting new people.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Depends on the situation. At a club, sure! Getting off a bus in Manhattan for the first time, not so much.

48. I am a good diplomat.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Coincidentally, my uncle-in-law was in a band called The Diplomats, though that sounds like the kind of random association a person on the spectrum might make. But, yeah, I like to think of myself as a good diplomat, though my wife would likely say different. But then again, she’s from the Midwest where everybody’s a diplomats, especially, as I mentioned, my uncle-in-law, may his memory be a blessing.

49. I am not very good at remembering other people’s date of birth.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Didn’t I answer this one already? Like a hundred questions ago? Didn’t I say I can’t even remember my own parents’ birthdays? I’m pretty sure I did. Does recalling that fact mean I’m on the spectrum?

50. I find it very easy to play games with children that involve pretending.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree

Hold on now. Is this the test for autism or the test for memory loss?

Wait. Is that it? Fifty questions? Oh my God, that’s it. I’m done! Drum roll, please…

YOUR RESULTS:

The average score for the original control group of the test was 16.4. 80% of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders scored 32 or more, compared with only 2% of the control group.

The test is not a diagnostic tool and higher scores do not necessarily indicate either Asperger syndrome or high functioning autism. [For the record, nobody says “Asperger’s” anymore] The test is more often used to assess milder variants of autistic-like traits in typically developing individuals to investigate the continuum hypothesis of autism spectrum condition.

Your Autism Spectrum Quotient is 15.

Fifteen? That’s two points below the average of the control group! I’m less autistic than the general public? Well, color me surprised! And for some reason I don’t quite understand, a tad disappointed.

Now that that’s settled, let’s get back to the chickens, shall we?

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Driving home one night I heard Terry Gross interview an author who for some reason had a big stick up his ass when it came to the internet. Gross asked if he ever used the internet for research and the guy said, “Honey, the questions I’m asking can’t be answered by the internet.” Which pretty much means no, because he’s too old. What question can’t be answered by the internet? Besides the meaning of life, nothing came to mind. By the way, this all happened before AI took over the world. So when I got home, I hopped on the internet to find the answer to the question: “What question cannot be answered by the internet?” And a banner ad popped up that said a Facebook friend had just taken the “Autism Spectrum Quotient Test” (AQ) and scored pretty low (as in, low chance of autism), and wouldn’t I like to know how I might score on such a test?

For the answer to my next question, I turned to Wikipedia:
“The Autism Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, is a questionnaire published in 2001 by Simon Baron-Cohen [yes, that Baron-Cohen] and his colleagues at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, U.K.”

By answering fifty questions, the AQ claims it can determine whether someone shows symptoms of autism or autism spectrum.

“Approximately half the questions are worded to elicit an “agree” response from neurotypical individuals, and half to elicit a “disagree” response. The subject scores one point for each question which is answered “autistically” either slightly or definitely.

“The questions cover five different domains associated with the autism spectrum: social skills; communication skills; imagination; attention to detail; and attention switching/tolerance of change.”

I wasn’t sure why it was okay for the ad to tell me how autistic my friend was (or wasn’t) or why Zuckerberg was so interested in finding out how autistic I was (or wasn’t) but given my own tendency to avoid conversation, especially around others, and my affection for cancelled plans, I assumed the test would place me somewhere at the spectral outskirts, in the ultraviolet.

The Autism Spectrum Quotient Test

This is not “a trivial Facebook Quiz.” This is a serious scientific questionnaire. It is a genuine diagnostic tool designed to measure the expression of Autism-Spectrum traits in an individual, by his or her own subjective self-assessment.

Many people who score above 32 and who meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger’s have no difficulty in functioning in their everyday lives. A high score on the AQ Test is not by itself diagnostic. If you have concerns that predate taking this test, it’s best to discuss this with your family doctor. The reason for its use on Facebook is to raise awareness of the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and to demonstrate the complexity of the issue.

This application does not automatically publish anything to Facebook.

{ TAKE AQ TEST }

Here we go. Feel free to play along at home, won’t you?

1. I prefer to do things with others rather than on my own.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   It depends on how I feel at the moment, but in general it feels easier to do things on my own. Certain things, especially, now that I’m married.

2. I prefer to do things the same way over and over again.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Again, it depends. If I’m putting on socks or doing the dishes there’s probably not going to be a lot of variation, day to day. But when it comes to making love to my wife, variety is the spice of life.

3. If I try to imagine something, I find it very easy to create a picture in my mind.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Not that I have anything to compare it with, but yes, it’s surprisingly easy, particularly when I’m alone.

4. I frequently get so strongly absorbed in one thing that I lose sight of other things.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Some days are better than others. For instance, I’m writing this in Cafe Algiers in Harvard Square, surrounded by my writing group. They’re easy to ignore at the moment because they’re also busy writing. But there’s a dude in front of me who I’m guessing is on coke because he’s talking very fast and loud and using words like ‘cultural milieu’ and ‘centralized IT’. Impossible to ignore.

5. I often notice small sounds when others do not.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Yeah, definitely. But I’m a musician, I’ve been trained to notice small sounds. I don’t think this one counts.

6. I usually notice car number plates or similar strings of information.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Only when it’s a vanity plate that spells something like “CHKN LVR.” Because then I might get hung-up on whether it was meant to be LOVER or LIVER.

7. Other people frequently tell me that what I’ve said is impolite, even though I think it is polite.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   I suspect that I sometimes wind up sounding like an asshole when I’m just trying to be funny. Like now, for instance, poking fun at this questionnaire.

8. When I’m reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   Yes. Though sometimes they remain an amorphous cloud and I’m totally cool with that.

9. I am fascinated by dates.
   Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
   I cannot remember any dates, not even my own parents’ birthdays. Generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of time.

10. In a social group, I can easily keep track of several different people’s conversations.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree

    Am I supposed to do that? Can people do that? Absolutely not. No way. I have enough trouble keeping track of one conversation.

11. I find social situations easy.

    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree

    To this day I feel uncomfortable talking to people. I never know what to say. Why do I even have to say anything? Why am I hanging out with all these people?

12. I tend to notice details that others do not.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I see where this is going. No. Despite that I’m a writer and am supposed to notice every detail in case one day I want to use it in a novel, it’s usually someone else who’s pointing stuff out. Most often, our three year old son: “Daddy! Turkeys!!”

13. I would rather go to a library than a party.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    First, this seems like an unusual choice to have to make. Second, a great library is hard to beat. Is that bad? That sounds like it might be bad. But you know how it is sometimes at a party, right? You try to have a good time but suddenly find yourself thinking, “Boy, I wish I was at a library right now.”

14. I find making up stories easy.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Kind of a lobber.

15. I find myself drawn more strongly to people than to things.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I’d say it’s a toss-up. I realize material objects have no intrinsic value but does that mean I would I give-up my first edition copy of Naked Lunch just to hang out with the kid who used to pick me up by my neck in Jr. High? Not likely.

16. I tend to have very strong interests, which I get upset about if I can’t pursue.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Though since I became a father, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to giving up everything I had any interest in. Sex being at the top of the list.

17. I enjoy social chitchat.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Like I said, sometimes I can’t help but find it awkward and challenging. Maybe it would help if I were more into sports…

18. When I talk, it isn’t always easy for others to get a word in edgeways.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I tend not to talk much. Though now that you mention it, I do interrupt people. A random idea I think is brilliant will pop in my head so I’ll insert it into a conversation I’d been having trouble following anyway.

19. I am fascinated by numbers.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Shouldn’t we all be? They’re not even, like, real things or anything. They’re just ideas. Concepts. Abstractions. And some of them are irrational? And some are imaginary? They may not exist at all, they may just be, like, by-products of the nature of human thought. That seems fascinating enough right there. Especially when you’re stoned.

20. When I’m reading a story, I find it difficult to work out the characters’ intentions.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Another lobber since I have an MFA in this stuff.

21. I don’t particularly enjoy reading fiction.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Well, duh. See above question.

22. I find it hard to make new friends.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    The silver friends? Not particularly hard, no. I’ve pretty much got it down by now. Also, do Facebook friends count?

23. I notice patterns in things all the time.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    I’m rarely able to recall what people are wearing, if that’s some indiction. This includes my own wife, much to the detriment of our marriage. But if there’s a pattern in something, will I notice it? Sure. It’s possible. But I’m not saying I’m a professional pattern-noticer or anything. For instance, the Kay Jewelers’ jingle? The one that goes: “Every kiss begins with Kay.” Took me fifteen years before I realized Kay was a play on the letter K.

24. I would rather go to the theatre than a museum.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Aren’t they kind of the same thing? I mean, most of the time they put a theatre inside the museum. I’ve even seen tiny museums inside of theaters. How do those factor in? Weird question.

25. It does not upset me if my daily routine is disturbed.

    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree

    This feels like a variation of an earlier question. Is it just me? Am I crazy? Or am I just on the autism spectrum? Seeing as how I have no daily routine, why would I get upset if it was disturbed? What do they think I am—autistic? (See above re: asshole comments)

26. I frequently find that I don’t know how to keep a conversation going.
    Definitely agree | Slightly agree | Slightly disagree | Definitely disagree
    Often I find I have to repeat what someone just said in my head in order to figure out what I’m supposed to say next. Isn’t that supposed to come naturally? What questions should I ask? What details had been left out? What opinion might I safely express without coming off sounding like an asshole (see previous question)? I know if I ever get stuck in a conversation I’m supposed to just parrot whatever the other person said back to them in the form of a question, but usually I can’t even remember to do that!

I’m beginning to feel sorry I took this on. Fifty questions is a lot. I can only imagine how you must feel (which maybe means I’m not autistic?).

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Mia’s pre-school teacher wasn’t the only authority figure to say something about Mia, she was just the first to bring it to our attention. At age four, Mia’s “Ooey Gooey Doo” teacher, a girl about sixteen, let us know that Mia had been having trouble paying attention and following directions. “All Mia wants to do,” she said, “is mess around with the goo.” Which seemed reasonable. Since they featured the goo aspect in the name of the class, they must have realized that would be the big draw. Now they expect kids to be less about the goo and more about following instructions? I’m not buying it. Then a “Stay & Play” teacher at the Arlington Boys & Girls Club said Mia was having difficulty connecting with the other children. She said Mia was all about the Play-Doh. In this case, the teacher might have a stronger complaint, since “play” implies playing with other children, though it’s possible Mia mistook this for meaning play with doh.

Around first grade, Megan and I began seeing signs. Or things we took for signs once we’d been prompted by teachers to look for them. Similar to how you can hear any word in garbled speech as soon as a word is suggested. Green needle or brain storm. You hear the word you focus on first. Our mind fills in the gaps, creates its own reality. We saw things folks and/or the internet said were signs of something. For one, Mia jumped late. She walked on time, but she was a late jumper. She was afraid of jumping. She had a fear of leaving the ground. Years later she explained she was worried that as soon as her feet left the Earth she would just keep going and would float off into space, never to return.

Eventually, this phobia was replaced by a powerful phobia of swings and slides, which generalized into an anxiety around simply being in motion. Her early fear that gravity was too weak somehow transformed into a concern that the world had too much gravity, and that she was going to fall victim to it. She was easily overwhelmed by motion. She loved the idea of a carnival ride—the neon colors and the gleeful screams of children—but she was distrustful of the shoddy, fly-by-night construction and the operator’s smoky rasp. She freaked out when we sat her in a flying fish at Story Land, and screamed until we pulled her off the ride.

Mia hummed a lot. And by a lot I mean all the time. Her humming reminded me of the low, atonal drone my brother made when the world became too much and he had to find a way to drown it out. When Mia got into a serious hum she’d stop responding and it became impossible to get through. She was in her own head. Who knew what she was thinking? In groups, Mia kept to herself. At parties she avoided the moon bounce and focused her attention downward, collecting objects from the ground. She always came home with pockets full of rocks. Either she genuinely loved rocks or the hunting was a means of avoiding social interaction. We never figured out which.

