Congratulations! It's Asperger Syndrome

Jen Birch

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781846423932
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

One of the increasing number of people diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome in adulthood, New Zealand-born Jen Birch relates her story with humour and honesty, taking us through the years of frustration and confusion that led to her diagnosis in 1999. Now that she can put her life experiences into context, she candidly describes her continual search for 'normality', including her experiences at work, her difficulties with relationships, her time spent in a psychiatric hospital and her struggle for correct diagnosis in a country where the syndrome is relatively unknown. Talking positively about how her life has changed since the 'revelation', Jen aims to use this new-found knowledge to inform others about the syndrome and how, once its pros and cons are understood, life can be lived to the full.

Part One

Chapter 1

Life at Park Fields

My grandparents had named their farm “Lone Pine Farm,” though all that was left of the pine, by the time I arrived, was a stump. My parents started by buying the other end of the farm, and called it “Park Fields.” As Dad was a whiz at welding, he crafted the words “Park Fields” in perfectly formed letters of steel, and attached them to our roadside gate.

My parents built what was originally a car-shed, in the middle of a twelve-acre paddock. There was no driveway at first, so groceries and building materials had to be carried from the road, through the grass, by hand or in a wheelbarrow. One of Dad’s many skills was making concrete blocks, and so this shed, and many others, were constructed from these. With a coat of white plaster, the car-shed became our house.

When I – the first-born – came along, I was noticeably yellow in hue. This was jaundice, which is comparatively common in babies. It can also be a sign of other health conditions, however. In those days – 1955 – the blood tests which are nowadays taken at birth were not done. After the jaundice had disappeared, I still had a slightly yellowish – sallow – complexion and tooth colour, which has remained for life. A doctor told me recently that this is attributable to jaundice at birth. I was a very quiet and placid baby, sleeping all day, even when major carpentry projects were being carried out in the next room. On the other hand, a trip into a shop would guarantee a screaming attack, which Mum says seemed to have been brought on by the moving displays, which were the fashionable method of advertising at the time. Mum would have to park my pram or push-chair in such a way that I could see nothing, as whatever I saw set off the screaming.

I never learned to crawl, but managed to propel myself around the linoleum floor on my stomach, using my limbs as flippers. My first attempts to walk were at 22 months. Prior to these first steps, the Plunket Nurse had been concerned, and had mentioned the term “Cerebral Palsy.” When I finally achieved this motor skills milestone, all was assumed to be well.

I loved our cosy little house, kept warm by the Aga coke-burning stove. Mum often made pikelets or pancakes on the hot plate on top of the stove. We kept our towels, and our clothes to be worn the next day, on the rail by the Aga, which ensured that they were always toasty-warm. Every day Mum had to empty out the cinders which were left over from the coke, and frequently there was also a “clinker”: a hard piece of rock which would not burn.

In keeping with its design as a car-shed, one side of our house had a “Big Door”: the whole end of the house, which happened to be we children’s bedroom, could be rolled completely open on a set of wheels. On a sunny day, this meant that my brother Keith and I could play inside and outside at the same time. I thought that this was a completely normal and common-sense arrangement; and it would be many years before I realised that no one else had a “big door”. At other times, the fact that the big door was on wheels and not, therefore, flush with the ground, meant that a wide range of small creatures could enter our bedroom at will. Again, I found it completely natural that slugs, snails, earthworms, slaters (woodlice) and a variety of spiders were to be found on the floor, and it made sense to look before stepping.

Mum took me to the local play centre, but I was unable to interact with the other children. All I wanted to do was to stay in the book corner for the whole morning. One of the highlights for the other children was finger painting, but I would not touch the stuff, as I have an abhorrence of sticky substances on my skin. (For the same reason, Mum had to leave an unbuttered corner on my toast every morning, otherwise I would not eat it, because I did not want to get butter on my fingers.) One day, the play centre organised a cartoon film viewing for the children; I was three years old. Again, the moving, animated figures (of Tom and Jerry) terrified me, and I screamed so much that I had to be taken out. The other children loved it.

