5. "By History"
http://www.asakamae.com/p/technicallyautististic7Welcome to CHAPTER FIVE of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery, where I talk about my early childhood.
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I left the womb nine weeks early, in a city that never sleeps. Since then, I’ve been in constant, wayward motion.
I was born to a Japanese mother, a foreign-student-turned-immigrant, and a Korean-American father. They met on the West Coast, moved to New York to have me, and raised me and my little sister in New Jersey. We grew up teetering between many little worlds, with our multi-cultural, bilingual household as the pivot.
It wasn’t uncommon for my family to stay in Japan twice a year when I was little. If we weren’t going to Japan, it would be California to see my dad’s family. Or Canada to see my mom’s aunt. Riding the plane was torture. Within the first hour, I would always throw up, only occasionally distracted by TVs and games. Motion sickness drugs didn’t work, because it wasn’t the motion; it was the odor of the airplane that made me nauseous. But it was all worth it.
We grew up teetering between many little worlds, with our multi-cultural, bilingual household as the pivot.
I vividly remember my grandpa and step-grandma’s house in Hachioji, a suburb at the outskirts of Tokyo. The lumpy, olive couch where my sister and I tuned into NHK’s (basically, Japan’s PBS) morning segment; the sliding door behind the couch, leading to the tatami-style room that we unloaded our suitcases in; my grandpa’s old home office, which practically functioned as a library.
Leaving was always the worst part. Every time we boarded the bus to the airport, I’d bawl my eyes out. I told my mom it was because I missed grandpa but the truth was, my longing couldn’t be tied down to a particular person or a thing. Japan was my happy place.
Once I was old enough to understand numbers, the calendar on the kitchen wall served as a reminder that nothing lasts forever. I’d run my eyes over the dashes marking our arrival date and our departure date, helplessly aware that whatever time remained would succumb to the same fate as the time elapsed. All that was left to do was turn the TV back on and forget. Thankfully, that always worked.
Up until third grade, I attended a private school that only taught Japanese (except for a biweekly ‘English’ class). The student-to-teacher ratio was low, and the retention rate was even lower. A typical preschool class had up to twenty kids; by sixth grade, that number would go as low as four. Some kids moved back to Japan because their dads’ work visas expired. Other kids switched to public school (rumor had it that they “forgot Japanese”). Nonetheless, there was plenty of attention to go around and God knows I needed it.
If kindergarten had class superlatives, I’d be voted most likely to get lost during field trips. Any time I went too long without being directly spoken to, I drifted away into my own world — a kaleidoscope of books, animals, plants, and some more books. According to my mom, I’d be so lost in my reading that I didn’t even notice when recess ended. At playdates, I’d ditch my classmates and wander off into their older siblings' rooms to read their books. According to my mom, I got along much better with adults better than kids – unless they had sunglasses on. Then, I would run and cry (she denies any sunglass-related trauma).
My favorite activities was was snooping at the 連絡帳, a notebook that parents and teachers wrote on every day to exchange messages. These pages were full of shorthands (or Kanjis) that are typically taught in elementary school. But with some context clues, it was easy to find out what my mom and teachers were saying about me (I don’t remember much, but my mom kept mentioning that I was “very shy”, and my teacher often noted that I couldn’t sit still during nap time). By the time I was in first grade, I was at a sixth grade reading level.
In all other departments, I lagged behind. I couldn’t finish a worksheet without my mom watching over my shoulders. When left to my own devices, I’d start doodling, and she’d walk into my room thirty minutes later, realizing the mistake she made when she left me unsupervised.
Math homework was the worse. I remember my mom spending hours trying to teach me how to subtract double digits, while I cried and screamed, arguing with her logic. The laws of mathematics felt magical in the worst way; utterly unpredictable with no rhyme or reason.
Doing my homework was half the battle; the other half was getting it to the teacher. I was always the last one to turn in my assignments. I was so busy playing with my eraser, doodling, and thumbing through my textbooks that I wouldn’t notice my classmates walking across the classroom to submit their work.
I also couldn’t understand how everyone’s folders were neat and mine wasn’t, while my worksheets from six different subjects from over a week ago were shoved haphazardly in my backpack and desk both at school and home. My mom kept telling me to put my belongings back where they belonged, but I thought that was one of those advices that no one followed, like “Floss your teeth twice a day.” A couple of times I tried to organize my stuff, I almost ended up late for my next class. Everyone else was on time. It was probably just a coincidence that my backpack was so messy.