Mia could identify any car from as far as a hundred yards away. “That’s a Toyota!” she would proudly shout. “That’s a Hyundai!” Was this a cool trick or another sign? Then she developed an obsession with letters. She would walk through the house loudly declaring that “Pickle starts with P! Puh! Puh! Pickle!” Megan and I tried to enjoy this silly entertainment, but we were saddened by Mia’s aversion to eye contact. She never looked us in the eye.

In second grade, Mia’s class watched a video on Dr. Temple Grandin, the brilliant autistic scientist who invented the hug box and devised a more humane method of preparing livestock for slaughter. Dr. Grandin said her autism enabled her to think like cattle. She could predict where in the long walk to slaughter a cow would become spooked and refuse to go on. It wasn’t the certainty of death that upset them, she said, but environmental elements no one had ever bothered to consider. Things that were easily corrected, such as the reflection of light. Before Dr. Grandin came along, no one had even considered the possibility an animal’s behavior could be affected this way, that something as simple as an innocuous glow or an awkward turn could haunt an animal and hold up an entire line.

“I think I’m autistic,” Mia said. “I have what she has. I don’t like being around people, either. And I think like an animal, too. I think like a chicken.”

My father regularly calls to tell me what the Democrats are doing wrong this time and to ask when I can come by to fix his printer. The last time we spoke, I mentioned how things were going with Mia and told him what her teachers had been saying. Dad wasn’t convinced. Call it denial or call it old age, but he was determined to rally for his granddaughter. He wasn’t going to fall for anybody’s bullshit. He’d seen it all. For years, he fought the system to ensure the best living situation for his own autistic son. He knew a thing or two. He served on the board of the Protestant Guild for the Blind. This might seem odd since my brother is neither Protestant nor blind, but back in the ’70’s they were one of the few groups advocating for the rights of children with autism.

“There’s no way Mia’s autistic,” Dad said. “I don’t see it at all.”
“This isn’t autism like you know it,” I said. “This is autism spectrum. It’s a whole spectrum of autism. Practically everybody’s on it.”
“I know what it is,” Dad said. “And I don’t see it. Mia’s fine with people. She makes good eye contact…”
This made me nervous. Mia had many talents, but eye contact was not one of them.
“You never see her around other kids, Dad,” I said. “Mia never plays with other kids. She always wanders off on her own.”
“Talk to your mother,” he said.
“She never dances,” I said. “She just rocks back and forth.”
Mom picked up.
“Hello? Scott? I think Mia’s teacher is crazy.”
“Teachers,” I said. “Plural.”
“I’m serious,” Mom said. “I looked it up in my book.”
“Autism spectrum,” I said.

Mom said she researched the entire autism spectrum and didn’t see anything. She thought Mia was just really shy. Which made some sense. Because I was shy. Too shy to ask a girl to prom, even. Not that I wanted to go. But maybe the real reason I didn’t go wasn’t because I wanted to maintain my reputation as a punk rocker but because I was too scared to ask someone.

Mom said, “They want to slap a label on anybody who’s the least bit different. You should be glad she’s different. I’m not just saying that to make you feel better. I looked up the whole spectrum. I didn’t see anything that felt like Mia. Nothing.”

Was it possible the doctors were wrong? Was it possible my dad carried another genetic defect in addition to the Fragile X that mom carried? Dad is a nervous wreck, after all, and not just because of his printer. And I may be more anxious than he is.

We made an appointment with our pediatrician, Dr. S—. Dr. S— wasn’t into prescribing drugs, which we liked about him. He even let us pursue an alternative vaccine schedule, which my wife liked. He had two eccentricities. One, he had a bit of a verbal tic and, two, whenever he wanted to suggest a more radical approach, he invoked his wife: “My wife resists giving any of her patients prozac.” We couldn’t find a sitter for Mia’s three-year-old brother, Gage, so we took him along. As the doctor gestured us all into his office, Megan and I described our interactions with Mia’s teachers, and braced ourselves for the inevitable.

But Dr. S— wasn’t buying it either.
“Those fuckers!” He said. “Oh, sorry! Sorry, Berman kids.”
Megan and I gestured dismissively.
“It’s okay,” I said, “Mia swears all the time.”
“I don’t!” Mia protested.
“I do!” Gage exclaimed. “I swear!”
“This happens a lot,” Dr. S— said. “Whenever they see a child who’s a little different, they need to slap a word on it.”
I said, ”That’s what my mother said!”
“So, you don’t think she’s autistic?” Megan said.
“Not even close,” Dr. S— said. “And when I know, I know. When I see it, I see it right away.”
“But why would her teacher say that?” Megan said.
“Who knows,” he said. “Maybe she thinks she’s covering her ass. Ooh, sorry.”
“You think we don’t say ass around them?” I said. “Mia, say ass.”
Mia laughs nervously. She won’t say ass.
Gage jumps at the opportunity: “Ass! Ass! Asshole!”

Dr. S—’s face turned somber. Joking time was over. He told us we couldn’t say or do anything, no matter what. We couldn’t go back to Mia’s preschool and tell her teacher our pediatrician said she’s crazy and should quit working in child education and find a more appropriate job, like stocking produce at Johnny Foodmaster, maybe.

“Well, what do we do?” Megan asked
“Nothing. You don’t do anything,” he said.
“Can I blog about it?” I asked
“I wouldn’t,” he said.
“Why would you blog about it?” Megan said. “You haven’t blogged in a year!”
“I’m serious, guys,” Dr. Dr. S— said. “I’ve seen it happen. The mother gets this kind of news and goes back to the preschool thinking she’s going to chew them out. And the next thing she knows, DSS is knocking on her door, and they’re doing interviews and asking questions because the teacher decided the mom is in denial about the whole thing and the child is in jeopardy in the home.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.
The doc said, “These teachers worry parents will come back years later and sue them or sue the school for not saying their kid was autistic. They think the parents will say something like, ‘Because of you, I put her in all the wrong programs! If only you’d told me she was autistic, she’d be all better now!’”
“Mums the word,” Megan said.

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Your city or town may not permit the ownership of roosters, therefore, you might find it helpful to understand the manner in which a baby chicken’s (a.k.a. chick’s) gender is determined, and by whom. Not surprisingly, the process is performed by a professional “sexer” and involves the manual examination of the chick’s reproductive organs. Prior to flipping the chick over to observe its anatomy, the sexer first squeezes it firmly to expel any fecal matter that may be obscuring the anal vent (or cloaca). The phenotypical genitalia of male and female chicks are nearly indistinguishable. That is, their visual appearance is nearly identical. Because in place of a penis, the male chick presents an “eminence,” a shiny, pimple-like bump. For this reason, chick sexing is a practice best reserved for large commercial hatcheries. The process requires a professional eye, and a practiced hand. Performed improperly, the process may result in death or disembowelment.

Naturally, female chicks are far more desirable than males. So, what the sexers are focused on finding are females, not males. Most commonly, any chicks found to be male are discarded and destroyed.

Due to the lack of available instruments and spare parts, the practice of sexing chicks via a mechanical means has all but been abandoned. In their heyday, two sexer machines prevailed: the Keeler Optical Chixexer and the Chicktester. Both were endoscopes with blunt telescopic tubes. Inserting the illuminated tube into the cloaca allowed the sexer to distinguish testis from ovary, though again, the differences were subtle and the task required patience, diligence, and experience.

Given the hundreds of minuscule variations that exist between vent shapes, most sexers report they operate “on intuition alone.” “Even the best professional sexers can’t describe how they determine gender in the toughest, most ambiguous cases. Their art is inexplicable. They say that within three seconds they just ‘know’ whether a bird is a boy or a girl, but they can’t say how they know.”¹

For this reason, chicken-sexing has even made its way into philosophical debates, specifically the epistemological discussion concerning internalism versus externalism:
“Consider the example of the ‘chicken sexers’—subjects who are able to tell whether a chicken is male or female when they see it, but who do not experience the chicken as being male or female. If we want to defend the idea that experience plays a distinctive epistemic role, we need to explain how the source of the chicken sexers’ knowledge differs from that of ordinary non-inferential perceptual knowledge. The multi-level simple theory of perception suggests the following account. The chicken sexers do experience the chickens. But their failure, in doing so, to experience the properties they report the chickens as having (the absence of relevant level 2 perception) disables them from seeing that a chicken is (say) female (level 3 perception).
“Now the question is: what does it mean to experience properties? Advocates of RC often take it to be obvious that this is a matter of experience having representational content. They assume that to see the sex of a chicken is a matter of seeing it as being (for example) female, where this, in turn, is construed as having an impression with a correctness condition (i.e. with representational content).
“What is peculiar about the case of the chicken sexers is that they make non-inferential judgements about a kind of feature that (we are supposing) makes no difference to the character of their experience. Their judgement that a chicken is female is therefore not intelligible in terms of level 2 experience of features. This is why we are reluctant to credit them with the level 3 capacity to observe that a chicken is female. Put in more familiar terminology, we cannot make their judgement intelligible in terms of the way the chicken looks to them.”²

The art of chicken sexing may still be learned at Japan’s Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School. Founded in the 1920’s, this two-year program trained about 100 sexers per year in its first decade. Since then, interest in this career path has waned considerably. In 2010, the graduating class consisted of just three students. The American Chick Sexing Association is another resource for those interested in pursuing the subject further.

While several “sex-linked” breeds have been developed to make gender more apparent by genetically linking it to specific physical traits (e.g. color or pattern of down), in general, roosters are larger than hens, develop larger combs and wattles, and grow longer tail feathers. Famously, roosters also begin to crow at a few weeks of age. So, while there is no easy way to determine the gender of a (non-sex-linked) chick, the most accurate, practical, and tried-and-true method is simply to watch it grow.

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1. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Joshua Foer. Penguin Books, 2011.

2. Roessler, J. (1 October 2009). “Perceptual Experience and Perceptual Knowledge”. Mind. 118 (472): 1013–1041.
   

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Nevertheless, I found myself consumed with my genes—something I hadn’t thought about since the time Megan and I did mushrooms at Joshua Tree and I hallucinated some interminable flying strands that I somehow understood to represent my ancestral DNA passing through the centuries, after which I ‘received’ a message that asserted my only purpose in life was to keep the DNA moving. The voice made it clear I was nothing more than a temporary vessel for the immortal alpha helix, the holy code. Don’t let the DNA die, the mystery voice said. Make more people.

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The next morning, over toast, Megan and I began compiling a list of all the things that might have resulted in Mia’s presumed autism. This is the kind of thing parents who suffer from First-Child Syndrome do, even after having their first good night’s sleep in months.

1. The C-Section
   This one was my fault. Or, I suppose you could say it was the doctor’s fault. But more than anything, Megan wanted a home birth. She practically pleaded with me for a home birth. But being the idiot I am (memoir theme #1), I said no. I said not for our first child. For the first one, I said, let’s just go to Winchester hospital. It’s not even a mile away and we have all this insurance. Why would we not? Megan relented, but not without a fight. She hired a local birth doula. She printed out our Birth Plan. She enrolled us in a hypno-birthing class, where she learned to breathe down her pain and where I learned how to be spiritually supportive while performing light-touch massage. They assured us natural childbirth was nothing any woman couldn’t handle. They extolled the power of “breathing the baby down.” They assigned new words to things that had perfectly good words already, like “birthed” for “born.” Babies aren’t born, they insisted, they’re birthed. To this day, I have no idea what that means. They sat us in a circle on big poofy pillows and regaled us with tales of women who orgasmed when they birthed. They validated these stories by playing bornography videos featuring strange communal gatherings of hippie ladies birthing orgiastically in the sea as a pod of curious dolphins swam inexplicably around them. I’m not making this up. It felt like we had joined a cult.
   I told Megan I still thought we’d be better off in the hospital, despite the unavoidable absence of dolphins. We had already learned how to breathe. We had laminated our Birth Plan. We were ready. Our Birth Plan indicated “No ptosin. No antibiotics. No anesthetics. Absolutely no c-section. A water-birth, if possible.” Lastly, we had the help of our trusty doula to keep things from going awry. Nothing was going to go wrong.
   

