The following is an excerpt from my book, with some changes. 

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I was taming a steaming pot of wild spaghetti with a wooden spoon when the Phone rang. The water had been boiling at quite a roil. If I didn’t stay alert, I sometimes had fires. I had fires a lot. 

“Hello?”

“Kimbuhrley?” Said an Australian accent on the other end of the line. I knew right away who possessed the soft voice. 

I’d been writing to Donna Williams, and she back to me, on and off for a long time. This is because I loved reading memoirs. I loved knowing what made people tick; so to speak. 

One day, browsing through Caldors Dept. Stpre, I saw Nobody Nowhere (The Extraordinary Biography of an Autistic) displayed on an end cap; and I bought it. I figured ‘I definitely don’t have autism but it’ll be a good read.  Surprisingly I connected to the words in a surprising way. Donna had me at Slap! the 1st word of that book. Fan letters turned into replies turned into 8 pagers from the both of us back and forth. Now she was on the phone! I turned off the spaghetti pot and paused, spoon in one hand, phone receiver in the other. 

Naturally I was alarmed. There were grease-like stains, the color of old tea, dripping down the sorry walls. What must she think!?  After a stunned staring spell I shook off the panic. Aah, she could not see our kitchen through the phone. 

“Yes, yes this is her,” I stammered. “Yes.”

“I am in your area,” she said. 

We made arrangements to meet at a House in Deep River, Connecticut, that she and her then husband were renting while she made appearances locally to promote her 2nd book Somebody Somewhere.

I had two sons at this point: Jeff 14 and Jeremy almost 5. I was a few months away from giving birth to my third, who would be born a girl and much much later start the process of becoming a man. It was 1995. I was fairly certain both Jeff and I were autistic and from what I’d told Donna, she thought so too although we were both 5 years away from our formal diagnoses. 

Howie, my husband drove us to the address I’d scribbled on an an envelope. The boys, in the backseat, enjoyed watching scenery fly by. The little car was littered with fast food toys for them to fidget with. 

“Why the hell cant she meet all 4 of us? This is bullshit. ” Howie griped. Jeff was fiddling with paper, shredding it and sprinkling the fluttery pieces over Jeremy, who sat in his car seat entranced, trying to catch them. 

I explained that Donna was private and had wanted to visit with me an hour. She’d invited Jeff but he declined. “Look!” I said. “A playground. Perfect. Take them there for an hour after you drop us off. And we’ll go out to eat afterwards.”

We arrived and I got out and stepped onto the gravel drive. The house was a deep dark blue, a rich saturated color like the color of chosen to paint house of built. It wasn’t a nanny pamby washed out blue. It was bold and I liked the flowers lining the walk like soldiers. Daffodils stood in neat rows saluting me with vibrant yellow heads that nodded in the warm summer breeze as I made my way down the walkway. 

I became mindful of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem and recited the line as the door opened and Howie, seeing me step inside drove off. 

“I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

That was the line. Ian, Donna’s husband, had a phone against his ear and ushered me inside with hand motions, all the while mentioning to the person on the phone that he’d like to see the Grsnd Canyon while he was in the States. He never made eye contact. I felt right at home. He had Aspergers?! I’d have to do more reading on that. 

A trompe l’oeil faux rug was painted onto the hardwood floor in the entryway. I wanted to drop to my hands and knees and inspect the Ingenius paint strokes, so convincingly rendered to look like a multicolored rag rug. But I did not. These days I am far more ‘present’ and attuned to act on wants but I could not do so then. 

He disappeared into the house to get Donna and finish his phone call I assumed, so I plopped down on a piano bench wanting so much to plunk down a key. Or better, I imagined myself shrunk to a miniature me and pirouetting across the ivories; my wee dance steps imbibing a lively tune. 

In one of our epic letters I’d told Donna I would love to hear her play piano. I knew she wrote music arrangements. 

Two plates nearby on a shining expanse of dark-wooded dining table, had food piles on them. 

Her voice interrupted my thoughts. “Where is she?!” It was Donna, bounding down the stairs and looking the part of smiling mischievous Sprite in her oversized tie dyed T shirt. 

I rose to stand and looking upon her in denim maternity bib overalls I felt I had grown to a preposterous height of 7 feet tall in comparison to her petite frame I felt like an Amazon. 

“Hi,” I said, shifting the full to bursting paper grocery bag on my hip. 

Im preposterous. I thought. 

She immediately handed me a sparkling knickknack shed acquired as a souvenir. I examined her array of glass things she’s  collected on her tour of the U.S., rotating each treasure in my hand near a lit window so it would catch the light. I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my favorite films The Glass Menagerie. 

Lugging my paper bag on my hip we ventured outside into the backyard and sat at a picnic table. 

Inside the bag was an array of items. She’d asked me to bring things I especially liked and through the sharing of my things she would know me better. 

The first thing I removed from my bag was a miniature piano. It was supposed to wind up and play music but there has always been a penny rattling around inside rendering it mute. What a metaphor for communication impairment!

