A drink and a song

Last night, we decided to live it up a little and get some dinner out---some Burger King.  We ordered just what we felt like, because we are like that, living large, you know.  And then we ate it in the scenic lovely parking lot of the mini mall the Burger King was at.  I told Tony as we ate that I knew when I married him he'd take me some special places, and a night like the one we were having certainly proved I was right.

Seriously, though, we enjoyed ourselves.  I was thinking how in some ways, I'm pretty suited to the lifestyle that life with Janey brings.  I am not much into getting dressed and going out, I wouldn't really call myself unsociable, but I'm probably low-sociable, and I am as happy eating in the car in a parking lot as I would be in a fancy restaurant overlooking the ocean, most of the time.  We had a nice meal, joking around and people-watching.

At one point, Janey asked for a drink of Tony's soda.  He had a big diet Coke (he is a diabetic).  We don't usually like Janey to have soda, but in the spirit of a carefree night, we gave it to her without a lot of thought, and she had a nice big draw of it.

When we got home, it was the time Janey usually goes to sleep, about 7:30, but she wasn't sleeping.  She finally did go down about 8:30, which was fine.  In another example of just how we roll, we all went to sleep at that time, which is I have to admit a fairly typical bedtime for us.  We are just not late night people.

At four in the morning, Tony woke me up to say Janey had been up almost all night and it was my turn to take over, so he could get a little sleep before work.  I was happy to, but not happy to hear about the sleepless night.  We've certainly had them at times, but not too often recently.  There's two types of them.  One is the upset, screaming up all night and the other is the cheerful but demanding up all night, and Janey was in the second mode.  Every time Tony drifted into a minute or two of shut-eye (we stay up when Janey's up, but the human body can only take so much not sleeping and we drift off for minutes here and there), Janey had a new request.  So he was not in a good way.

Janey switched over to requesting things from me.  She watched part of "Journey to Joke-a-lot", a Care Bears movie that I think was designed mostly for late night college parties where there might possibly be some non-sobriety going on, due to its many wild colorful scenes of roller coaster type rides going through bizarre landscapes.  Then she asked for another show on the "big TV", but I told her it was time to lie down, and if she couldn't sleep, she could use her iPad.  That was a mistake, as it turned out her iPad was out of charge.  That is something Janey doesn't get at all.  I think she thinks we just every now and then decide to take away the iPad, to show our dominance or something.  We've tried getting her to use it plugged in, but she immediately unplugs it.  So she was ready for a meltdown.

Grasping at straws, and cursing the caffeine in the diet coke, consumed after 12 noon, which we have to be reminded over and over and over results in her not sleeping, I asked her if she wanted me to sing her a song.  She said immediately "Yes!" which startled me, as she isn't usually a direct answerer and she generally isn't that into my singing.  I asked her what song, and she said "Angels we have heard on high!"  Another direct answer, and I knew what it really meant.  I pretended I didn't, and started to sing the carol, and she said "On the big computer!"

For some reason, Angels We Have Heard must always be played through iTunes on the computer, with the visualizer on.  I knew that from the start, and I dragged myself out of bed and put it on.  And we listened and watched, the unseasonable song and the mesmerizing colors and shapes.  We listened together to five versions of the song.  Janey danced next to me.  Some of the versions required me to clap along, which Janey let me know by clapping my hands for me to get me started.  We skipped version six, done by Neil Diamond, and went to version seven, a VeggieTales version, proving that Janey doesn't always have great taste in music.  We wiled away the very early morning hours, until it was time to get ready for school.

I thought, after I'd had a little rest, that like the parking lot dinner, that sometimes what Janey wants and needs is similar to what I'd want and need.  I love hearing many versions of a song, and getting into the light show the computer provides, and aside from not quite wanting to do it when I'd rather be sleeping, I'd enjoyed myself a lot with Janey, having a drink and a song with a friend.  My life today isn't exactly what I'd ever pictured, but whose life ever is?  Life is what happens while we're busy making other plans, to quote John Lennon.  Having a child like Janey isn't in most people's plans, but it's life, and like any life, it has its downs but it also has its nights of drink and song.

Thank you for the music

I've written a lot here about Janey's love of music, but it's very hard to capture it in writing.  It's hard to explain it without seeing and knowing Janey.  It's not really just that she loves music, but that she seems to understand it, to appreciate it, on a level far beyond what she normally understands or appreciates.  She can hear a song once, and months later, ask for it and remember it and get excited when it gets back to a part she really loves.

A recent example was Janey asking over and over for "the angel song".  Well, there are lots of angel songs, especially Christmas ones.  She had also called a song recently that mentioned wings in it an angel song, so I tried playing that, but it wasn't it.  I played a bunch of Christmas songs, even though I like to save them for the season, but they weren't it either, and Janey was getting increasingly upset.  It's hard to see her like that---knowing what she wants, but just not having the words to explain it.  We were spending long periods of time by my computer using iTunes, trying to get the right song.  Finally, one night, she blurted out "And the Angels Sing!"  Somehow, she had remembered the title.  I don't know when she had heard that song.  It was on my playlist, but iTunes showed it hadn't been played.  I played it right away, and the look on Janey's face was one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen.  It was what she had needed to hear.  If you don't know the song, you can hear it here.  It's a beautiful Big Band tune.  We listened together, and when it got to the bridge, Janey started clapping and clapping, and looked close to happy tears.

That's another thing about Janey's love of music---it's very discriminating.  She doesn't like music in general, she likes the music she LIKES.  I think her love of songs is based on both the tone of the voices and the melody.  For example, in my playlist, I have a lot of songs by The Gatlin Brothers, both as a country group and here and there on country gospel albums that have lots of performers.  I don't always recognize them when they come up, but Janey does.  If a song is by them, even if she has never heard it before, she'll get very excited and ask to hear it again.  There is something about them she adores.  But others songs she loves sung by just about anyone, like "Over the Rainbow" or "Keep on the Sunny Side"

I think the most amazing moment with Janey and music was the first time she heard the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  She suddenly started to clap loudly, the first time she had done that in response to music.  I looked in the back seat (we were driving) and she looked close to tears of happiness, clapping and looked amazed.  If you know the story about King George 2 and how he stood up when he first heard that chorus, you can see why what Janey did gave me chills.

I could be deluding myself about Janey's innate understanding of and appreciation of music, but I don't think so.  As they say, she comes by it naturally.  My mother is a church organist, William a very talented guitar player, and Tony's family has a lot of musicians.  Tony and I are avid listeners, and the house almost always has some music playing.  And from the start, Janey would sing when she couldn't or wouldn't talk.  I think whatever ravaged part of her brain, causing her autism, spared the musical part of her brain.  And like the ABBA song Janey would probably not find musically pleasing, I say thank you for the music, the joy it's bringing.