   But then the baby wouldn’t come.

What is a birth doula?

As defined in Beth’s pamphlet, "A birth doula is a non-medical professional who enhances the childbirth experience for the mother and her partner through knowledge, compassion and support." Here is her "Birth Philosophy”: "All women deserve the feeling of empowerment, pride and joy that accompanies birth. Beth believes in helping parents learn about their choices and clarifying their desires before labor. She provides a calm, caring and relaxing environment, allowing a woman and her partner to discover the beauty and inspiration of birth. She understand that each woman, as well as every birth, is unique and therefore each family’s choices and decisions are to be respected. Beth delights in pregnant women, birth and babies. It is an honor for her to share in the miraculous delivery of a new life." And here, according to Beth's pamphlet, is "The Doula Advantage," the "beneficial effects" of using a doula during labor and delivery:
• 50% reduction in the cesarean rate
• 25% shorter labor
• 50% reduction in epidural requests
• 40% reduction in oxytocin use
• 30% reduction in analgesia use
• 40% reduction in forceps delivery

What follows are the doula’s own notes. If you’re offended by the biology of the female reproductive system (and/or, for inclusivity’s sake, the transgender male’s pre-op reproductive system), you may want to stop reading now and skip ahead to my next installment: “Autism Cause #2: Crib Lacquer.”

Mia’s Birth Story

“Scott called me at 11:15pm on 4/3/07. Megan’s contractions were about 4 minutes apart and although they were strong, she could still talk through them. I arrived at their house at midnight. The scene at home was calm and serene, with low lighting and birth music playing. Megan was lying on her side in bed, while I did deep relaxation visualization exercises with her. We made sure she was drinking plenty of water and emptying her bladder frequently. Her contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart. The pain was localized to her lower back, but went away in between contractions. Scott massaged her lower back through each contraction. We labored at home for about 2 hours. We knew it was time to go to the hospital when Megan suddenly needed to vomit, after which she mentioned that she felt pressure like she might want to push.

“We left for the hospital at about 2am and arrived at 2:10am. Megan walked into the hospital of her own volition and was relaxed and completely coherent. Megan’s nurse, Heather, set her up in room #8, while Scott set up the music and LED candles. We got right back to the relaxed and serene place we were in when we left the house.

“At 2:30, Heather checked Megan and she was 7cm and fully effaced! We were all really excited about how much progress she had already made. Her bag of waters was bulging through the cervix, which was causing much of the pressure she was feeling. Megan was handling the surges beautifully and even said to me, “I am so relaxed.” She didn’t even want to get up to go to the bathroom. Most of her discomfort continued to be in her lower back, so Scott continued with massage. Megan loved lying on her left side. Megan was given her IV of antibiotics (ampicillin) for Group B Strep and had an allergic reaction soon after. Her airways closed up a bit and her nose got stuffy. She knew exactly what was happening, so I went and got Heather, who promptly stopped the drip. The reaction took a bit to subside, but Megan used her inhaler, breathed slowly and shallowly and worked on relaxing. The nurse wanted to give her some Benadryl, but Megan thought she was getting better on her own. The next antibiotic caused no reactions.”

How I remember it:

The nurse said they needed to give Megan an antibiotic. Something to do with ensuring a clean vagina. Because apparently nobody in the history of man has ever birthed a baby through a regular vagina before.
“Hospital policy,” the doctor said. “Go ahead, nurse.”
An instant later, Megan was looking at me funny. Not, like, comedy funny. Like, ‘I feel like I’m about to die’ funny.
“I don’t feel right,” she said. “Something’s happening. I’m getting asthma.”
“Doctor,” I said, indicating some red splotches on Megan’s neck and chest, “Are these hives?”
“You’re having an allergic reaction,” the doctor said.
“But I’m not allergic to any antibiotics,” Megan said.
“This happens sometimes in pregnancy,” the doctor said.
“Then, why do it?” I asked with all the authority of someone who was kicked out of med school.
“Nurse, prepare the epinephrine, please.”
“Hey guys,” I said, “Remember when we said we didn’t want any meds? This was why. What’s happening right now.”
“She’ll be fine,” they said. “Everything’s fine.”
“Do you want my inhaler, honey?” I asked Megan.
“Yes, please.”
“I can’t believe we’re in a hospital and I’m giving you my inhaler after they made you have an allergic reaction. ‘Above all, do no harm!’ Anybody remember that?”
“Please calm down, sir,” the doctor said. “Everything will be alright. Nurse, we’re going to have to move ahead with a C-section.”
“No!” Megan said. “No C-Section!”

“It’s on the no list!” I said. “In the manifesto, or whatever it’s called.”
“Birth Plan,” Megan corrected.
“It’s number one!” I said,

“At 3:50, Heather checked Megan again and she was 9cm. The nurse thought the baby was facing the side, but she couldn’t tell which side. Megan had chills and was shaking quite a bit. They had the tub filled, so we walked down to the tub. She got in the tub at 4am. It was heaven for Megan and warmed her right up. She didn’t complain of any backache at this point and even smiled. Amazing!

“Scott got in and sat behind her for a while, then she wanted to turn on her side and so he went down to the bottom of the pool and fell asleep (for just a second!). Megan felt she was getting closer and closer to pushing. So at 4:30, she got out of the tub and moved back down to her room. The towels and sheets the nurse suppled were warmed up and just lovely.”

How I remember it:

Eight hours later, the baby’s still not coming. Megan and I went back and forth between the tub and the bed, pushing and breathing the baby down from a variety of positions. The doula performed a maneuver meant to encourage the baby to turn, but nothing seemed to help. Megan was fully dilated but there were no signs of progress. We sat in the tub for hours, pushing occasionally and patiently waiting. The doctors had already made it clear the tub was only for soaking in, not for having babies. So, despite it being in our plan, a water birth wasn’t an option. Megan still hadn’t taken any drugs, so that was good. The nurses couldn’t believe she was able to walk around the hospital, fully dilated, without any meds in her. The hypno-birthing techniques were actually working: the relaxation and the breathing-down.

“At 4:45, she was 10cm and ready to actively push at about 5am. We sat on the toilet and did some pushing there at about 5:10. Megan worked on breathing the baby down for much of this time. (Nurse Heather said “good for you” every time Megan pushed…very sweet.)”

I didn’t think it was sweet. I thought it was terrifying. Where was our baby, already?

“At 7am, there was a shift change. Heather was replaced by Maureen and Dr. F— came on as well. Megan tried a couple different positions to push at this point: next to the bed, on the toilet, on either side with her leg up and on her back. She did a lot of breathing down as opposed to really actively pushing.”

Megan pushed with such force it was hard to believe the baby didn’t just come flying out. Her face turned beet red. I felt it prudent to be ready for anything and positioned myself at the receiving end just in case. No medical staff were in the room with us at this point. It was just Megan and me and the baby who wouldn’t come. Chances are, they probably knew how this was going to play out and were just humoring us.

“At 7:15, Dr. Forrester said Megan had a lip on her cervix, was not quite 10cm, and at 0 station. She had a bulging bag of waters that might be causing the head to not push fully on the cervix. The doctor also mentioned the baby was Occiput Posterior (OP), facing up instead of the more common OA—facing down.”

To this day, Mia has trouble with directions.

“The doctor suggested rupturing Megan’s membranes, which she agreed to. The doctor noticed some meconium in the amniotic fluid. Megan tried more pushing positions (birthing bar, squatting, and hands and knees) and became more active in her pushing. I was impressed with her determination and strength!”

How I remember it:
The hospital staff was anxious and impatient. It was getting late. Finally, they offered an ultimatum: they would start by coaxing the baby out with ptosin. “To move things along,” they said. And if that didn’t work, they would perform a C-Section. They had no other choice, they said. The baby still wasn’t coming. We relented. We were tired. The doula argued weakly with the staff but we all just wanted the whole ordeal to be over. I could see Ricki Lake wagging her finger in disapproval. We’re sorry, Ricki!! We did the best we could!

“At 9am, a lip still remained on her cervix and there was no change in the baby’s descent. The doctor recommended a Pitocin drip and epidural. Scott and I had to leave the room while the anesthesiologist placed the epidural. It took about 30-40 minutes for Megan to feel any relief. Megan was thankfully able to feel and use her legs. She asked for a bolus of pain meds to be added to the epidural at 11:30 to help take a little of the remaining edge off.”

How I remember it:
I was frankly relieved when Megan asked for the pain meds. It meant things were out of my hands. We had given up the ghost. I no longer had to worry about defending our Birth Plan. We were trusting modern medicine to make everything okay.

“By 11:45, she was actively pushing again. She was 10cm and at +1 station. We were elated. This time her pushing was much more forceful. At 12:30, more meconium was presenting. She was not progressing any further, though, and by 2pm the doctor called for a C-section. The top of the baby’s head was swelling, as was Megan’s perineum. The baby was most likely not going to descend any further. After Megan’s catheter was placed, she even tried to push again, thinking that the baby might have descended further after the urine was gone. What a champion!”

I feel like “champion” is a weird word choice in this context. We’re not talking about a horse race! I’ll let it slide.

“They prepped her for the C-section, while we worked on breathing through the contractions. Scott and I waited outside while they wheeled Megan into the operating room. I made Scott tell me a joke as a distraction (it was the one about Bill Gates) The baby was born at 2:52. Megan was shaking pretty seriously, but we quelled it with some breathing and relaxation. Scott already proved that he would be a fabulous dad by serenading his new baby girl while she got cleaned up. What an absolutely beautiful baby! What a lucky girl to have such wonderful parents!”

The joke goes like this: A young couple is out on a date at a fancy restaurant. The woman excuses herself to use the bathroom. All of a sudden the man sees Bill Gates walk in and sit down. He steps over to Bill Gates, and says to him, “Hello, Mr. Gates. My name’s Bob. What an honor to meet you. Listen, if you could do me a small favor. See, I’m on a date with this woman, see? Over there? Our first date, actually. And I really want to impress her, so could you just come over at some point and pretend like we’re old friends?” Bill Gates, says, “Sure, no problem.” And the man goes back and sits down. A minute later, his date reappears, and then, sure enough, just as Gates is about to leave, he steps over to their table, extends his hand and says, “Hey, Bob! I thought that was you! How’re you doing? What’s it been? Twenty years?” And the man looks Bill straight in the eye and he says, “Fuck off, Gates! Can’t you see I’m on a date!?”

The song I sang to our newborn girl was one Megan and I had sung to her in the womb almost every day, a simple melody that counted down how long she had left to go in the womb, and about how big and beautiful she was getting. My hope was this would help explain things by providing some continuity to the whole experience. “Hey,” I imagined she’d think, “That must be the guy who sang me all those songs. Strange…he’s a lot shorter than I had imagined.”

In summary, before Mia was even born, she already had three strikes against her: the antibiotic, the allergic reaction, and the epinephrine. Whose brain wouldn’t be messed up after that? When the medical staff finally presented Mia to me, all polished-up and bundled, it was pretty obvious she was totally stoned. Her eyes could barely focus. Here’s another strange fact: I don’t remember hearing Mia cry when she was born. When they let me enter the surgical room, I recall seeing Mia lying on a metal tray under a heat lamp—naked and vulnerable, but seemingly content. I remember not knowing what I was meant to do. I was overwhelmed. Was I supposed to pick her up? It seemed like they were trying to maintain some sterility. I remember nobody telling me it would be okay to pick her up. I vaguely remember not doing the normal thing—picking her up and cradling her in my arms—but instead assuming I wasn’t supposed to. Perhaps they asked me not to. Perhaps they asked me to hold-off for a minute. So instead, I just stared at her, and watched her stare back. It felt like Mia and I were equally confused about what we were meant to do. So we just stared at each other. And as Megan asked me for details, I snapped a picture. At some point they laid Mia on her mother’s chest, where of course both were better off. So, perhaps this is all my fault. Perhaps I failed to give Mia some critical immediate physical contact because I waited too long to pick her up and as a result this caused some sort of permanent imbalance in her tiny baby brain.