Grasses, flowers, and all types of creepy-crawlies were a constant source of fascination for me. I could, and sometimes did, spend hours hidden in the tall grass or amongst the shrubs and trees, watching whatever lived and moved. I learned some of the names of grasses and weeds from Dad, and the names of many garden flowers and shrubs from Mum, Aunty Freda, and Grandma, who were all keen gardeners. Most of the weeds were just as attractive to me as the garden flowers: just a few examples are the blue linseed, shepherd’s purse, ribwort plantain, and the rushes and sedges. One morning, as a youngster, I gathered a bunch of rushes with flower heads as a gift for my teacher: she seemed less enthusiastic than I was about them, and some of the other children chuckled.

I grew up as a gardener. Every summer I would gather the hard, purple Scarlet Runner bean seeds which were leftovers hanging on the bean fence. The bean fence was one of the items which bore Dad’s style: constructed from long, thick logs, it was sturdy enough to grow pumpkins on. I collected empty tins and punched holes in the bottoms with a hammer and nail. These I filled with dirt and one bean seed each. The beans came up and grew wonderfully, until the first frost arrived. Invariably, they would be scorched until all were dead. (I never realised until leaving the district as an adult that frosts were heavier at Karaka than in most other parts of Greater Auckland.) On frosty mornings, the cow troughs and puddles would be covered with a layer of ice. Every year, we had to have the same lamentations from me over the dead bean plants.

The rest of my gardening efforts were more successful, however. I would carefully dig a row in the ground, and sow carrots, turnips, radishes, peas, sweetcorn… and, one year, a whole gardenful of kohl-rabi. Mum thought my seed-sowing methods quite amusing, as I would meticulously place one turnip seed per inch, instead of just tipping them in. Even though, as a youngster, I did not like eating turnips, I liked planting them, as the seeds were so appealing to me. When one turnip plant ran up to seed, I spent hours, (days!) methodically harvesting every tiny seed from every pod, and carefully storing them in a container. I saw these as a useful commodity which I would be able to sell to nearby farmers; this enterprise never came to pass, however, as Mum usually managed to stop me from carrying out my childhood business ventures.

Aunty Freda, Grandma and Grandad lived at the other end of the farm, and I was a frequent visitor. Aunty Freda was (and is) an excellent cook, so there were always cakes, biscuits, and lollies, as well as book-reading, and every variety of being spoilt. Aunty Freda also had numerous goldfish ponds, and it was one of my treats to feed out the wheat germ from the tin. The fishes’ little mouths would come up to the surface and open wide, while I watched the food being sucked inside. There were gold ones, black ones, white ones, and multi-coloured ones. Aunty Freda had some varieties which, as an adult, I have never seen again. When it was time to clean out one of the ponds, all the fish would have to be caught and held temporarily in buckets. Aunty Freda had a soft muslin net for this purpose, and, although the catching had to be done very gently, she would allow me to wield the net for some of the time.

Aunty Freda was also a whiz at making pipe-cleaner men. Working so fast that I could not follow her movements, in a few seconds she could transform a couple of pipe-cleaners into a little figurine. I loved the fact that they had movable limbs, so I could play with them for hours – making them climb trees and traverse the African jungle.

Grandma had had poultry before I knew her. Grandma’s old hen-house still stood, ramshackle and abandoned, two paddocks away from the house. There was a metal tub for a water trough, with a white, very dead, hen still floating in it. I would stare at this unfortunate fowl with dread fascination. But by the time I knew my Grandma, she was a semi-invalid and housebound. She owned two large golden syrup tins full of old pennies – some a hundred years old, as I found out when I examined the lot. Once, she bought a boxful – a gross, it said on the side – of marshmallow Eskimos, some of which we chewed our way through on every visit.

What Grandma and I did mostly was to play “Farm.” She had bought me a lot of toy farm animals over the years, and they stayed at her house so that I could play with them there. Using tooth picks for fences, I made paddocks for cows, calves, bulls, sheep, horses, pigs, poultry – along with a race and a cow-shed. The cows would then have to walk to the cow-shed to be milked, so I would “walk” them along the race (the farm track). Once in the cow-shed, they would be put in their milking stalls and have the (imaginary) milking machines put on. Grandma would be sitting in her big, red chair for all of this, (as she could not get up and down), with me playing at her feet. At the moment of turning on the milking machines, Grandma was in charge: she supplied the appropriate sound effects, “Choof, choof, choof, choof,” as each cow was milked. Then, as in real life, the finished cow would walk out of the hatch-way at the end of the stall, and the next cow would have her turn. Many are the hours we must have spent at this!