I was clumsy. Every time I saw a ball moving in my direction, I flinched. My teacher kept reminding me that the rules of dodgeball did not apply to soccer or basketball, but every time I tried to play correctly, a slapstick sequence ensued. There was a thud, a crash, and aah, aah, aah... Those who spent enough time with me recognized my distress call (Once, a kid said that my name was Aah-saka — get it?).
At one point in second grade, I came across a passage in an encyclopedia that said people with autism “reacted to things differently.” I asked my teacher if I had autism. “That’s a good question. I’m not sure,” she replied. My mom also said she wasn’t sure. Ultimately, I didn’t think much of it.
A poster child of the expression, I do not wish to be perceived without my consent, I spoke in periods never exclamations, rarely looked people in the eyes, and didn’t call people by their name. Despite the occasional teasing, my classmates tried to understand. But I wasn’t interested.
My parents scratched their heads. Unlike other kids who were shy, I had little regard for social norms. When someone complimented me, asked me if I was okay, or recognized me at a grocery store, I didn’t say “Thank you.” Instead, I ran and hid. One time, I lashed out at my mom’s friend, flinging my stuffed labrador-greyhound mix, Snow, at her at the checkout line, because she ran over to say hi.
My parents signed me up for weekly counseling with a therapist in New York City. They also had a learning specialist come to my school to give me a psychological evaluation. The unfamiliar woman pulled me out of class, asked me about my family, and made me solve a bunch of puzzles.
“She said that she’s almost certain you have Asperger’s, but that she couldn’t diagnose you because she wasn’t a psychologist,” my mom recounted.
To my mother, pursuing a formal diagnosis was like beating a dead horse. The first page suggested I get assessed for Asperger’s but she was more interested in the next ten pages, a comprehensive breakdown of my IQ test scores. The report stated that I had the hardest time pairing letters with shapes, while I aced the vocabulary portion. It also noted that my attention span was shorter than what is expected for my age, though that was hardly a surprise.
“It didn’t matter to me what it was called. What mattered to me was that you got what you needed,” my mom told me.
In second grade, my grandpa died. I was in the room when my mom learned that he was in critical condition, and that was the first time in my life I trembled because I had never seen my mom in such a state of distress. But in a room full of sobbing people and an open casket, I found myself dry-eyed. I wondered if I was a cold-hearted monster.
Many kids at the Japanese school were there because of their parent’s jobs. Others were permanent residents; many of them were hāfu, a Japanese word (from “half”) meaning someone had one parent who was Japanese and another who wasn’t. That was the case for me, too. My mom grew up in Japan and came to the United States to study fine arts after getting a liberal arts degree in Japan; my dad grew up in Korea and emigrated with his family when he was in middle school. Like many others in her position, my mom wanted me to experience cultural perspectives and the individualized attention of a private school, before going to public school.
When my parents dropped off transfer papers at Edward H. Bryan School, they gave the guidance counselor a heads-up about my suspected disability. She told my parents that they’d need more information — including proof of diagnosis (the psychological evaluation from the prior year had no official diagnosis in it) — in order to determine my eligibility for special education services. Then, they could talk about options.
“It didn’t matter to me what it was called. What mattered to me was that you got what you needed,” my mom told me.
The first few months of third grade consisted of watchful waiting. The teachers said that my English was excellent. I was too excited to meet new people and start a new life to feel sad about leaving my old school. The folks from the Child Study Team frequently visited the classroom with a clipboard in hand, though I highly doubt it was all for me — rumor had it that my class, 3N, was the worst behaved, and that the teacher, Ms. Nally, was stretched thin.
Ms. Nally always had this welcoming aura. Even after the contractors installed the Smartboards, she’d huddle us on the carpet to read us books. Once, she read us a book called The Junkyard Wonders. The story starts with Trish, a young girl horrified to find out she has been enrolled in a special education class known as “the junkyard.”
Their teacher, Mrs. Peterson doesn’t flinch at the epithet. The junkyard, she says, is “a place of wondrous possibilities.” Soon enough, Trisha learns the truth about her classmates: a determined group of students, each brimming with triumph and talent.
