Chapter: 2  Meet Jane

  Jane’s morning started, as most do, with a sudden, violent jolt into consciousness. One moment, she was peacefully dreaming she was an ant on a leisurely stroll through a field of oversized marshmallows. The next, her internal alarm system, typically triggered only by the scent of burning toast, blared a scream that could only be described as a dying pterodactyl in the next room.

Acting on pure instinct, Jane leaped from her bed with the grace of a startled giraffe on roller skates, yelling, "FOR THE QUEEN!" Still briefly believing she was an ant, she continued groggily, "...Wait... ATTICUS...? Are YOU okay...?" She hit the floor with a pathetic thud, her ankle twisting into a shape not found in any human anatomy textbook. As a wave of excruciating pain washed over her, the adrenaline began to recede, and her mind finally caught up to her body.

Jane groaned, sprawled on the floor in her pajamas, as reality hit her. Her earlier battle cry had been a bit of an overreaction to her son's intense screams. It wasn't a real battle. It was just Atticus, who is mostly non-verbal and has zero chill when he wants something.

With another groan, Jane hauled herself to her feet, clutching her throbbing ankle. Her son, she knew, would be perfectly fine. But her ankle? That was a different story.

A throbbing ankle wasn't going to stop Jane. She had a mission far more critical than most: getting her five-year-old, Atticus, to school. Atticus was non-verbal, and mornings were always a chaotic dance of interpretation and patience.

"Atticus, honey, we need to get dressed," she said, ungracefully limping into his room. He was already sitting on the floor, clutching a bright red and blue bundle of fabric—his favorite superhero costume. This was a battle she'd fought many times.

Atticus looked up at her, his big, blue eyes silently pleading his case. He held up the costume and then pointed to his chest. The message was clear: he wasn't just wearing a costume; he was becoming the hero. For Atticus, the world could be a loud, scary, and unpredictable place. But when he was in the costume, he was brave. He had a job to do.

"I know, buddy. The web-slinging hero is very important," Jane said, her voice soft and understanding. "But what about your cool dinosaur shirt? It has a T-Rex on it. T-Rexes are super strong, just like spiders."

Atticus shook his head vehemently and hugged the costume tighter. He made a soft humming sound, his way of expressing his deep-seated desire. The costume was non-negotiable. Jane sighed, knowing this was a battle she couldn't win without a major meltdown. The school had a strict "no costumes" policy, but they also understood Atticus’s needs. She'd already had a long conversation with his teacher about his love for the wall-crawling character.

"Okay, super spider costume it is," she said with a small smile. She helped him put it on, carefully zipping up the back. The moment the mask went on, Atticus's entire demeanor changed. He stood taller, his shoulders back, and he started to "thwip" his wrists, pretending to shoot webs. He was ready for school. He was ready for anything. Jane was ready for coffee.

As Jane helped him into his shoes, a tiny, almost imperceptible smile played on her lips. Her son wasn't a typical boy, but in her eyes, he was the bravest spider she'd ever known.

Atticus was already at the kitchen table, which was less a table and more a command center for his morning routine. He sat in his usual spot, the chair perfectly angled so he could see the entire living room and the small, chaotic world of the ant colony just beyond the window. Jane limped into the room, a bowl of cereal in her good hand and a can of powdered "strawberry milk" in the other.

"Okay, web-slinger," she said, carefully placing the items in front of him. "Drink up."

Atticus's relationship with food was, to put it mildly, complicated. He had ARFID, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, which meant his palate was less a preference and more a strict, unchangeable law. Every morning, for as long as Jane could remember, breakfast was the same: a specific brand of oat-based, multi-grain cereal with specific marshmallows, eaten dry from a specific red bowl. Any deviation—a different bowl, a different cereal, or God forbid, the inclusion of actual milk—was a catastrophic event.

Today, the cereal was in the right bowl, and he was eating it with a quiet, focused intensity. The real battle, however, was the drink. Jane placed a small sippy cup of a pink nutritional supplement next to his bowl. For Atticus, this was his "strawberry milk," the one and only drink he would consume other than water. It was a daily negotiation, a delicate dance of encouragement and stubborn resistance, often succeeding only with bribery.

Jane sat opposite him, watching as he crunched his cereal, his little superhero mask slightly askew. She held the sippy cup out to him. "Just a little sip, buddy. Super Spiders need to be strong."

Atticus looked at the sippy, then at her. He shook his head, a small, defiant gesture. Jane knew the drill. She held up the sippy, and held it to his lips. He took a hesitant sip, and for a moment, Jane thought she had won. But then, in a sudden, deliberate motion, Atticus turned his head and shot the pink liquid out of his mouth. It flew across the room and landed with a wet splat right on her white sneakers by the front door.