For some time, Donna tried to work the coin out but it proved difficult. Next I pulled out my African American figurine Moe, and then I showed her a few petrified mushrooms that I often put gesso on and painted farm scenes on them. They were large enough to be elves’ awnings. I gave her one to keep but she could not accept it as when she returned home she said it would never get through customs. 

Of course my most prized treasure was in my pocket but it meant so much to me I could not pull it out. As I said,  I would share it today but could not do so then. It was a greasy tan pull string from the ceiling light of the beloved rat infested grey house I’d lived in as a child. It came from the house where money was tight and I’d raid a nearby farm in the middle of the night to steal potatoes and corn. 

We three spoke of things. 

After we thoroughly inspected all my treasures ( except for the pull string) Donna rose and walked over to a crack in the patio cement. She gently plucked an intricate weed and the three of us examined it close-up for while, the delicate white petals, and pale dirt clinging to its meager hairy roots. After we had fully appreciated it, she gently nestled it back into its cranny. 

A lawn mower roared to life in a nearby yard and back into the house we went. 

The house was harmonious! I studied a framed map for some time. Then all our attentions turned to the swarthy wooden beams above our heads and the flora tacked up there in wrapped bunches. We tried to name the dozens of drying flower and herbs. Sage? Queen Anne’s Lace?

Food still lay in piles on the tables. None of us mentioned this. We moved to the living room and I say in an area that made Donna uncomfortable. She wanted me to her side and not ‘straight across’ from her. She redirected me to a couch and started flipping through TV channels, clearly delighted at American TV. She settled on Oprah. I noted that she was most at ease when I set things exactly where they’d been, like her crystal ornaments. I set one on the table earlier and she’d immediately moved it back near the lamp. Imagine, I thought, tweaking the environment to make one’s self more comfortable. Here I was, sitting in the place she’d directed, where she thought things were set up for optimal communication. Rearranging my environment, being selfaware of these things, it was enticing, a brave new possibility. 

The hour passed quickly and glancing at my watch I knew Howie would be returning soon. “I’ll use the rest room now,” I said, “and then Howie will be back to get me.”

I lingered in the tiny wallpapered cubicle of a bathroom after I washed my hands, enjoying the lavender aroma and Grandma atmosphere.

That’s when the rise and fall of slow and dramatic music started. I cocked my head to the side, standing there in front of the antique sink basin and closed my eyes. 

That house received Donna’s music joyously, which thrummed on in a calm then quicker harried pace; finishing out neatly. I counted to ten in my head and went to the piano nook. The bench was empty of any, shining in the 5:05PM sun. 

I saw Donna then, and she was taller than me now, perched several stairs up on the staircase that led to the upper floor; the gleaming bannister between us, her long fingers resting there. 

I said in her direction that the playing was lovely. 

She seemed frenzied as she  answered excitedly, “That wasn’t me playing. It was him!” And she pointed at Ian who bowed his head and frowned. He shrugged. 

I directed my voice toward Ian, “It was very good. I didn’t know you could play. You didn’t mention it in our letters.”

He shrugged again and I went for the door. The red Hyundai was idling outside, the AC blasting no doubt for the kids who’s been playing hard in the summer Sunday at that playground. 

I pointed out to Donna, Jeff in the backseat. Donna knew about Jeff because of our letters. She knew my struggles with school meetings. She’d sent him a rare Briish copy of her book which shed signed. Unlike U.S.verdions it had Britt slang. In her letters Donna had tild me she strongly suspected we two were undiagnosed autistics. She’d told me things like: 

Be proud. Be brave. Be reasonable. Be you. Be on your side. 

“I’ll say hello to him, ” she said cheerily.

She peeked into his (closed) car window, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare and still smiling she said “Hello Jeff.”

He rolled around his wide eyes which to me were so much like wet marbles and wiggled his fingers at her. And that was that. 

“Bye Kimbuhrley!”

“Bye Donna!”

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And that was our meeting. I had no sense of her being an internationally known bestselling author. I thought of her as kind and sisterly, a true peer in every sense. 

Polly (as she preferred to be known) has passed on. She touched so many and will continue to do so her. I haven’t yet made a personal memorial to her in my home but I plan to do so. She was a magical lady. A rare soul. 

In one of her last FB entries she said:

Thank you all, those in the inner circles, and non-biological sisters, brothers in the world… thanks for the sharing… shine on for me… fill your shoes for I will fly the body and have neither feet nor shoes of my own but happy to share any that welcome the essence of me.

My book available here:

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Banana-Moon-Living-Aspergers/dp/150572886X

A blog I wrote for Mental Illness Awareness Month and Art of Autism viewable here:

http://the-art-of-autism.com/selective-mutism-being-quiet-doesnt-mean-i-have-nothing-to-say-mentalhealthmonth/

Filed under: aspergers, authors, autism, contemplation Tagged: death, Donna Williams, meeting donna williams, remembrance