Strike four.

The hospital had a less romantic take on the whole matter, encapsulating the full extent of it in the following:
Winchester Hospital
Report of Operation

PATIENT: Murphy, Megan E
DATE: April 4, 2007

PREOPERATIVE DIAGNOSIS: Failure to descend, right dermoid cyst
OPERATION: Primary low transverse C-section, right oophorectomy

INDICATIONS FOR PROCEDURE: This is a 32 year old G2, PO, at 40 weeks and 4 days who presented in active labor. She slowly progressed to fully dilated and pushed for over two hours, however, did not descend beyond +2 position. The decision was made to proceed with a primary low transverse c-section. She was consented for the procedure, as well as for the removal of the ovarian cyst.

PROCEDURE: The patient was brought to the operating room where epidural anesthesia was found to be adequate. She was prepped and draped in the normal sterile fashion. Pfannenstiel skin incision was made in the site of her prior incision and extended down to the fascia with the knife. The fascia was then nicked with the knife, and the fascial incision was extended bilaterally with Mayo scissors. The fascia was tented up with Kocher clamps with the underlying rectus muscle dissected off. The rectus muscles were separated in the midline. The peritoneum was identified and entered bluntly. The peritoneal incision was extended superiorly and inferiorly for adequate visualization. Bladder blade was placed. Bladder flap was created using Metzenbaum scissors. The hysterotomy was then made with a knife and extended digitally. The infant’s head was delivered atraumatically. The baby was DeLee suctioned. The remainder of the infant was delivered and handed to the waiting pediatrician.

Electronically Signed,
E— G—, M.D.

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Chickens may be easily and cheaply acquired by several means. Day-old chicks are available for purchase from a small but adequate number of retail chains, the largest of which is Agway. Alternately, chicks may be obtained via mail-order catalog or even through a commercial online website, of which several exist.

Before you purchase your birds, be sure to check your local town or city ordinances regarding backyard chickens. While most municipalities now permit the raising of chickens, many still do not. Towns that do allow chickens frequently place limits on where on the property a coop may be placed, though if you begin your chicken-raising adventure with baby chicks, coop placement is not an immediate concern. Your chicks will spend their first six weeks in a cage, kept warm by a heat lamp. There are no restrictions on where such a cage may be kept and the entire setup should cost around $30.

Frequently, towns also set limits on how many chickens a home is permitted to have, or may only allow the raising of hens (in the interest of reducing noise or controlling the chicken population). There’s just one catch. Regardless of how sincerely you may intend to abide by such sex-based regulations, as your chicks age and develop you may discover a mistake has been made when a “girl” turns out to be male. This applies even to those who purchase pullets (hens under a year old). For this reason, always be sure to have a plan in place should you wind up with a rooster you are unable to keep. One common strategy is to offer the offending male to a local farm or to simply cull the bird yourself and enjoy the fresh meat.

We didn’t get our birds until Mia was ten. And we only got them because Mia insisted she needed them for her anxiety. She had seen a news story about a therapy duck and then spent a week at a local farm camp (Wright-Locke Farm) where she took care of the chickens. Like every kid, what she really wanted was a dog. But since Megan and I are both allergic to anything with fur, Mia demanded some “therapy chickens.” She said we owed her that much. Like every parent, we eventually relented. And in the grand parental tradition of being wrong about everything, we made the mistake of believing her when she agreed to be the birds’ sole caretaker. They would be her birds, we said. She would be responsible for all chicken chores: feeding and cleaning and whatever else chickens needed done for them because the last thing her mother and I needed were some stupid chickens. Mia swore she would take care of them. She was relentless. Not only would she do all the chores, she said, she would also stop complaining about having to share a room with her little brother, Gage.

Winchester, where we lived, was a small, sleepy suburb ten miles outside Boston. In our part of town the houses were fairly close together, along with townhouses and two-family units, so it’s a bit of a surprise chickens were allowed at all. But they were. But only hens. Roosters were forbidden.

From REGULATIONS FOR THE KEEPING OF ANIMALS IN WINCHESTER:

Section 6.0: General Requirements
6.1: The following animals are prohibited: roosters, pigeons, swine and wild animals.
6.4: Animals shall not be slaughtered at the property/permitted facility.
6.5: Animals must be treated in a humane manner at all times, including but not limited to, access to fresh food, water and protection from the elements as needed.

Section 8.0: KEEPING OF FOWL:
8.1: Land and fowl requirements:
A. Residential General (RG) Zone (with 6500 sq ft lot minimum): 3 fowl maximum
B. All other residential zones (with 6500 sq ft lot minimum): 6 fowl maximum

8.2: Facility (Coop and Pen) Requirements:
A. A coop/henhouse is required for shelter of fowl:
Coop must have a minimum interior floor surface of at least 2 square feet per bird.
B. A Pen/Run is required:
Pen must have a minimum ground surface of at least 5 square feet per bird.
C. Facility must be 10 feet from property/lot line
D. Facility must be 20 feet from all residential dwellings.

8.3: Free-ranging of adult egg-laying hens is allowed under the following conditions:
A. Only in fully enclosed fenced-in yards, and
B. Hens will be supervised at all times while roaming and,
C. The permit specifically allows for free-roaming.

Note the chicken maximum (regulation 8.1). Our property was over 6500 square feet but a zoning map showed us as RG. So, three hens max. Case closed.

But hang on a second. There’s another law: a chicken minimum.

According to state law, when you purchase chickens in Massachusetts, you must purchase a minimum of six birds. The reason why is unclear. Either the state expects some of your chicks to die for one reason or another or else there are a lot of surplus birds they got to move. Regardless, someone clearly screwed up. Because what are people supposed to do with six chickens if they’re only allowed to have three? This, dear reader, is the Winchester Chicken Predicament. But Megan didn’t want six chickens. She didn’t even want three chickens. She wanted four chickens. She had her heart set on four as the perfect number of chickens for us. And when Megan has her heart set on something, that’s it. It’s set. But it turns out you can’t just pay the kid at the Agway for six chickens and take home four chickens. You can’t even tell them you’ll take six and then give them a little wink and walk away with four. Since they hardly cost anything, who cares, right? The Agway kid cares, that’s who. It’s Agway or the highway.

The kid looked like a high schooler working a summer job to support his weed habit but nevertheless, the dude was unflappable:
“You have to take six chickens,” he said.
“But we’re zoned RG,” I said. “We’re not allowed that many.”
Agway kid:
“Look,” I said. “How about if we pay for six chickens but we only take four?”
Agway kid: “You have to pay for six chickens…”
“Fine,” I said. “What are they, four bucks each?”
“…and you have to take six chickens.”
“But…”
“No buts. That’s the law.”
“But our town says we can’t have six chickens!”

An older, more experienced Agway lady overheard us and motioned me over. I became hopeful. Surely she must have encountered this situation before. Surely hers would be the voice of reason. Surely a solution was at hand.

“Here’s what you need to do,” she said. “You need to pay for six chicks and you need to take six chicks. What you do with the extra two is your own business. I don’t judge. It’s only you who has to live with yourself, and no one else. Never forget that.”
“It’s not up to me,” I repeated. “Our town bylaw says…”
She leaned in and whispered, “The easiest way is to drown them. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

I turned to my phone for answers and found mypetchicken.com. I put in a test order for four chickens and entered our address. The Submit Order button lit up without incident. I could order as many or as few as I wanted, with no restrictions except that of good taste. I was relieved to find that governmental overreach had not penetrated the digital realm—at least not when it came to the personal ownership of backyard chickens in Massachusetts.

As we headed out of the Agway with our hands full of supplies (but no chicks), the senior Agway lady shouted after us: “In a bucket!”

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Along with a sturdy coop, you will of course need to provide a source of food and water for your flock. The locations of these should remain constant to minimize stress in your birds and to keep them close to home. Several manufacturers sell bucket-style feeders that need only be refilled periodically. Electric waterers may also be purchased to prevent the water from freezing in winter.

Fill your feeder with layer feed, available in many varieties online or from your local Agway. Some chicken-raisers opt to splurge on organic feed during the warm laying months to ensure their eggs are as free from chemicals as possible, and switch to less-expensive non-organic feed over the winter when backyard hens take a break from laying, so egg quality is no longer an issue. For treats, try combining cracked corn with sunflower seeds or dried mealworms for protein, along with a calcium source such as crushed oyster shells to aid with laying and to give your chickens all the nutrients they need.

Though you and your family may enjoy feeding your chickens treats right from the palm of your hand (let’s face it—it’s fun!), in the long run, this is not the best practice. If you persist in feeding your birds from your hand (or even from a feeder), they may eventually forget how to scratch for bugs and abandon the scratching behavior altogether. In effect, the self-sustaining instinct will have been comforted out of them. Chickens are essentially lazy creatures and will forgo clawing at the ground if they know an endless supply of food is available and may be obtained at any time with a minimum of effort and guaranteed results.

To keep your hens in the practice of pecking and scratching for food, it is vitally important to also feed them by scattering food on the ground in as wide a pattern as possible. Typically, a scratching bird will claw the ground once with each foot, then quickly look down to see if she has unearthed anything just below the surface worth eating. The sequence is as follows: left foot scratch, right foot scratch, look down for bugs. Though it appears comical, the behavior is essential to their survival. Chickens will perform this ancient foraging instinct regardless of whether they have ever witnessed the behavior in another bird.

Big deal, you may be thinking. So my chickens forget how to scratch. Why do they need to find bugs when I give them plenty of food already? The reason is that chickens do not only scratch to find bugs. Chickens also scratch to prepare a dust bath, to build a nest, and, perhaps most importantly, to bond and engage socially with their flock. Try this experiment: claw lightly at the ground near your birds. First with one hand, then the other. Then tap the ground with your index finger. Chances are, the birds will mimic your behavior and begin to scratch. When one bird scratches, the other birds scratch. And when one bird preens or dust bathes, the others will follow suit. This is how chickens become friends.

Note that “chicken scratch” is also a term used to describe the food you throw out for the chickens to scratch for (typically a mix of cracked grains, a.k.a. treats). Chickens scratch for chicken scratch. As you scatter treats, you may also notice that your chickens have a tendency to run towards your last-thrown handful, abandoning whatever scratch is already on the ground at their feet. This behavior is likely triggered by the birds’ attraction to objects in motion. That is, food in motion is somehow better than food at rest. Or else they are driven by an odd obsession with newness; they want the latest and greatest scratch, and they want to get at it before anyone else does. Ironically, if you keep throwing scratch at different areas of your yard, without giving the birds time to eat between each throw, you’ll see they will run back and forth after each tossed handful, locked in an endless cycle of compulsive enticement without ever getting to eat. If kept up long enough, one wonders if the chickens would eventually either collapse from exhaustion or starve to death amid a bounty of grain.

In addition to helping rid your yard of unwanted bugs, scratching also helps chickens keep their nails short. It’s a critical life skill. So, remember, please try to refrain from feeding your birds by hand, and always scatter treats across the yard. Make your birds work for their food, lest they lose their independence, the ability to feed themselves, the skill of preparing a dirt bath, and the chance to form social bonds with their flock. Taken to an extreme, the toenails of a chronically non-scratching chicken will grow until they literally curl under the bird’s feet, rendering the bird unfit to walk at all.

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When it came time to enroll Mia in preschool, we felt like we had hit the lottery. Not only was Winchester home to a good Montessori preschool, it was also home to the first Montessori school in the world. And it was only a mile from our house! As our top pick, it was the first preschool we checked out.