Jane stared at her now-pink sneakers, a moment of silent shock before she let out a long, weary sigh. "Well," she muttered to herself, "at least my shoes match my morning." Just then Atticus took a big swig of strawberry milk, and just as Jane started to form a proud smile, he dribbled all of it out of his mouth into his own shoes before she could even blink. She stared at the sticky shoes he had no alternative for, and groaned as she pictured the long process of cleaning the velcro of the AFOs he wore to prevent toe walking. Jane glanced back up at Atticus, who was back to eating his dry cereal, completely unbothered. The battle was over. The spider, it seemed, had won. They would both spend the day in sticky shoes.

With her sneakers now a shade of slight pink, Jane hoisted Atticus onto her hip, careful not to let him slip from her grasp. He was still in full super spider mode, humming contentedly as she grabbed his backpack. She swung the front door open, only to be met with a sight that made her heart sink: a group of neighborhood kids, armed with sticks and rocks, stood around the beleaguered ant colony by her mailbox.

"Oh, no, you don't!" Jane muttered, a fresh wave of panic washing over her. She gently set Atticus down, her ankle protesting with a sharp twinge of pain. "Hold my hand, buddy," she said, before grabbing a large piece of cardboard from the recycling bin. She scribbled a message in big, bold letters: "DANGER! DO NOT DISTURB THE ANTS (and also, please don't get bit)." This scenario happened weekly, and the neighborhood kids just didn't realize the obsession this created for Atticus in the morning. Seeing the angry ants always encouraged Atticus to try to kick them, not realizing the poor decision this was yet, regardless of the number of times this had previously ended catastrophically. Jane was very tired of playing hockey guard between ants and oncoming traffic for her danger-seeking son.

As she propped the sign up, a small chuckle escaped her lips. Maybe she was crazy after all. But just as she glanced down at her son, a familiar glint of metal caught her eye. It was her car keys, and they were dangling precariously from Atticus's hand. He let out a triumphant "thwip" and dropped them, right into the middle of the very ant colony she was trying to protect.

A fresh surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. Jane knelt down, gingerly trying to pluck the keys from the sea of angry, scurrying insects. The ants, feeling the full might of her pink shoes, began to swarm her hands and shoes, their tiny bites stinging like a thousand pinpricks.

Just then, Atticus, seeing his opportunity, wiggled his hand free and darted off toward the street. Jane looked up, her heart leaping into her throat. A car was speeding down the road, its tires screeching as the driver slammed on the brakes. Jane, forgetting her ankle, her shoes, and the ants, launched herself forward. In a move that would have made any football coach proud, she tackled Atticus, wrapping her arms around his small body and rolling them both onto the grassy embankment.

They landed with a soft thud, a cloud of dirt and school supplies exploding around them. Atticus was safe, but Jane was now caked in dirt, and her frustration finally bubbled over. "Ohhhhsh*t," she breathed, the word slipping out before she could stop it.

Atticus, still in her arms, looked up at her with wide, unblinking eyes. He took a deep breath, and then, in a clear, deliberate voice, repeated her word with the exact same tone. "Ohhhhsh*t!," he chuckled and then said again, "Ohhhhsh*t!."

Jane's face fell as the words, once a simple exclamation of frustration, now became a new fixation. Just as she was trying to convince him she had said "OCEAN," the school bus pulled up to the curb. Atticus, still chanting his new word, looked up at the bus with a mischievous glint in his eye. He was a superhero, after all, and he had a new superpower: the power of a really, really bad word. Jane just sighed and tried to smile as she greeted the bus driver.

"Ohhhhsh*t!" exclaimed Atticus with a proud mischievous smile. Jane smiled, red-faced, at the shocked bus driver and said, "He learned how to say 'OCEAN' last night, isn't that great?" The bus driver looked unamused and nodded as she closed the bus door.

Jane watched the school bus pull away, a small, sticky-shoed, dirt-covered, "ocean"-chanting web-slinger waving goodbye from the window. She stood there for a moment, letting the quiet of the morning settle around her. Her ankle throbbed, her hands stung with ant bites, and her shoes were a colorful testament to her son's unique way of expressing himself. She felt embarrassed, defeated, and furious. She was silently crying as she scooped her keys from the angry mob of ants, and she was also psychotically smiling—in the insane way that people smile just before they are locked away in an asylum in an old movie.

This, she knew, was actually a comparatively good day. She hadn't overslept. It was a day that started with her son safe on his way to school, a day without a full-blown meltdown before coffee, a day with only a few minor injuries and only one new, slightly inappropriate word added to his vocabulary. It was a testament to the fact that her mornings, like her son, were a chaotic blend of irony, humor, and sometimes a bit of heartbreak.

Jane typically practiced what she called "purposeful apathy" whenever in public to dim the noise a bit. It was a world of constant noise and a symphony of other people's feelings and judgments. But Atticus was different. His autism, with its intense fixations and unyielding routines, was the one thing she couldn't constantly hear.

Atticus was the hardest thing to protect, a constant challenge against a world that wasn't built for him—an adventurous, creative spirit with no comprehension of danger. Yet, he was also the easiest thing to love.

ApathyJane.fitconsulting.fit