Carrie Link

BLUE TWOS

My days were one long blur of brushing, compressing, Floor Time, speech, physical, occupational and social therapy. Because our boy was under three, the Early Intervention therapists came to our home. I welcomed them like the long lost brothers and sisters they were. Some adult to talk to. Some adult to help. Some adult to truly understand. I don't know how much they helped my son, but they kept me from "jumping" and that's saying something.

Together we rolled him tightly in blankets and swung him like a hammock. The full body pressure awakening his sensory system. We gently bounced him on the bed to get him to make gutteral vocalizations. Lying on his back, our hands on his shoulders, pressing playfully to get the "ugh ugh ugh" sound, training his mouth to do more than cry. We stacked cups and put body parts on Mr. Potato Head endlessly.

"Nose!" we said gleefully, while placing the nose on Mr. Potato Head.
"Nose!" we cooed while touching his nose.
"Nose!" we sang while touching our own noses.

And so it went, and went and went.

The boy stopped crying. Almost two full years of crying, then he stopped. The crying stopped and the talking began. The talking began and the underlying Obsessive Compulsive Disorder came into the light. He found something he loved and we spoke of nothing else for days, if we were lucky, years, if we were not.

"FIVE!" he ordered, and we rewound the VHS video to Elmo singing, "Yo, Five!" "Yo, Five" was replayed no fewer than 20 times a day for months. Months.

As he learned to walk and was rehabilitated, he soon was running.

"BLUE TWO!" he barked. Out the door he went (until I childproofed all the exits) outside looking for blue twos.

Let me tell you something I didn't know until he came along. License plates, in Oregon anyway, have one sticker for the month of registration, and another for the year. February had a blue sticker. Blue two. The sticker can't be bigger than 1 1/2 inches squared. It's way down on the lower left hand corner of a license plate. These blue twos were a source of endless fascination for him. We took several walks a day, not being able to return home until we'd found a blue two. It didn't take me long to stake out which homes had one, and to begin praying their car was in the driveway.

We took road trips in search of blue twos. Parking lots. Safeway, Target, apartment buildings.

"BLUE TWO!" he shouted joyfully each time we found one.

We looked for blue twos the greater part of each day, for four years. One thousand four hundred sixty days in a row I took that boy in search of blue twos.

Not a bruise on 'em.