Tiny Blowing a Bubble, Seattle 1983, by Mary Ellen Mark

Camouflaging is what women do to make sure no one thinks we’re weird. This means we end up camouflaging at work and being too exhausted to do it at home. But home is where we really need it, because the effect of camouflaging is to be more agreeable t0 other people. And the workplace doesn’t reward agreeableness.

We intuitively camouflage when dating; don’t do a bait-and-switch.

Once the kids were gone, I found myself choosing bras more carefully. I only have one real bra. The rest are running bras that squoosh. But I started wearing my real bra when Nino came over for dinner. We had not spent a whole dinner alone in 20 years. I wanted to look like someone he might like, so I put on makeup, but not enough for him to be able to tell that I put on makeup just for him.

It took about four dinners before it felt like before we had kids, when everything was fun if we did it together. When he met me I never wore bras – only bathing suit tops. So I quit the bra. And the makeup. Read more

When someone tells me their child is autistic, I always end up telling them that they are too. Because autism is a family condition. At the end of these conversations people ask: “Do you have a reading list you could send me?” So here is that list.

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Reminder that tonight at 7pm – 9pm Eastern I’m hosting a free, live session to talk about autism. Here’s the link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82800295802?pwd=LfTfUHmWnqbbQdLJCbD9U8Wd7L571A.1

The platitudes about autism being a gift miss the more important point that pretty much every major movement, invention, and breakthrough has been from someone autistic. Here’s the science behind why that is true: Read more

Electronic Superhighway by Nam June Paik

In the 80s my teacher asked, “How did it happen that the Republican party ended slavery yet Black people are Democrats?” That was his introduction to the process of party realignment in the US. In the 1960s the Democrats supported Civil Rights and the party lines were redrawn. And the teacher told us we are due for another Read more

Detail of Pilot’s Notion Five, Red, Yellow Star by David Collins

I told a friend I keep not finishing things and he said, “Yeah, the last 10% of anything is the hardest.” A light bulb went off. Once I realized that this is a problem everyone has I could see the last 10% more clearly. And all day I’ve been finishing things.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to have a live session where we all talk about autism and this post is my last 10%. Now we have a date and time: Wed, Nov. 13, 7-9 pm ET. And we have a link. Here it is:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82800295802?pwd=LfTfUHmWnqbbQdLJCbD9U8Wd7L571A.1

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In the last 48 hours many of Y’s friends have been arrested for being part of an anti-war encampment at their college. I am shocked by the large number of college encampments across the US, but I knew this was coming because Y (who goes by they) has been discussing it for months.

We are Jewish, and like many Jewish families, our sense of activism is strong. But it wasn’t as easy for me to get my head around the pro-Palestinian rallies 0ver last six months.

My extended family has a wide range of views on the topic — there are Zionists on one end and  Y on the other. I am somewhere in the middle, which is to say I think the Israel-Hamas conflict has become horrifying and I have no idea how to fix it. This disappoints Y because the ethical discussion is so clear to them.

Before Y was born, Nino and I opened our home to a Palestinian kid who was 16 years old in NYC with nowhere to go.

His name was Tariq. It was just after 9/11 and Nino was working full time to help illegally detained people from the Middle East. Tariq’s dad was detained and Tariq had no relatives in the US.

Tariq’s dad was in the US raising money for Palestinians. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that cause, but I knew it was wrong to have the dad imprisoned for 9/11, and I knew Tariq needed a place to live until he could get back home.

Tariq had no life skills. He had spent his entire life fighting for his homeland. He learned everything about the fight from his dad, but no one taught Tariq how to make himself breakfast. We thought maybe it was that our food was unfamiliar, but actually, he had never used a stove.

He was on high alert at all times. Totally traumatized. We tried our best to support him, but we really had no idea how to cope with the level of trauma he had. Finally, someone took him back to his family in Gaza.

Periodically Nino would try to figure out where Tariq and his dad were. How they were doing. But it’s not like you can stalk them on Facebook.

Now, 25 years later, I still see no grand solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I am sure there’s another generation of Palestinian kids never learning to cook or shop for food, because their childhood will be consumed by fighting and recovering from fighting and fearing the start of more fighting.

This is why I can support Y in their endeavors to stop the war in Gaza. Because we didn’t know if Tariq’s family was on the right or the wrong side but we knew he was a kid who needed help. And I see Y looking at the human destruction and I am not surprised by their reaction.

What did surprise me is that while Y protested their school’s financial support to Israel, Y’s Jewish identity grew.

Y’s school organizers have been careful all along to show that Jewish kids were organizing; that a person can love being Jewish and hate the war in Gaza. So when Passover came around, the kids had a seder in the encampment. Y had never gone to seder at school, so this is their first student-led seder. They said they’ve never been more proud to be Jewish. They were happy to know all the prayers and all the songs. They were happy that non-Jews participated as well. This is from the kid who announced God is not real during their bar mitzvah.

At the seder each kid had written the phone number of a lawyer on their arm in case they got arrested. But the intent was to be peaceful, so arrests were unlikely. That is, until a pro-Israel student shouted “kill the Jews” and then the state police arrested everyone because the protests had become anti-semetic. This speaks to tension on campus, for sure. But also it speaks to how savvy today’s kids are about protesting.

Anyway, the kids got out of jail fast enough to get back to campus the same day. They reorganized right away, including rotating shifts to study for finals. I love that what my kid is learning in college is how to protect free speech, how to stand up for what matters, and how to shape their own identity.

That night the group planned a Havdalah service at the encampment spot. I don’t know if Y has ever even done Havdalah. But now Y talks about it like it’s an essential part of the Jewish week: I’m kvelling.

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Z went to a Duke recruiting weekend where accepted kids can get a feel for the university. He hung out with some kids who decided to go to Harvard and Stanford, and a bunch of kids who decided on Duke. What was similar about all of them? They talked openly about having autism.

At lunch one kid said to Z, “Do you know you have autism?”

And Z said, “Yeah. Do you?”

And then a bunch of the kids at the table said they had it. That’s all. Then everyone moved on to another topic.

Kids are so far ahead of parents in how they think about autism. So I’ve been trying to focus my own research on what makes autistic people so special. Why are they overrepresented among top colleges, top earners, artistic success stories? Read more

My son met a Ukrainian girl over the summer, and after telling me it was a summer fling because she barely speaks English, he started learning Russian and seeing her all the time. The relationship became a race – could she learn English before he learned Russian. Her school is in an enclave of all Russian and Ukrainian kids who escaped the war, so she is not learning English as fast as you’d expect. Read more

I thought the good friend test was who do I tell that I got a job at Harvard. But I ended up telling everyone. Then I thought maybe the good friend test was who can I reach out to when I’m having a total breakdown? But again, the answer is everyone, because no one solo person can actually deal with me calling them, repeatedly, so I have to just tell you all, here on my blog. Read more

In the 70s my family’s knowledge of plastic exceeded our knowledge of gerbils, so we bought two girl gerbils  and a plastic Habitrail cage because it didn’t look like a cage at all. The two girls made babies, and started eating them. We thought that meant the cage was too small, so we bought more Habitrail stuff. Read more