Another memory I have of Grandma is her interest in making scrapbooks. She had a number of these, already completed; many of her pictures came from flower catalogues and farming magazines. I caught on to this hobby, making my own scrap-books on and off throughout my life. Grandma made her own flour-and-water paste, mixing it energetically in a small jar. The sound of that rapid stirring was the first time I remember having an ecstasy attack in response to auditory stimuli; I still feel like a purring cat when the sounds are right. In keeping with her national heritage, my Grandma placed a lot of importance on a particular vegetable. Some of her scrap-books were specialised ones, full of nothing else but pictures and their captions – clipped from the Journals of Agriculture – of potatoes.

Then there was digging for kauri gum. Apparently, in years gone by, gum diggers had excavated a part of our farm, and Dad showed us where. Armed with a trowel and a sharp stick, I scraped and delved along the banks of a tiny stream at the bottom end of the farm – “The Flat,” we called it, and we children were not supposed to go there without permission. The stream was in existence only in the wetter seasons, and seemed to be the tail-end of a larger one on the farm next to ours. Most of the kauri gum had, by the time I became a digger, crumbled and dissolved, manifesting as an orange, gritty patch in the soil. Oh, the thrill, on occasionally extracting a good, hard nugget of gum! I saved these up in boxes… as well as my carefully harvested crops of acorns and horse-chestnuts. I was a collector, a hoarder – a trait which would become something of a problem in years to come.

Mum remembers that I could never be hurried. When getting ready for school, for instance, I had to go through all of the steps, no matter what, at the same pace. I was not able to change the routine, nor leave out any parts of it, even if we were in a hurry. Mum learned, she says, simply to allow enough time beforehand. On reaching the school gate, there was then the matter of getting me through it. During my first months there, I would not walk through into the school grounds without someone from the school (whom I trusted) taking my hand and bringing me in. An older pupil, Linda – being a kind, caring and trustworthy person – took on this role, until I no longer needed this form of support. (Thank you, Linda! I never did thank you properly for this.)

Mum covered my school exercise books with spare wallpaper. The type that she had on hand was embossed, and she would top that off with a picture from a used Christmas card on the front cover. I felt that I had the loveliest school books in the class.

At home, I was not much of a household helper, preferring to be outside, usually in my own private world, or hidden in a corner with a book. One of my few household skills that I recall was “pricking the sausages.” As a young child, Mum had told me that the sausages had to be pricked with a fork before cooking, otherwise they would burst and look messy. My resultant savagery towards the sausages meant that one would have to look hard to find an unmutilated piece. My other speciality was the bean-slicing. As we had an enormous bean fence and Mum owned a green, two-holed bean slicer, I could have hours of fun poking the beans in and watching the slices come out the other end. I also learned how to make the porridge whilst Mum and Dad were at the early morning milking, so that it would be ready when they arrived home famished.

At hay-making and silage-making time, the farmers of our immediate neighbourhood helped one another. Morning and afternoon teas were a meal in themselves when feeding a gang of hungry men, so Mum was kept very busy preparing five meals a day, as well as milking cows twice a day, doing all the usual chores, and caring for my brother and me. Typical morning teas would include scones, pikelets and lamingtons – all home-made, of course. Sometimes I was the little helper who carried the basket of food and the billy of tea to the workmen. One way of stirring the tea prior to drinking it was for someone to swing the billy over his head, again and again; the trick was to keep the lid on and the contents in.

There were two hay-barns on the farm: one was known as “Grandad’s hay-barn,” and this was the original one; at the other end of the farm, at Park Fields, was “Dad’s hay-barn.” Hay-barns were just one more enthralling part of my secret childhood life. One could find a hiding-place between hay bales; and tunnels; and a look-out from the top hay bale, peeping out through the strip of ventilation netting just beneath the roof. Sometimes Dad’s hens would lay eggs here, which would be looked for and found.