The name of the school is the “Children’s Own School,” which could not sound any more empowering and radical left lunaticky. Their website boasted of “a carefully crafted, beautiful environment where children gain independence, confidence, and essential skills for life-long creative thinking and learning. Founded in 1942 by Dorothy Sprague Gove, the school’s name represents the spirit of the place, a bright and warmly inviting atmosphere where a child may peacefully explore in a carefully prepared, stimulating learning environment which helps children develop within themselves the foundational habits, attitudes, skills and ideas essential for a lifetime of creative thinking and learning.
“The Montessori classroom is non-competitive, and encourages a spirit of happy productivity in a positive climate. Children learn to care for their environment with pride, to accept guidance, to live happily with their peers, to advance at their own rate of growth and to experience the real joy of learning.
“Decisions are made not for the convenience of administration, faculty, or parents but on what is best for the children we serve. COS recognizes that each child has a unique nature and, with that, the capacity to become a successful learner. We promote opportunities for self-discipline and the development of the child’s inner resources, which in turn promote self-esteem. COS believes that parents and teachers are partners working together for the benefit of each child. COS supports and fosters positive growth and development in the entire school community. We are successful in our mission by fostering positive attitudes with families, faculty, staff, and administration.”

This was clearly the place.

As we drove up the sweeping driveway, past a lawn outfitted with massive wooden play structures, we felt like we had hit the lottery. The school grounds were the size of a small farm. In fact, it sat on the site of the former Russell Farm. The building itself was a gorgeous, historic Victorian farmhouse with a new multi-level addition that housed a library and auditorium: the Paul and Jessica Lohnes Pavilion. It was downright idyllic. It looked exactly like the sort of place one would want to spend their childhood. Their pre-childhood. I found a parking spot and Megan fiddled in her bag for her checkbook.

A matronly old woman introduced herself as the director. She was at least seventy-five years old. At first glance, she seemed like the perfect woman for the job. She was short and stocky in a 19th-century schoolmarm sort of way, and she spoke through flawless false teeth in a singsong accent somewhere between Irish and British. Her heavy winter suit was free of the festive adornments typical of senior women in the winter months. She said she was one of the original founders (which didn’t surprise us) and had been the school’s director since 1970. She indicated a hippie poster on the wall and claimed that she, herself, designed it in the late 1960’s, and that it has remained in that same spot ever since. We expressed our astonishment as convincingly as possible. Despite this promising detail, she failed to give off the Summer of Love vibes one might expect. I found it impossible to picture her twirling her dress at Woodstock, muddied on mushrooms. She failed to smile once during our exchange, a fact I attributed to her singularity of purpose: turning children into productive, successful adults through early-educational advantage.

The director quickly sized up our children and delivered a full report. In a matter of moments she had diagnosed them both. She understood Mia completely, she said. She possessed total insight. After all, she said, there’s nothing she hasn’t seen before. Megan and I immediately felt relieved. If she could identify Mia’s situation that quickly, a fast solution was sure to follow.

“See him?” she said, pointing at Gage, our middle child, who had busied himself with something on the ground. “He just goes for it. He’s doing his own thing. He’s making for himself his happiness, you see?” We saw. “But her, she said, pointing at Mia, she’s not finding. She needs more. She’s being a good girl around her mother.”

“I’m not sure what you’re telling us,” Megan said.

Her psychoanalysis was thorough and convincing. As if in response to the director’s reprimand, Mia studied the fabric pattern of her mother’s coat. She was doing an impressive job at staying patient, but she was starting to break.

“I’m bored,” Mia finally complained, tugging at her mother’s trousers. “This is boring.”
The director piped-up, perhaps sensing a potential threat to her reputation.
“You hear this?” She said. “This is not something she should know to say. You need to remove this from her. You need to strike it out.”
“Strike it out?” Megan asked.
“She should not know what it is to be bored,” the director said. “A bored child will only make trouble tormenting her classmates.”
“I wouldn’t,” Mia protested weakly.

My comedian’s brain flooded with responses in defense of our daughter: “Isn’t it perfectly natural to be bored?” “Don’t you ever get bored?” “Are there any other words you would suggest we strike from her vocabulary?” “Which striking method do you prefer? A whip? A switch? Some good ol’ back of the hand? What’s the rule of thumb?” “Is this something that could be done surgically?” “If we do have it removed surgically, will our health insurance cover the procedure?” “Which way is it to the little boy’s room? I need to throw up.” “Have you considered the possibility you talk too much? “Mia’s right. This is boring. Because, frankly, you are boring.” “For someone who dabbled in hippie posters, you may be the most boring person I’ve ever met.”

But here’s what I said: “Uh-huh.”

Then the director did something I didn’t expect (because I didn’t think she was physically capable). She got down on one knee and addressed our girl directly:
“Now, Mia,” she said, “We’re going to take a walk around the school. But you can’t talk to anyone or touch anything. Do you understand?”

Mia looked down at the floor, avoiding eye contact.
“I want you to look up at me!” the director said.
Mia looked up.
“Good. Better,” she said. “And when you go into a room, I want you to look around. But no touching or talking. Okay? Off we go.”

Megan scooped up Gage and the director led us down a long yet surprisingly quaint hallway. She opened a door and we followed her inside. The room was full of kids, but not in the way anyone is used to. These kids were all sitting at their desks, their workstations, silently doing their own thing. Cleaning seashells. Threading beads. Sorting wooden objects. It was a veritable craft sweatshop. Or a non-speaking cult. One child was manipulating light with an arrangement of prisms, projecting rainbows against the wall-hung muslin.

The teacher was also silent. As we entered the room, she looked up at us fearfully, as though at any moment we might—with a misplaced word or gesture—incontrovertibly destroy any or all of her students’ futures.

“Ooh!” Mia exclaimed.
Megan and I exchanged terrified glances.
“Mia, please,” the director scolded. “We don’t judge the work of others.”
“She wasn’t judging,” Megan said. “She was just reacting. It looks beautiful, doesn’t it Mia? All the different colors.”
“Mrs. Murphy, please.”
“It’s okay, I said, forgetting the rules. “My wife has an arts degree. But I agree, everything looks great.”
“Mr. Murphy!” She reprimanded.
“Oh, that’s not my…” I said.
“I’ll have to ask the both of you to refrain from being complimentary.”

Megan placed the checkbook back in her bag.
“Oh, right,” I said. “I’m sorry..“
“We’ll be good,” Megan said.
“It’s not about being good,” the director said.“We’ll be quiet,” I said.
“It’s not about being quiet,” the director said.
“Now I’m confused.” Megan said. “What is it about, exactly?”

The director waved us goodbye as we drove off. A quick Google search revealed the truth. They weren’t the oldest Montessori in the world, just the oldest one in New England. We crossed The Children’s Own off our list, and never looked back.

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Congratulations!

Congratulations on your decision to raise backyard chickens! Regardless of the size of your flock or its particular mixture of breed, we feel confident that in the long run your chickens will provide countless hours of happiness—and of course lots of eggs! Chickens typically live as long as a decade and make wonderful outdoor companions for you and your children. Their quirky down-homeyness is sure to bring a smile to the neighbors’ faces—children and adults alike.

But raising chickens is not all fun and games. It’s a significant commitment that involves chores and responsibilities, trials and tribulations, triumphs and catastrophes. Top of mind concerns include the prevention of predators, the elimination of mites, the resolution of quarrels, the treatment of disease, the assurance of water, the freshness of food, the balance of diet, the hazard of ammonia, the blocking of drafts, the dryness of the coop, the seclusion of the injured, the culling of the terminal, and the disposal of the dead.

Many towns require neighborhood sign-off prior to issuing a chicken-owner’s permit. If any neighbors exhibit signs of disapproval, simply remind them of all the delicious eggs soon to be headed their way. Everyone knows there’s no tastier egg than one that comes fresh out of a happy, free-range chicken. On average, expect each hen to lay approximately one egg per day, with greatly reduced output in the winter months, due to the decrease in sunlight. If any unappreciative spoil-sports continue to give you trouble, your best course of action may be to grease them with a c-note and remind them that Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of our great nation, once proudly raised a flock.

Some Backstory

Megan and I had been married happily for four years when we moved to Massachusetts from Los Angeles for the express purpose of raising a family. We shuddered at the thought of raising children in L.A. We weren’t even sure they even allowed young children or provided places to educate them. Mia is our first child. Twelve years later, we have one other girl, Sophie, our youngest by about five years, and in the middle, a boy, Gage, nearly two years younger than Mia.

Megan and I met when she fired me from a temp job. She denies this is true, but it’s how I remember it. She says that as creative director it wasn’t her job, but my guess is nobody else had the guts to fire me so they made her do it. It wasn’t a big deal. I knew my temp agency would just find me another gig and graphic design wasn’t what I’d moved out to Los Angeles to do anyway. Six months later, I ran into Megan (at the Baked Potato Jazz Club) I had a job writing fart jokes for a major comedy company. I was “in the business,” which somehow made me interesting enough to Megan that she agreed to a date. Or maybe she still felt guilty about firing me. In any case, Megan was exactly the sort of girl I’d moved out to Los Angeles to meet. She was funny and adorable and an even bigger fan of punk music than I was.
Five years later, we married.

End of backstory.

Before Mia wound up at the preschool that deemed her autistic, we had toured a bunch of schools (which should give you the actual value of shopping around for preschools). But as first-time parents, we felt compelled to tour as many as possible, intent on finding the best possible environment for our sacred firstborn, our golden child. Call it ‘First-Child Syndrome.’ In reality, we had no idea what we were looking for, or what made one environment better than another. But this didn’t matter. It was more about the performance, the act of effort-making. First-time parents worry so much about getting things right they wind up doing everything wrong. Fast forward twelve years. Sophie, our youngest, is lucky we’ll walk her down the hill to preschool. Really, her big brother should take her—just like I did for my sister when I was a kid. I can’t even imagine my parents walking me to elementary school. I’d never have stood for it! Not to mention, he’s heading that way already!

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My wife, Megan, was not happy with our mattress. She has felt this way before, but the feeling always passes. She wakes, complaining of back pain and muscle soreness, an unconnected cracking of the heels, and concludes that her body is falling apart. Sometimes, a numbness sets in; a loss of feeling in the fingers. Other times, her problem is a leg, a tingling in the varicose from a lack of support. Or the pillow. The problem is often with the pillow. Some years ago, Megan suffered from a neck pain that lasted for months. She blamed it on the discount polyfill pillows I’d picked up at Bed Bath & Beyond. She insisted I go to Relax the Back and spend a hundred dollars on a pillow made of memory foam.

A week later, Megan was back to her old pillow.
“I didn’t know it’d be so restrictive,” she said in her own defense. And she was right. The pillow was an unforgiving, oddly shaped mass that forced the sleeper to lay on their back, hence the name of the store.
“Who only sleeps on their back?” Megan complained.
“Dead people, that’s who!” I said, supportively, hoping I’d saved the receipt.

But tonight was all about the mattress.

“I’m serious, Scott,” Rachel said. “We need to get rid of this thing. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re getting rid of it.”
“So let’s get rid of it. There’s like a ten-year guarantee.”
“It’s been fourteen years! Seriously. Something’s wrong with it. Roll over to my side and feel around.”

I rolled downhill into a deep, Megan-sized depression. I wasn’t sure how to proceed. We were heading into touchy territory.

“Maybe your pain isn’t from the mattress,” I proposed. “Don’t forget, you’ve been through a lot lately.”
“Like what?”
“There’s the baby, having the baby. And then your mother died.”
“My mother died before Sophie was born.”
“Right. I knew that.”
“Five years before Sophie…”
“I wasn’t necessarily saying the things in order…”
“It’s the bed! It has to be the bed.”
“And then your uncle died,” I said.
“It’s just not fair,” Megan said.
“No,” I agreed, “it’s not. But that’s just the way life is, unfortunately.”
“Your half looks totally fine,” Megan said. “Switch sides with me.”
“No way,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“But, I can’t sleep!” Megan said.

