The Day I Made Lemon Chicken for Oliver Sacks

It all started when I was sitting with the late Wayne Gilpin and the rest of the then board of the Autism Society of America in the Banyan Tree. It was 1993. At the time, I was the president of ASA and Wayne was treasurer. We had run against each other for president and he had been surprised and a little ticked off at losing. To get him to agree to be treasurer, I had to make a deal that he'd be in charge of the international conference in Toronto. The bar we all sat in was in the hotel that housed it.

Neither Wayne nor I was interested in drinking, so we talked to each other. A presenter had just pulled out of the conference and I made a proposal to be a fill-in. I would talk about my family: The Autism Family. We had an empty session and Wayne had nothing to lose, so he agreed.

I wrote that night until one A.M., filling page after page of a legal pad with my presentation. Only slightly bleary, I presented it the next morning. I told the room about my two sons at very different functioning levels. There wasn't much news in that. Then I dropped the bomb. In the late '80”s Edward Ritvo, then the head of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, wrote a letter to an Autism Journal, outlining ten anonymous high functioning adult phenotypes of autism. Two of those ten were my husband and me. Even though the fact was known to members of my local autism community, especially since Dr. Ritvo referred other high functioning adults to me, it had never been announced to the world at large. Both my husband and I had careers that might have been adversely affected. Most people still saw autism in terms of Dustin Hoffman's portrayal in Rainman. It wouldn't have done our health insurance any good either. So when I let the news out, I did it outside the country.

The room where I did my presentation was packed. I gave, among other things, my personal experience with what stimming felt like, and tricks I used to appear as normal as possible in public. I found out later that there were people from thirty-eight countries present. At the end, a woman came up with tears in her eyes, to thank me. The audio tape was the second best seller at the conference, with only that of a well known person with autism ahead of it. It was also referenced by the keynote speaker at the plenary session. He had listened to it before he presented his own talk.

Sometime after I'd returned to where I lived in California, I got a call at the metal finishing plant where I was working as chemist and Q.C. manager. It was a representative for Oliver Sacks. I was told that the woman who had approached me after my presentation was Mira Rothenberg, author of Children with Emerald Eyes and pioneer in the treatment of children with autism and schizophrenia. She and Dr. Sacks were friends and she had convinced him that he needed to meet with our family for a new book he was writing. I was all for meeting someone on whom a Robin Williams movie was based, so I agreed.

Dr. Sacks arrived to see our family later than planned, getting caught in California traffic. He was charmingly apologetic. He also brought several of his books, which he autographed and gave to me. Insisting we call him “Oliver,” he spent the day. I made hamburgers for lunch and lemon chicken for supper. He was fascinated by the process, accompanying my higher functioning older son to the backyard to pick a fresh lemon I had requested. He confessed that his custom was to have someone cook him a pot of bouillabaisse, to last the week. He hadn't expected to like the chicken, cutting himself a small piece from his portion on the serving plate, then later eating the whole thing.

The one thing that stands out most in my memory, was watching him stare at my lower functioning younger son, typing rapidly at a computer completely by touch, a skill he had taught himself. He exclaimed, “What a strange creature!”

If anyone else had said something like that, I would have asked them to leave my house. In his case, I didn't get mad, because it was merely an astonished observation.

Dr. Sacks took off after supper. His next stop was to be to see Temple Grandin in Colorado. Temple and I knew each other because we'd worked together on the National Board. Oliver gave her a tape of my presentation in Canada, and after she listened to it, she called me. We talked for a long time.

Oliver had asked if it was all right to use our family's name or if we wanted him to disguise us. He even offered to put us in another state. I told him that California would be fine, but asked that he change our name.

As it turned out, we, as “Family B,” got a paragraph. Temple got the rest of the chapter. Even so, from Oliver's description of our home, every one from the local ASA chapter who'd ever come to our house for meetings, knew it was us anyway. I didn't mind. They weren't the ones I was concerned with fooling. When the book came out, Oliver sent me an autographed copy, which I still treasure.

The most wonderful thing that came out of Dr. Sacks' visit was that for a while we became pen pals. He wrote on a real typewriter with a ribbon that badly needed changing, but his letters were well worth reading. At the time, the neurotransmitter focus in autism was on dopamine and serotonin. Because of my younger son's extreme sensitivity to monosodium glutamate (MSG), I suggested that medications involving the glutamate system might be more helpful. Oliver was very encouraging when I proposed my theory. It was a joy and a relief to have his attention. In the end, at least where my son was concerned, I proved to be correct. Glutamate protective substances greatly improve his behavior. That day with Oliver Sacks, and our correspondence afterward, helped to improve my son's life and mine. I will always be grateful.

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