A secret place

Joined to Dad’s hay-barn was his truck shed, constructed from his home-made concrete blocks. A few feet from the truck shed was an empty piece of land; it looked like Dad had had this in mind for some building or other, but never got started. This forlorn-looking patch had a character all its own, and I would go there for certain types of adventures. It was the only piece of ground near our house which became flooded after heavy rain, so I would paddle around it in my gumboots for hours, poking around with a long stick, to “test the water depth.” Like, I suspect, most children, I loved messing around in puddles. (Unlike most children, however, my Mum would remark that I was the only child she ever knew who could make mud pies without getting muddy.) There were even unique plants to be found in this desolate spot: tauhinu and salsify grew nowhere else on our farm, which added to the mysterious quality of the place. These two plants also looked right for the part: stark in appearance, they seemed to belong to a harsh, lonely environment. Deepening my sense of other-worldliness still further was the secret alliance between the salsify and me. Dad told me a number of times that he wanted to eradicate all salsify from the farm. (Why he was so concerned about salsify is a question in itself, as there were only ever one or two salsify plants growing at any one time, whilst other types of weeds were an ongoing challenge!) Though usually a compliant child, I saw no harm in one or two salsify plants, with their striking purple flowers. I loved them for their unusual appearance, and for adding atmosphere to one of my secret locations. Therefore, in spite of Dad’s reminders to report any sightings, I never did. Yet here is another strand to the strangeness of his request: had he walked the few steps to the same spot that I did, he could have seen the “forbidden” plants for himself. Oh well, aren’t people funny!

Dad’s truck

Dad had an old Studebaker truck which he and I loved driving around in. The driver’s seat was a wooden nail box, and the indicator was a yellow tin hand on a pole, which could be lowered out of the window at the appropriate moment. There were sizeable holes in the floorboards, so that I could watch the grass or the road swish past underneath. One of its purposes was to go to the quarry, where we would collect loads of gravel and sand for making concrete. The other main reason for its existence was hay-making. To save time, Dad had the hay-bale-loading gear permanently attached to the front and top of the truck. Thinking back, I don’t think anybody else’s truck ever looked like this.

Mum usually – if not always – had trouble trying to get me to eat my vegetables. At lunch time, sometimes peas were part of the meal. Although I love peas and every other vegetable now, as a child I hated them. If I knew that Dad and I were going out in the truck after lunch, I could store the peas in the side of my mouth, and, finally, when the road started swishing along, I could spit the peas out through the holes in the floorboards.

One day, at school, we were all out in the playground when an unmistakable vehicle drove up to the petrol station opposite. “Look at that!” somebody yelled.

“That’s my Dad!” I piped up, bursting with pride.

Paspalum and cow plops

Paspalum, a common grass of New Zealand pastures, is useful for resisting drought longer than other varieties. When left uncut, it grows tall flower stalks which ooze a thick, brownish, very sticky substance.

As primary school children, my brother and I would walk down the drive to the farm gate, from where the school bus would pick us up. The drive consisted of two wheel tracks covered with stones, passing through the front paddock, with a strip of grass between the wheel tracks. When the cows had recently grazed the front paddock, there were plenty of fresh “cow plops,” entailing the careful watching of one’s footsteps which was normal life for us. When the cows had not been in the front paddock for a while, there were the old, dried-out cow plops, and the dreaded paspalum: its long flower heads reached right over each of the stone tracks. There was no avoiding the sticky flower heads which wrapped themselves around my bare legs, and no avoiding the glue which stuck tenaciously to my skin and to the hairs on my legs. I could collect quite a lot of this gunk by the time I reached the front gate. One could not simply wipe it off with a tissue or with water: it needed serious washing with soap. Possibly, I disliked it even more than others did, due to my aversion to sticky substances on my skin. Oh well, at least it was not poisonous or otherwise harmful to humans! During my childhood, however, I once heard that someone’s pet goat suffered from ergot poisoning from those paspalum seed heads.

I often enjoyed rolling through the grass, (as long as it was not paspalum in flower). I chose a safe place where the cows had not been for a long time, and felt the pleasure of the fresh grass, its natural smell, and the motion of rolling over and over. One day, I did not realise that a cow had, indeed, been let into an area where usually there were none. Getting back on my feet after a rolling session, I discovered that my white cardigan was now mostly dark green – I was liberally manured with fresh cow dung. I ran crying to my mother for a clean-up – something I did not usually volunteer for!

Walking up and down the race (the central farm road for tractors and cattle) could be an occupational hazard. By the time I began this activity, most of it was concreted, but one last stretch of it was not. Twice every day, the herd of cows would walk up the race to the cow-shed f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Thanks
• Contents
• To the Reader
• Part One
• Part Two
• Glossary and Notes on the Maori Language
• Bibliography and Suggested Further Reading