“How do you know you’ll sleep, even if we switch?” I said. “We don’t. But I know I won’t be able to sleep. So now we’ll have two people not sleeping, all because you wanted to switch sides.”

“Lets rotate it then,” she said.
“That’s practically the same thing!” I said.
“You’re supposed to rotate it like every 30 days or whatever,” she said. “We haven’t rotated since we left California! Maybe that’s the problem. We never rotate. Come on. Here we go.”
Megan hopped out of bed to demonstrate the strength of her convictions.
“Now?” I said. “I was just falling asleep.”
“Well, lucky you!” Megan said.

We lived in a tiny two-bedroom victorian, circa 1895, in Winchester, Massachusetts, a worker’s cottage from the old tanning mill. It was our first home. We were known as “the family that does everything themselves.” Our bedroom wasn’t much larger than the bed itself, so rotating the mattress was harder than it sounds. We had to prop one side straight up against the wall and then spin it around and hope it fell mostly into place without taking too much paint off the wall. Also, noise was a concern. The children were asleep in the other bedroom but any sound could wake them.

There’s a leak in the roof. The contractor said he’d have to open up the ceiling to fix it but he can’t because there’s some original knob and tube around the opening. He can’t even give us an estimate because there’s no telling how much live wiring he’ll find. That’s the thing about knob and tube. The way it works is there’s two wires, one negative, one positive. And they run like railroad tracks, in parallel, about four inches apart. Only instead of being safely wrapped in rubber, they’re just these bare wires. Which is perfectly safe so long as the two never touch.

One time we thought we had mice up there. Or maybe squirrels. But we didn’t. It was something with the knob and tube. It was crackling. Could’ve been a mouse had gotten caught crossing the wires, completing the circuit.

I lay on the wrong side of the bed, wondering how I would ever fall asleep.
“So,” I said, “What do you think?”
“I’m worried about Mia,” Megan said.
“What’s wrong with Mia?” I asked.

Mia was our daughter, our first-born. She had just started preschool at the Rockland Montessori, which for us meant driving all the way to Malden and back twice a day. We’d visited the Montessori in Winchester, right down the street, but it felt like something out of a David Lynch movie. Two children later, I’m not sure why we assumed a Montessori school would be better than a non-tessori. My guess is we were drawn in by the power of good marketing and the allure of romance languages. Maybe we were hot for that rare joy that comes from telling other parents our child attends a Montessori preschool, proving the superiority of our parenting.

Wikipedia says, “Montessori is a system of education for children that seeks to develop natural interests and activities rather than use formal teaching methods.” So, there you go. Who wouldn’t want that for their child? Mia would have the opportunity to follow her own path. She would be freed from the oppression of group structure. The shackles of formal teaching methods would be torn asunder!

Megan said Mia‘s teacher had pulled her aside at pickup.

“We need to talk about Mia,” the teacher said.

Megan said she didn’t think it was going to be anything important. She was thinking maybe Mia had lost her socks.

“I just want you to know I’ve noticed some things,” Megan said the teacher said. Megan asked if Mia had been having trouble making it to the bathroom. We’d seen that at home. Mia frequently got so focused on whatever she was doing, she would hold it in until it was too late.
“What I mean,” the teacher said, “‘is that I’ve noticed something different about Mia. She’s more interested in objects than in people. She’s not playing with the other kids. Just with the toys.”

The teacher said we should get Mia tested for autism. The teacher said she had a sense for these things.

Megan let out a huff and aggressively adjusted her pillow in a way that made it clear the mattress still wasn’t cutting it.

“Look,” Megan said, “we knew there was something. Right? Look at your brother. Look at Sherry.”

She was right. The truth was, I knew autism. I could spot it in a second. It’s in my family. My siblings both have Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder. Growing up in the 1970’s, autism was all around me, back when nobody knew what it was or how to define it or what to do about it. Back when they’d put an autistic kid in handcuffs and lock him in a closet if he had a tantrum. I’m not talking about my parents. My parents would never have done that. But there were places folks sent their kids to that would. Plenty of places. Places my parents worked hard to avoid because back then you had to work hard to keep your kid from winding up in a place like that. Even in Massachusetts.

Back then, doctors used to blame the mother for their child’s autism. They accused mothers of being too cold. This sounds so absurd you probably think I’m making it up. I’m not making it up. They called them ”refrigerator mothers,” as cruel as that sounds. This term was coined in the 1940’s by Leo Kanner and persisted through the 1970’s. Nobody who ever met our mother would call her “cold.” She is honey wrapped in sunshine.

Today, the world is different. Everything is a spectrum and everybody’s on it. Autism is a spectrum. Gender is a spectrum. We all try to respect and care for each other. People proudly refer to themselves as “neuro-spicy.” And everybody gets their own pronouns and their own parade.

As a result of Fragile X syndrome, my older brother, Matthew, suffers from severe, debilitating, non-verbal autism. The classic moaning and silverware-spinning autism. The ear-rubbing. The heel-rocking. The self-mutilation. As a child, Matthew chewed his thumb in frustration so often that massive callouses formed. He ran from the whirring roof motor of our Bonneville convertible though he loved to hear his own voice echo in the lobby of our local bank. There was no Hollywood-style savant element to his autism. He couldn’t play piano concertos by ear or recite baseball stats from memory. He hardly ever spoke at all, except to ask for a Diet Coke or a white sweater for his birthday, though birthdays and Jewish holidays passed unceremoniously in our house because Matthew couldn’t deal with lit candles or song.

From the age of twelve, Matthew lived in a residence for autistic kids in Lowell. One boy wore a hockey mask: a biter. Another wore a football helmet: a head banger. One girl wanted to make out all the time: a compulsive kisser. I liked her. I remember only one savant: a climber who would balance fearlessly on the second-floor balcony. They didn’t even try to stop him though he always seemed about to fall. But he never fell. As a child it was overwhelming and I cried the whole ride home.

“It couldn’t hurt to have Mia tested,” Megan said.
“She’s in preschool…” I said.
“If her teacher thinks it’s important,” Megan said.
“It’s her second day of school,” I said.
“Second week, actually,” Megan said. “And the bed feels much better now, thanks.”
“But Mia loves people,” I said. “She’s just shy. She has a sense of humor. She tells jokes…”
“I’m just telling you what her teacher said,” Megan said.
“And what is she,” I said, “an expert?”
Megan drifted off, and I lay uncomfortably in a pit of someone else’s making, unhappily mulling this new information. To calm myself down, I recited some relaxation exercises, and focused on my breathing.
Some time later, Megan stirred.
“Did you say something?” she asked out of nowhere.
“Did I?” I asked, rousing, “I was asleep, I thought. I thought I was sleeping.”
I turned to face Megan.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure. Nothing, I guess.”

Megan took my hand and we lay silently on the rotated pillow-top, long past its time of return. Eventually, our breathing deepened and we both fell back to sleep, accustomed to the bumps, motionlessly passing the stale night air back and forth between us.

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“Raising Backyard Chickens is a masterwork and a joy to behold. Equal parts modern parenting memoir and chicken-raising guide, Mr. Brykman has hilariously reinvented the form.”

— Andy Borowitz

Living at the End of Time
By Robert Bly

There is so much sweetness in children’s voices,
And so much discontent at the end of day,
And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.

I don’t know why the rooster keeps crying,
Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,
Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.

A handsome child is a gift from God,
And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,
And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.

Some say we are living at the end of time,
But I believe a thousand pagan ministers
Will arrive tomorrow to baptize the wind.

There’s nothing we need to do about John. The Baptist
Has been laying his hands on earth for so long
That the well water is sweet for a hundred miles.

It’s all right if we don’t know what the rooster
Is saying in the middle of the night, nor why we feel
So much satisfaction when a train goes by.

Introduction

You may not realize chickens can fly, but they can. For about twenty feet at a stretch. But only when they have to. Because they don’t like to. It’s not their thing. They’re not crazy about flying, and they avoid it whenever possible. “Flying," the average hen must think, looking up at the birds soaring above her, "how pedestrian.” To a chicken, flying is a nuisance, a last resort. It’s so much easier to stay down here on the ground, close to the coop where all the food is and where it’s safe. A chicken's wings are short, clumsy appendages, out of proportion with the size of their torso, more parachute than wing. If a chicken must fly, it’s only because they’ve gotten themself caught up in a bad place, and must remember never to do whatever it was that got them there.

That said, there must have been a time—sometime between the T-Rex and today—when the chicken was indeed a decent flier and perhaps laid eggs less frequently. But one day, our ancestors discovered some hens who preferred walking to flying…and put out an egg nearly every morning! They seized upon the happy circumstance and domesticated the convenient creatures. Over millennia, we humans continued to breed into the birds the traits we found most desirable (and delicious): bigger breasts, shorter wings, meatier thighs, and congenial docility. Traits that reinforced their earthbound inclinations. In time, chickens hardly ever flapped their wings; flapping now being more trouble than transport. It got to where the birds could hardly remember what their wings were for: these flappers that got them nowhere.

Today’s domesticated hen rarely ever needs to fly. Among birds, she is royalty. She has no fear of humans. Rather, they cater to her every need. She has them wrapped around her toes. In return, she produces approximately one egg each day (except in winter). Her appeal knows no bounds. As a result, flying is but an outdated drudgery. An artifact. The vestige of an earlier era. The flotsam and jetsam of a less enlightened time.

Folks who raise backyard chickens often don’t bother to fence them in. Because chickens are as loyal as they are lazy. Chickens won’t even bother to hop a short fence. What would be the benefit? A hen has little reason to stray too far from her coop. Her coop is her castle. Everything she needs is there. Her water. Her scratch. A nesting box in which to lay. A perch on which to rest. The companionship of her flock. The love of her attentive humans. Why’d the chicken cross the road? I’m guessing it probably didn’t. The backyard chicken is a rare breed; one that enjoys a mutually symbiotic relationship with people while remaining, for the most part, independent. Call it a happy captivity, because at any time (except at night when locked up for protection), a free-ranging backyard chicken is entirely free to go.

In times past, a ten-year-old would happily leave the house in the morning, spend the day roaming the woods with friends—setting fires and getting lost—and return home at nightfall to parents thankful only to have had one less kid to deal with. At ten, my parents never knew where I’d been or what I’d been doing, or with whom. And they never asked, so long as I was home in time for dinner. They already had enough to worry about: a non-verbal autistic twelve-year-old son and a compulsive eight-year-old daughter with Fragile X Syndrome.

But today’s children don’t roam free. They’re not allowed to. Overzealous marketing and the 24-hour news cycle have made the modern parent skittish around strangers and distrustful of the trappings of childhood. In many states, it’s literally illegal for a child to be left alone. They’ve gone from latch-key to cooped-up. We don’t even let them out in the run. Why didn’t the child cross the road? Because her parents live in fear of the other side. Because every corner holds an unimaginable danger. Because we’ve instilled this same fear in our kids, eradicated their adventuresome instincts until the only safe space remaining exists betwixt the pixels of a smartphone screen.

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Be especially thankful you’re still able to call yourself a homeowner at all since you always-meant-but-never-got-around to contacting your insurance company to determine if additional homeowner coverage was needed to cover the medical and/or funeral expenses for whichever neighborhood child would one day be sent flying off the thing. Next, recall that the term for this is “quitting while you’re ahead,” and that by getting rid of the trampoline, you are finally ending these threats from ever happening once and for all. “Breathing easy” is another such phrase, as is “sleeping soundly at night.”

Also keep in mind how happy removing the trampoline will make the children’s mother (your wife), who has been begging you to get rid of it since last Mother’s Day, nearly one full year ago. As with everything else, she’s not wrong. Not only is the thing a health hazard, it’s also a massive eyesore. For too many years it occupied about a quarter of your backyard like something out of Sanford and Son Salvage. The legs are rusted, the netting (as mentioned) is shredded, and the once-bright blue padding that encircles the mat and allegedly covers the springs is rotted and barely keeping it together. Its white Styrofoam stuffing is exposed in huge patches where the duct tape repairs have failed. Loose strips of tape flap awkwardly in the wind, unable to maintain their stickiness against even one New England winter. Some lay scattered about on the ground, having given up their post altogether.

