Just before the news report came out that the “man-flu” and it’s severity is a real thing, the 15 year old man-child was sick – nasty sick to the point of him doing school work at home for 2 weeks and staying home a full 3 weeks going back slowly with a couple of half days before he was able to be there all day once again. No school, no hockey and a ton of nasty, icky, feverish misery. My boys and I rarely get sick and I never had a glimpse of what this guy was like when he’s under the weather until he hit the teen years. Boy does he ever make his brother look like a gem in sickness circumstances.  When the older, almost-man is sick, he declares that he is dying and that he needs to go to a hospital. After a rational conversation, he understands that he is not gravely ill and proceeds to shut himself in his room with juice, water and crackers and he sleeps – sometimes for 24 hours. When he is better, he comes out of his room, declares that he is not dying anymore and congratulates himself and resumes being himself. Not so with the man-child. He is a groaner, a crawler (yes, he has been known to take to all fours when feeling lousy) and he grumpy cries. He is impatient as he expects to heal like Wolverine. He cusses under his breath, uses every blanket in the house and germs it up without a thought and generally is so down and out that he can literally sink you like a ship with a gaping hole in it’s hull.  No two children are alike, which when coming to dealing with sickness, is too bad for me.So in light of his illness and my plight as I come off a long and draining 3 weeks of nursing him back to his old self, I decided to get back to myself  by reflecting on his unique sense of humour.

Logan has had to grow up fairly quickly because being just 2 and bit years younger than a brother with autism, his mom and dad sometimes had their hands full with him and Logan learned to wait and when he did feel like he wanted to wait, he had to learn how to take care of whatever he needed that we could not readily provide. On the one hand it pains me to think of these times but it has made him the great guy he is today. I remember being on the phone with a therapist for Adam and I heard this screeching across the kitchen floor only to find my little tank pushing his high chair to the freezer, climbing up onto the seat and getting himself his frozen milk and making his way to the microwave to warm it. At that point I told the woman on the phone ” I have to go, this is taking too long, my baby is raising himself. It’s not fair,” That day, I made a decision that our family was not going to be autism central but as “normal” a family as possible. I wanted to do all I could to meet Adam halfway and encourage him to do the same and  enjoy the world with us and I also wanted to give Logan a life that did not mean he always would have to take a back seat to Adam’s autism. We are close, the man-child and me and we are so lucky to have him in our family. I remember how he would talk about his life in heaven, before became to us and it would leave Tom and me in tears, we were laughing so hard. One day he told me he was forgetting what heaven was like and I asked him how he came to choose us as his family and he casually said, “Well, it’s not really like that Mamma. You go where they send you, you know?,” He gave me a little sideways glance and raised his eyebrows and went on playing with his toys and I just sat there shaking my head at this little cherub’s comments. In  all the humour, I had a great belief that this guy was really an angel sent to our family.  I remember being at my wit’s end trying to figure out why 4 year old Adam was upset. He had been crying for a long time and he had very little language at this time and I was impatient with him, alone in a house with two little children and I couldn’t take the noise anymore and I raised my voice at him which made him cry more.  Then I felt a tug on my shirt and it was this little white haired thing with these dark green eyes staring at me. “Hey, you scaring him Momma.  Him just want sketti” He rubbed my arm with his soft, little, meaty hand and I proceeded to boil spaghetti, serve them up and Adam stopped crying and all was right in our world. After that strange, eerie and miraculous evening in my kitchen in Calgary, Logan had the remedy more than not for what ailed Adam. “Him want posicle” or “Him want pwetsel” and I was game to always have whatever the food item “Him want” in our pantry.  So yeah maybe Logan had a unique way of using his brother’s mood to get what he wanted but it was always so strange that he always knew what Adam wanted and for a toddler always had the right words for me at the right time…those dark, desperate times of trying to figure out the simplest things that were the most complex things with Adam.

The man-child was also no lacking in humility or confidence when he was little. He was the kid who would say “Um hmm, I know” whenever he was told how cute he was. And if you asked him how come he knew that he would look at you like you were foolish and say “People tell me dat all time and I bleeve em,”

He was our dancer, our acrobat, our mischief maker, our shadow, my yoga partner and he went through a phase where I called him my third boob as he clung to me in his swimming classes for dear life. Needless to say, he was no natural swimmer like his older brother – he tended to sink like a stone and we had to trade in the Mom n Tot classes for one on one classes when he was a bit older and even then he was convinced Sandy, his teacher was trying to drown him.

