Me as younger, younger brother Those of you who follow my blog are aware that my older brother Michael is autistic, low functioning (formerly known as retarded) and has never spoken. I don’t know how I came up with the notion that I needed him to tell me who he was. Maybe since I was […]
My brother Michael is unrecognizable in this portrait. I had not intended it this way, but it is oddly appropriate. Since Mike has never spoken and functions on a very low level, I don’t know much about him as a person. He is alien to me. As I have discussed in previous posts, seemingly ad […]
Back-story This post is a back-story for my first visit to see my autistic brother Michael at the Brooklyn Developmental Center. It is something of a departure from what I usually write, as it concerns a relationship outside my immediate family of my two brothers and my parents. I was married to my first wife […]
Since yesterday’s wallow, I’ve taken stock. I started thinking about my need for attention and how it affects my likes and dislikes. I would guess that, like me, other siblings of autistic brothers or sisters also struggle with an unfulfilled need for attention. Today, I turn the question around. What do I attend to? Paradox […]
Yesterday, Mom was my guest blogger. She said it was ok to post her e-mail to me in response to my post about memory and my childhood. She said how important it was for my younger brother and me to process the experience of growing up with our autistic, nonverbal and low-functioning brother, Michael. Dad […]
I usually write about my brother Michael and my relationship with him. But my 8 1/2 year old granddaughter’s mother will have a baby any day now. On the eve of siblinghood, I asked Sidra her thoughts about becoming a big sister. Jack: How long have you wanted a baby brother or sister? Sidra: 8 […]
I haven’t done much reading about misalignment of the eyes. I do know that if the eyes are not aligned properly in an infant, stereoscopic vision does not develop naturally. From the picture in the last post, you can see that my brother’s right eye looks off to the side while the left seems fixed […]
This is an important picture to me. I took this was at his 40th birthday party. It wouldn’t win any prizes, but it showed me something that I always sought from my older brother: attention. The fact that Michael has never spoken or seemed to acknowledge me probably explains this craving. My quest for his attention was […]
