The Journey Begins

Most of my earliest memories revolve around my little brother. I don’t remember my mother being pregnant with him, but I do remember going to visit my Mom once in the hospital with my Dad.

He carried me on his shoulder and I saw Mom in a bright white room lying in a bed. She was very cheerful for someone in a hospital, and at the time I didn’t know why she was there or why she was so happy. I think someone had mistakenly told me she was getting a check-up.

Lee was born when I was two years old on January 17, 1988, so I can’t remember a time when he was not around. Lee’s legal name is James Tinsley Alsop , but we all called him “Lee” short for Tinsley, which is good because I would have had a very hard time remembering to spell all that.

We always spelled it this way, “L-e-e.”

I remember my Dad taking down the old crib to put up a new one and how the old one fell apart on his foot, and he started cursing. I remember when the new crib was finished how Lee was placed in the middle of the crib. He did not do much, he just laid on his back seeing as how he was a baby.

I thought it would be boring being in a crib for so long and he would have more fun if there were something for him to do. My mother failed to see it that way and she would remove the toys after I had left the room. Of course, I would pile them up in his crib again the next day,

Mom would take them out, and we would start the whole process over again on a regular basis. We realized later Lee really liked tight cramped spaces.

By the time Lee was two years old, my parents noticed something was up. My Mom thought it was odd that instead of playing with his toy cars,

the way most kids do by rolling them back and

forth, Lee would line them up in neat little rows.

He also loved to keep his books in a long pathway, particularly his “Eye Witness” books that had these little pictures on the back. The house looked like the “Wizard of Oz” when Dorothy is off to see the Wizard on the yellow brick road.

At first, Lee had started to talk just like other babies and say words like “Mama” and “Dada” all the time. But after a while, he stopped talking all together. So he was very quiet, except for making a few noises that did not sound like words at all.

Some family members thought he might be deaf, but Mom did not think that was it.

If Lee was deaf, then how come he could hear her unwrap a candy bar two rooms away? So we got him tested and the test results showed he had normal hearing ability.

Next came the visit to the psychologist and then the psychiatrist. They labeled him “Pervasive Developmental Disorder” (PDD). This means Lee was showing delays in development of socialization and communication.

Finally after my parents took him to seven different doctors they pronounced him Autistic. Lee was 2 years 3 months old.

It was really hard for my parents to read whatever information they could find on Autism. The old way of thinking about this mysterious developmental disorder Autism, believed the mother was to blame. They even called it the “Refrigerator Mom” theory.

Meaning the genuine lack of maternal warmth had caused autism. Mom knew that wasn’t true because she was a stay at home mom and got to spend all kinds of time with Lee.