One day, Mrs. Peterson takes her students on a field trip with a mission: divide into teams, go through the junkyard, and collect anything that is useful. “Forget what the object was ... imagine what it could be!” she says. Trisha’s group stumbles upon an old model airplane, and after brainstorming different ideas, they transform it into a motor-driven drone they call Junkyard Wonder. The message of the book was unfamiliar to but intriguing: If the entire world insists on labeling you, owning it might just be the most powerful thing you can do.
Ms. Nally introduced me to her colleagues. I introduced her to my microcosm, my little world of Snow and friends, my iffy home life, and my particularities, or feeling problems, as I would call them.
When my family brought home an actual dog, Pumpkin, I got irrationally angry that they weren’t doing things the way I thought they should. My mom would yell at Pumpkin when she started nipping, even though the training guidebook said to ignore that behavior. She also moved the pee pad to the back of the room by the patio door, even though I thought it was perfect right next to her pen like I’d seen in a magazine. To top it off, after Pumpkin chewed through the leash I picked out for her, my dad went to Shoprite and bought a hot pink one that clashed terribly with her collar, a dusty mauve. We spent therapy sessions negotiating early loans from my monthly allowances so that I could get new gear from PetValu or order a new guidebook to accommodate changing circumstances.
I also became increasingly self-conscious of my unusual cultural background — a mom that I spoke Japanese with, and a similar-looking dad with whom I spoke English with. Every trip to the pool or park was a battle because I didn’t want to be caught by someone I knew. If someone happened to eavesdrop on a conversation with my parents, catching me off guard, I'd yank my mom or dad by hand and bolt, sometimes throwing in a slap or a shove.
Once, one of the folks from the Child Study Team asked me: if I were the only one who could communicate in Japanese in a life-saving situation, would I make the call?
"Yeah," I replied.
"Then why don’t you want to speak Japanese with your mom in front of people?"
"Because I want to save my fear," I explained (Spare the stress, I meant).
"Fear," she murmured, "can be overcome."
At that moment, her words felt like a personal attack. Who was I without my emotional reactions?
While other people based their identity on who they were to other people, I just felt like a sentient blob. I didn’t have an internal narrative. Randomly associated sights and sounds (think: Kiki and Boba), flickered in the background with zero commentary. And while others my age found fullfillment in their roles as friends, students, siblings, daughters and sons and whatnot, I found fullfillment in maintaining order.
So when Ms. Nally once said that I was going to be a writer, I didn’t get that. I wanted to be a dog trainer, because I thought I’d be good at it; over the summer, much to my family’s surprise, I successfully taught my great-aunt’s Border Collie to "down," "heel," "wait," and more (Previously, he could barely sit).
But she continued: One day you will be writing a book. And I’ll want a signature.
One of Ms. Nally’s colleagues was Ms. Martin, a brunette who always carried a brightly colored iced coffee cup and showed me pictures of her toy poodle, Mocha. One day, they told me that I was going to join Ms. Martin’s class for Reading and Writing from now on.
I didn’t know this at the time, but Ms. Martin’s classroom was a special education classroom, and I was there because my parents now had my diagnosis on paper. Or two. Up until its fifth edition, the DSM stipulated that a person couldn’t be diagnosed with autism and ADHD at the same time. One doctor had declared that I had ADHD; another declared that no, I had Asperger’s. Now, my parents were looking for a third opinion.
Thank you for reading CHAPTER FIVE of #TechnicallyAutistic: Lessons from the Periphery. Just a friendly reminder that this blog series is a work of MEMOIR. All pertinent disclaimers apply, such as:
- My narratives reflect the cultural context of the present year (2024? No way!) and my experience of growing up in the 2010s. If the world doesn’t change and I don’t change, then I’d be damned—we’d all be. Stay curious.
- I’ve made minimal changes to some names* and identifying details for the sake of privacy. I’d rather you not stay curious about that.
- I also used fictional names* for medications because different things work for different folks and I don’t want to interfere with anyone else’s path to wellness. (Do I have to tell you that I’m not a doctor?)
- But yes, this series contains depictions of mental illness that some readers may find triggering. Please take care of yourselves.
Now that I got that out of the way, a special shout-out to the best accountability buddies in the world: Dr. Harriet Hustis, for allowing me to start this project in a life-changing summer program, Nora Neus/The Longform Lab for supporting me through completion, and the journalism faculty of TCNJ for setting me up for success.
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