You will think about all these things as a ritual, a precursor to the task, a smudging of the past, a way of readying yourself for the emotional journey to come. Because let’s face it. Dismantling the trampoline means your kids have outgrown jumping-for-joy. After so many years of wishing the children would just grow the hell up already so you could get on with your life, you suddenly find yourself at an emotional impasse. No longer a fan of time, you look back on the early childhood days with hazy nostalgia, wondering if they ever happened at all. Problems were more easily sorted out. They were adorable even when upset. Not to mention, they still liked you, still thought you knew what you were talking about and found you fun to be around.

Alas, life passes too quickly to be captured.

Recently, a pair of robins made their nest in a wreath that hung from a window of your barn. You’d seen them flying up there with grass in their beaks. When you poked your head out the barn window to take it down, the nest already held four blue eggs, so you left it alone. You toyed with putting out a webcam so you could all enjoy watching them, but by the time you got around to setting up the shot, the babies had hatched and flown away.

And now here you are, the supposedly benevolent paternal presence, the father figure, junking a thing your children hold so dear and take such joy in, simply because it’s ugly, falling apart, and may kill them.

So, maybe it’s more about the act of taking away.

Yet, you are obliged to take it down, even despite your youngest’s insistence that it be kept up until her birthday so she and her friends can enjoy a final jump. Your wife, ever the voice of reason, assures you the girls will not use it. They’re too big now, she says, and it’s too dangerous to have so many of them jumping on it at once. Also, she reminds you, the spinal compression is bad for Sadie’s scoliosis.

So, enough with the chatter. Get to it!

You decide to wing it. You will not consult YouTube for a trampoline dismantling video. Rather, you will abide by the rule all old men live by: never ask for directions. How hard can it be? There are only a few screws to remove and the frame sections just nestle into each other like Lego. Be glad you kept the hooked metal tool that came with the new set of springs you got off Amazon, because otherwise removing them would have been impossible. There are about a hundred springs in all, and with the removal of each one you feel another tug at your heartstrings, the lost moments of your past slipping away, like a clock ticking off each minute of their childhood years as you shimmy around the perimeter, removing one by one the coils that held it together. That last metaphor was a bit much. You can take it or leave it. Thankfully, the springs become easier to remove as you go, since the tension is progressively lessened by each spring’s removal. The last twenty or so are barely holding on; the final ten fall to the ground on their own. The mat is still in great shape because you replaced it a couple summers ago when a tear in the old one grew big enough for a kid to slip through.

But as you take the trampoline apart you realize things were not as dire as they appeared. Yes, a child could have bounced through the failing (or nonexistent) netting and hit the ground, but the ground itself is soft. The grass provides an ample cushion and the soil, by now, is mainly composed of squishy chicken poop. Despite the rust, the springs, legs and frame are sound, and likely would have lasted for another hundred years.

Which makes you think about your family.

Through some miracle of good fortune, you are still married to, in love with, etc., the same woman. The relationship seems as healthy and as sound as ever. You still support each other—providing ballast or counterweight as needed to maintain an upright posture.

The legs have buried themselves and must be dug out from the ground. The frame segments refuse to budge, as if the many years of play have welded them together. Finally, you give up and turn to YouTube for a hack. But the dude in the video doesn’t have any trouble with his so you have no choice but to get out your mallet and beat the crap out of it until a segment finally gives way. Once that piece is removed and the circle no longer whole, the other pieces follow suit without much effort, though a few still need a good whack to set them straight.

Life goes on.

A week later, Guthrie, your middle child, preoccupied with guitar licks, has failed to notice the trampoline is gone. And Sadie, who wanted to use the space for volleyball, is happy to have the new net in its place instead. The enormous wooden swing set with the ladder to the playhouse will be the next thing to go, your wife informs you. It would be gone already but Noah, your oldest, is coming home from college and will want to swing gently on the glider like he used to, and rock out in his AirPods to his emo bands.

Addendum: though I fully intended to stick to the facts, I may have inadvertently taken some poetic license regarding the family of robins. It appears that (at least) two of the babies have not yet departed out on their own and are still crowding the nest!

Not long after he was discharged from the hospital following the accident, Noah underwent top surgery—one week after his 17^th birthday. For their safety, I won’t mention the surgeon’s name or where the procedure was performed. But imagine it. Even after the trauma of seven surgeries, the endless injections, the skin grafts, and the days of total immobility, Noah’s only wish was to get one more operation, one more procedure that somehow mattered more to him than all the others that literally saved his life. Maybe because Noah felt his life wouldn’t mean that much without getting it done.

Maybe you’re of the opinion that minors should never be allowed to get gender-affirming surgery. We had every intention of waiting until Noah was eighteen and old enough to make his own decisions. But the accident changed us as parents and as people. We were no longer able to look at the situation the same way. Our time on the planet is short enough; Noah’s time had nearly run out. He had nearly been taken from us. It was not the time to worry about pronouns. Noah would have to live with physical disfigurement from the accident for the rest of his life. How could we, as Noah’s parents, possibly have asked him to hold off for another year, after everything his body had already been through?

No parent can truly understand what it feels like to almost lose a child until it happens to them. Maybe you’re also a parent, dear reader, and feel sympathetic to our suffering. I contend that any parents in our situation would have acted as we did. Any parents would have wanted to do whatever it took to restore their child’s feeling of agency over their own body, after having it stripped away in an instant by a careless driver. Denying Noah his self-governance, disallowing him from inhabiting a body he could live with, would have been a strange and evil cruelty. If top surgery could give Noah new life and restore some semblance of peace, we weren’t going to slow the process down. We consider ourselves lucky that Noah is, as his surgeon, Dr. Balkin, said, “a stoic” and can see beyond his injuries, and find humor in everyday nonsense, joy in friendships, and gratitude for being alive.

Trans people who opt for gender-affirming care and surgery do so because for them it is their best available solution. In our case, it felt like a no-brainer to keep our child from falling further into a depression after the accident. I’m guessing you’ve never felt a desire to prolong or compound someone’s suffering by denying them access to medical care. So why treat trans folk differently? Let trans people ease their own suffering by pursuing the established medical standards of care. Let’s stop attacking our most troubled and vulnerable population. We are a nation strengthened and united by the breadth of our diversity. Let’s all work on trying to better understand transgender people and not focus on dehumanizing them and rejecting them from society.

I won’t linger on the gender-affirming double-mastectomy. Just know that compared to Noah’s recovery from the accident, the top surgery was a walk in the park. A blip. Also, you should know that Noah has never shown any signs of regret and vehemently denied any such feelings the one or two times I inquired about it directly. But one night, as I was heading to bed, I found Noah pouting and getting worked up over his hair, and I unthinkingly said, “What’s the deal, Noah? I thought the top surgery was supposed to make you happy.” Noah gave me a look I’d rather never see again and tearfully replied, “I’m still the same me, dad. I still have the same feelings. The top surgery was just so I can feel normal and not have to think about it anymore.”

Noah’s disfigurement is still significant: the scarring, the asymmetry. But Noah couldn’t care less about any of that. None of that matters now that he’s been given the chance to live a normal life, thanks to the gender-affirming surgery. Noah is much happier, and Raegan and I no longer worry about the potential consequences of hopelessness and depression.

I make this final appeal to the reader who opposes the notion of gender-affirming care but feels sympathy with the fact that Noah must live with disfigurement from the accident. I’m not trying to speak for trans people, but I ask you to take a moment to consider the possibility that gender dysphoria is itself a form of disfigurement that—in the absence of medical treatment—a child must suffer with forever. Most people never question, much less think about, their gender. Because for most people it just feels right. It feels normal. It would be like questioning why you have two arms and legs, and not three. If you’re one of these people, consider yourself lucky. But try to imagine what it must be like to feel trapped in a body that’s not the gender you perceive yourself to be. Now imagine that you must live with this feeling every moment of every day.

J.D. Vance’s Protect Children’s Innocence Act also declares that institutions of higher education “will not offer instruction in gender-affirming care” nor will the Secretary of Education accredit “any institution that offers instruction in gender-affirming care.” anyone who performs gender-affirming care on a minor “shall be fined...imprisoned for not more than 12 years, or both.” As of July 2025, 27 U.S. states have instituted bans on gender-affirming care for minors. According to the Human Rights Campaign, “Oklahoma, Texas, and South Carolina have considered banning care for transgender people up to 26 years of age.” As of February 2026, more than 40 U.S. hospitals “have paused or ceased to offer some type of gender-affirming care to young people since President Trump launched his first strike at the field.” Nearly a year ago, Yale announced it will no longer provide gender affirming care for folks under 21. Hartford Children’s Center closed their gender care center for patients under 19.

On March 31st of this year, Idaho made peeing-while-trans a jailable offense. The law criminalizes transgender people who use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity, including in government buildings (including K-12 schools and colleges) and private businesses. “A first offense is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.“ Ironically, the “Riley Gaines Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” a new Tennessee law enacted just this month, forces trans women to be housed in male prisons and requires trans boys to use the girl’s locker room, with all the health and safety risks this implies. Similar bathroom bans in Utah, Florida, and Kansas also criminalize peeing, but are limited to government buildings, including K-12 schools and colleges. Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates called the Idaho bill “the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the nation.” In all, 21 U.S. states have adopted similar bathroom bans. This creates a Catch-22 for trans people: either use the bathroom that doesn’t match your gender identity, and risk being harassed or assaulted, or use the bathroom that does match and risk imprisonment (likely based on their assigned sex!). You’d think lawmakers would have taken the risk of bathroom assault into consideration, since way back in 2019, a man in Oregon beat a transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom, fracturing her jaw. The only viable solution: never go out in public.

Three months after Noah’s surgery, Catherine Leavy was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin to three years’ probation for the bomb threat that potentially endangered the lives of every bedbound patient at Boston Children’s Hospital.

States that ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors aren’t taking the parents’ concerns into account. They aren’t considering the journey parents go through prior to reaching the point of seeking medical care for their child. They don’t appreciate the complexity of the parents’ experience, the period of questioning, the struggles with doubt that torment us at every doctor visit and with every hormone injection. They don’t realize there’s a gnawing voice at the back of our heads, asking “What if they would have grown out of it? Would everything have been different had we chosen to do nothing? What if everything would have been fine? What if it all would have simply gone away?”

But also: “What if our child decided he’d had enough and took his own life? Would we have ever forgiven ourselves if we had chosen to do nothing?”

So much fuss has been made about the importance of parental rights (e.g., a child’s school reading selection). But the opposite seems to apply for the parents of trans kids. Why don’t our parental rights matter? The White House believes (or wants us to think it believes) that the parents of trans kids clearly don’t know best. If we did, we never would have pursued gender-affirming care in the first place. I fear for the young kids in the midst of transition, whose lives are suddenly at greater risk due to politics. For a transgender kid living in the U.S. today, it must seem as if the whole country is against them. Not to mention for a transgender adult. In the few months since I began working on this story, the White House has begun implicating trans people in every violent act, even coining the offensive term “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism” (TIVE), and asserting that trans people represent our “most violent domestic terror threat.” Finally, the administration has done the one thing it has never, ever done: considered denying trans people their 2^nd amendment right to bear arms.

In February 2025, five people were arrested in upstate NY over the torture and murder of a trans man.

Enough is enough.

5/10/26 - update

On page 5 of the White House’s 2026 “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” the following appears under the heading “The Threat” (emboldening mine):

“Currently we face three major types of terror groups:

• Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs

• Legacy Islamist Terrorists

• Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists

And under “Our [Counterterrorism] priorities,” the following appears (emboldening mine):

“As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.

“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere.”