In this home of the bizarre because of Adam’s autism you need to have a sense of humour. I lost the full extent of my humour when Adam was diagnosed. I have lived a life of worry, stress adn not so happy days but fortunately for me and Adam, Tom passed on his sense of absurd to Logan. These two buffer the shit that autism can stir up at times and Tom has made our lives very fun and normal and un-special needs as possible and it has done us all – especially Adam – a world of good.

We have laughs with Adam, too because he operates on the bare bones of everything. He is very black and white, cut and dry and it is what it is on a daily basis for him, so you can just imagine how many moments we just burst out laughing just by the way he approaches life and puts us in our place as he brings a new perspective to the way we”humans” as he calls us, see things. But with Logan, there is such a blend of things at work within him that just comes out of nowhere and chops down a tree of seriousness with a blow from his ax of wit.

Tom likes his Uniqlo undershirts as they keep him cooler under his dress shirts. The material they are made of has a sheen to it and so one morning when he was dressing, unbeknownst to us, Logan was propped up against the bedroom door frame checking out tom’s shiny threads tucked into his dress pants.  All he simply said with a curious tone that also had a hint of warning that the look before him was not good, “That your shirt?”  We started laughing and Tom explained it was a fancy new undershirt with high tech material etc. And Logan put his hand up and said “That’s all good…as long as it’s not a new look,”

It was the same tone he had when we had the card at Disney that allowed us to pass Fast Pass with Adam if a line for an attraction was way too long, or in case Adam was having a hard time.  Logan is a repeatx5 Roller Coaster/ Thrill Ride rider and wanted to go with Tom on the Tower of Terror again and knowing using the card for him was kind of bending the rules he asked us, “So…you want me to jump up and down on the spot or bite my hand? (two of Adam’s stims at the time) I can play the role of Adam if anyone needs proof. I’ve watch Adam a long time; I can do this,” Again the delivery was just too much not to laugh.  When I forget where I park my car and he’s with me he’s calmly but with a stab has said “see this is how you win a ticket from me to Quinte Gardens.

I’m not going to be living here and I might be off somewhere playing hockey when Iget the call that you are walking around here trying to find your car.  Dad will be in the scooter back at the house and then what you will have to call Adam who may or may not take your call….that’s a death sentence. You’re gonna have to go to the home for your own good. You won’t need a car. They have a bus, You have long term care insurance to pay for that. It’ll be  good.

Man-Chi    

One of my favourite Logan lines was when he was standing for a guy at the movies. Apparently his buddy was grounded and there was going to be a situation where a girl was really going to feel like a third wheel and that was disastrous in Grade 8 so someone suggested they call Logan James to fill in. It was a movie he wanted to see and he was game to go. When I asked him if he had money to buy the girl something to drink, he looked at me and said “Daniella, I’m just standing in for a guy. This is NOT a date. Yes, yes I hear you telling me you are asking me to be polite and buy her a Starbucks…but I’ll be polite with your 10 dollars, not mine”. And so I had to fork over a ten that afternoon. What a cheapskate!

Recently their father and I celebrated our 20th anniversary and I wanted to get a tattoo with my wedding date and I was asking Logan what he thought. He asked me where I was going to put it and what colour etc., and he thought it was cool and was even helpful in covering for me when I went to get it done so I could surprise Tom.  Days later when it healed, he was already sick like a dog with Mono (no he did not get it from kissing a girl – we did the time line to be sure) he looks at me and said that he really did like it then after a long pause he looked at it and said “Hmm…..can’t wait until the next argument and you start getting all pissed off and you regret getting the tattoo.  You’ll have to get him to tattoo void over it or maybe put a dash and the end date of the marriage…Ohhhh…Just kidding Mom. I’m sick you can’t take me seriously,”  I am glad I don’t have to take him or his father seriously all the time.  We need their humour and their sarcasm. They are our family’s laughter and our joy and the reason we can look at ourselves and our far from ordinary and sometimes maddening lives and have a good chuckle.

Stay as witty as you are my man-child. You came to us so that we can be happy and lighthearted and you do your duty everyday.You are an angel sent from Heaven to us. We are lucky and ever so grateful for the gift of you.