The morning sun would shine through the dirty windows at odd angles, because the kitchen faced the west and there were only a few ways the light filtered in indirectly. Through the utility room, you could see every fleck of dust as the sun poured in through the dreary and ancient once black and white checked curtains, spilling onto the dirty concrete floor. Through the entry that connected the kitchen and utility room, some of the sunshine creeped into the kitchen. The south facing window also brought the morning light that would bend around the garage that was attached to the house, from the sun peering above the trees in the woods behind the house. Father had already left for work and mother would begin the days’ chores and dinner planning after her morning coffee (black with numerous spoonfuls of sugar) and cigarette, which she took sitting at the kitchen table. My older brother and sister (by 12 and 13 years each, respectively) had also left for school, leaving just my mother and I. Gazing across the table out the aforementioned south facing window, she brooded holding her cigarette in the air with her other arm across her stomach, in a sort of slouch.
On days that required her to make dough, she would make extra to form me a tart using grape jelly as filling and would crease it closed into a half moon shape. I would watch through the steamy oven window as it baked, giving off the scent of promise. The pastry would come out of the oven warm and flakey and the jelly was always too hot on my tongue but I ate it anyway.
During the time it took me to process all of the sensory input as an autistic three-year old child, I could have been living. I could have been loving, appreciating, laughing, and doing. But I stared uncomprehendingly at everything I saw, memorizing it for me to remember like a movie 30 years later. I could have been making connections and learning how to trust others instead of pushing them away or seeing them as static and unnecessary (unless I wanted something, then they were tools). If I had been paying attention to things other than the tart baking in the oven, maybe I would be closer to my mom. Our conversations could consist of more than the current: ‘is dad there? When will he be home?’ Why didn’t she try to get my attention and spend that time with me? Was I ignoring eye contact so much that in my memory I only see glimpses of her amidst a plethora of scenery? I was only three, and even then I thought I knew everything just as a rebellious teenager would vehemently claim, I knew nothing. Nothing that mattered. I acted impulsively, irrationally, and I considered myself equal to the adults with which I exclusively interacted.