Transgender people, then, according to the White House, represent one of the top three terror threats America faces. What they mean by “radically pro-transgender” is anyone’s guess—which, of course, is a feature, not a bug. The parallel pairing of “pro-transgender” with “cartels and Islamist terror groups” is clearly meant to equate the two. The next paragraph goes one step further, literally pairing “pro-transgender” with nuclear weapons. I can only imagine the room echoing with their cruel laughter as they penned this:

“Finally, and in a special strategic category, we will maintain and increase our national assets to combat and render safe the most dangerous terrorist threat to America: non-state acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction, especially the terrorist use of nuclear or radiological devices. This mission, and the attribution of nuclear threats, remain Presidential priorities as laid out during the first Trump Administration in NSPM-35 and NSPM-36.”

Though Substack is a bit of a closed forum, the feedback I’ve received from readers so far has been overwhelmingly positive. It turns out I didn’t need to fear backlash from my fellow Americans, as I thought at the beginning of this essay, it’s the lunacy of this administration we all need to be afraid of. They blame the assassination attempts on the hateful rhetoric from the left. A question for the White House, then. How do you account for the rise in attacks on transgender people? Just yesterday, on May 11th, a transgender student at the University of Washington was fatally stabbed. Transgender people don’t have a team of Secret Service agents to protect them. Stop the hateful rhetoric.

The next day, we learned the hospital had received a threat by telephone. A woman had threatened to bomb Boston Children’s Hospital because they’d been told they were castrating boys in the Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMS) program – the very program Noah was also enrolled in. The woman believed the best way to protect queer kids was by threatening to bomb them, instilling panic, despite that so many kids (including Noah) lay immobilized inside; tethered to IVs and wall suction, or with injuries that would have prevented them from getting out in time. The caller had warned, “There is a bomb on the way to the hospital. You better evacuate everybody, you sickos.”

A free and caring society evolves to better understand, accept, and eventually embrace the diversity of its members. In 1952, the first edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) classified homosexuality as a mental disorder listed under “sociopathic personality disturbance.” In 1968, it was reclassified as a “personality disorder.” In 1973, homosexuality’s status as a disorder was finally rescinded. Similarly, in 2013, the DSM-5 updated its diagnosis for trans individuals, shifting away from “gender identity disorder,” which framed the identity as the disorder, in favor of “gender dysphoria,” which focuses on the distress caused by the misalignment of a person’s perceived gender with their assigned sex at birth.

The Trump administration wants everyone to think trans people are a new phenomenon and haven’t always been walking peacefully among us, defending our nation, using our bathrooms, and teaching our kids. When I began writing this many months ago, at the start of Trump’s second term, I kept tabs on all the ways they tried to deny trans people their personal freedom by invalidating their very existence. The list has grown to include the removal of trans people from public restrooms and college classrooms, school sports, government websites, and the armed forces.

Every new proclamation against trans people feels like it’s aimed directly at my family. Each executive order feels personal, as if it were questioning our judgment as parents, stripping away the parental rights the White House claimed to hold so dear, and negating decades of medical research and the guidance from our team of health care providers concerning our kid’s diagnosis, needs, and best course of action.

But we should have seen it coming.

A year prior to Election Day, the GOP began their anti-trans campaign in South Dakota. Trump said that on day one as president he would “sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing...transgender insanity,” and “sign a law prohibiting child genital mutilation in all fifty states.” Trump added, “Could you imagine ten or fifteen years ago having some politician...saying, ‘I will stop child mutilation without parental consent?...They would say, ‘Is this guy crazy?’”

Of course they’d say that. Because it is crazy. No American doctors are mutilating children, with or without parental consent. But the public heard “child genital mutilation.”

Trump repeated the message on November 1st, 2024, at his Madison Square Garden rally, just a few days prior to Election Day. This time, after suggesting jail-time for flag-burners, he vowed to “get...transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.” The applause was raucous. He followed this up with a promise to defend religious liberty and restore free speech. Then, for some reason, at the same MSG rally, Vivek Ramaswamy insinuated the gays were to blame: “Our message to gay Americans tonight is this: you’re free to marry who you want, if you want, without the government standing in your way. But that doesn’t mean that...you do genital mutilation and chemical castration on our children.”

In July 2023, two months prior to Trump’s South Dakota speech, Senator Vance introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which classifies gender-affirming care on minors as a Class C felony, including “any surgery for the purpose of changing the body of the individual to correspond to a sex that differs from the individual’s biological sex” along with medications including gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) puberty-blocking drugs, estrogen, testosterone, and other androgens. Of course, this ignores the fact that biological sex also includes the brain.

The reality is that “biological sex” isn’t black and white. Even J.D. Vance admits that. Which is why his act includes allowances for minors “born with medically verifiable disorder of sex development,” such as those with “both ovarian and testicular tissue,” or who lack “normal sex chromosome structure, sex steroid hormone production, or sex steroid hormone action.”

“Trans insanity” has become a mantra for the President. Is he obsessed with the phrase because the message resonates well with his base (or is assumed to resonate well)? Or is it because it serves as a ‘safe’ distraction from other (genuinely insane) things, such as Operation Epic Fury (or other things beginning with E.F.)? Or is it simply because trans talk takes up air...and nothing more? Whatever the reason, the results are the traumatization of a population already beleaguered by their own condition, the undermining of our unalienable American right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, and the corruption of The Biblical Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12); “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39). Not to mention, a nation so brainwashed as to think bombing a children’s hospital is an appropriate response to gender-affirming care for trans kids.

The simple fact of the matter is we’re all going to die, and sooner than we think. These flesh suits are merely rentals we put on until we head off for wherever we’re going next. So why not follow the guidance of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence and leave trans folks alone and let them be happy? It’s bad enough they were born in the wrong body. Now they gotta deal with constant vitriol from the White House on top of it all? How is that in any way in the spirit of being an American...or a Christian?

Click here for part IV

Then I got the call from Raegan, and my own heart collapsed.

“Noah is at Winchester Hospital,” she said. “There’s been an accident. Hurry.”

I felt hopeless, but did the only thing I could: I turned around and headed back. It was the longest bike ride of my life, but with the morning traffic, I had no quicker way to get there. A phrase kept looping in my head: “Every parent’s worst nightmare.” I tried not to think about the worst-case scenario. I tried to reassure myself that our child would be okay. That everything would be okay. I tried to keep myself from losing my mind.

On his bike ride to the high school, Noah (now fifteen) didn’t see the car door open in time for him to stop. He had been thrown under the wheels of a passing truck and had lain in the street, crying for help.

Every parent’s worst nightmare.

Noah was conscious when the paramedics arrived. His leg had been crushed. His helmet had likely saved his life. A hematoma was bulging from Noah’s side. It was too much for our small-town hospital to take on, so an ambulance rushed us to Boston Children’s Hospital, where they put him on pain meds and sent us home. Noah would be fine, they said. The hematoma would resolve over time. It seemed unimaginable that someone could be run over by a truck and wind up with something that would resolve on its own, but we took the doctor’s word for it and went home.

Over the next few days, Noah’s thigh and buttock darkened to the color of dried blood. The hematoma grew to the size of a football. The pain, Noah said, was excruciating.

When we returned to the Boston Children’s Hospital outpost in Waltham a week later, the doctors repeated the same story. The hematoma would resolve. Noah would be fine. But just to be on the safe side, they had a plastic surgeon take a look. He was slick like a movie doctor, and I never got his name, but what he saw disturbed him. “You need to go back to the ER at Children’s downtown,” he said. “Don’t go home to pack. Go straight to the ER. Noah’s skin is dying. The risk of infection is significant. Noah will need surgery right away. Probably several surgeries.”

Every parent’s worst nightmare.

Noah lay on the unpadded steel imaging slab in excruciating pain. This time, imaging revealed the wound’s true severity. A deep degloving injury had traveled across Noah’s pelvis under the skin, just below the hip. None of the other doctors had even considered the possibility the damage could be so extensive. They drained quarts of fluid from the hematoma, put Noah on antibiotics, and prepared a room.

An anesthesiologist pulled Raegan and me aside and told us Noah would get much worse before he got better. He said it was likely Noah would end up in the ICU. We were devastated. But Dr. Balkin, the plastic surgeon assigned to Noah’s case, said he was wrong. Dr. Balkin said the anesthesiologist had spoken out of turn. Though he seemed quite young beneath his mask and cap, Dr. Balkin assured us the anesthesiologist didn’t know large wounds like he did. Dr. Balkin said he was a master at repairing large wounds and explained how the surgeries would progress. First, he would remove the necrotic skin, he said, and then we would wait. He would take as little skin as possible and then we would wait and see what happened. If more skin became necrotic, he would remove more skin, and we would wait. If still more skin became necrotic, he would remove more. This would continue until all the dying skin had been removed and all the healthy skin had been spared. It was a slow process, he assured us, but necessary in order to get it all and save Noah’s life.

For twelve weeks, Raegan and I took turns staying overnight by Noah’s bedside. To our horror, the necrosis kept expanding, even after six surgeries. The skin of Noah’s entire left buttock and upper thigh had to be removed. It didn’t seem possible Noah would survive. His disfigurement was otherworldly; his midsection no longer looked human. We couldn’t process what we were seeing. The fatty tissue of Noah’s buttock had been ground away somehow by the friction with the road, so that when the skin was surgically removed, all that remained was muscle. It was impossible to look at. How could a person lose so much tissue and survive?

Dr. Balkin covered the skinless area with grafts taken from Noah’s thigh. The skin grafts were impossibly thin, only .06”, and perforated so they could be expanded to cover as large an area as possible. It all seemed like a miracle.

I can’t remember the day-to-day mechanics, the meds, the teams of health professionals, the proddings and examinations, the struggles to get IVs into veins. But I can still feel Noah’s pain and the ever-present fear of something going wrong.

From the day we entered the hospital until the day we were finally released, Noah was either partially or completely immobilized in his bed. His wound was bound with sponges. A tube kept him tethered to wall suction. Inflatable boots kept the blood from pooling in his feet. On surgery days and the days that immediately followed the surgeries, Noah was unable to leave the bed due to the pain and the necessity of having constant suction to keep fluid moving through the wound.

For days after each skin graft, the doctors required Noah to lay completely still. Any movement might cause the grafts to fail. This required Herculean discipline, and bedpans. Through it all, Noah remained a “stoic.” That was Dr. Balkin’s word. Fearless and undaunted. A fighter. A champion.

And then suddenly—and seemingly out of nowhere—Noah began pressing us more urgently for a bilateral mastectomy.

“One thing at a time,” Raegan said. “Let’s get through this first. Then we’ll worry about that.”

There was still so much that could go wrong. A reaction. An infection. A complication. All Raegan and I cared about was getting him out of there alive. But for Noah, top surgery was the prize to keep his eyes on. The light at the end of the tunnel.

Imagine it. Even after the trauma of seven surgeries, endless injections, skin grafts, and days of total immobility, Noah’s only wish was to get one more operation, one more procedure that somehow mattered more to him than all the others that literally saved his life.

Finally, Dr. Balkin gave us some good news. The grafts had taken hold. Dr. Balkin said so many patients ignored the doctor’s orders, but Noah had done everything right and should be very proud of himself. For the next phase of the recovery, Dr. Balkin wanted Noah up and walking to accelerate the healing process. So, we walked. We took the elevator down to the food court or up to the rooftop garden, even when it was too hot to be outside. We walked past the rooms of children worse off than Noah. Often, we walked the baby floor, where most of the doors were open. Noah liked seeing the babies. Since babies always cry, they just seemed like regular babies. We pretended they were all normal, healthy babies, just tired or missing their mother.

Then, one evening at the end of August, I stepped out of Noah’s hospital room on a popsicle run. The hallway was filled with police in hazmat suits. I didn’t think much of it. I assumed someone had passed away. In any case, nobody stopped me or sent me back to our room. But the hallway was eerily silent. Save for the occasional crackle of walkie-talkies, nobody uttered a word.

Click here for Part III