On being an Asperger's man's tourguide into neurotypical land

I find my job as the wife of a man with Asperger's syndrome, my role is often that of explaining just how the "neurotypical" world works. I am his "Native Guide" in this "Strange Land" that he finds himself literally stumbling around in. (I say literally because his autism involves gross and fine motor coordination issues.) It's not uncommon to catch Dave backpedalling his way out of an uncertain social situation with the phrase, "Whatever is appropriate to your culture." While this might seem to a great catch-all that anyone could use, it throws off the new brother-in-law when he is asking Dave if he wants a lemonade at a family gathering.

In such a situation, I have to be particularly vigilant and notice that Dave had been drinking Diet Coke, the lemondade is sweetened (he's got diabetes) and pick up on the fact that my brother was only diligantly doing as HIS wife had asked and offering everyone lemonade. Dave, being quite literal thought his supply of Diet Coke was being cut off, and that now it was time to drink lemonade. I had to speak up for him and request that he get his Diet Coke refill.

Dave approaches my world as an anthropologist exploring a strange and confusing place. He exists as a culture of one, as each autistic person has his or her own unique sensory perceptions of the world that make the world a confusing and difficult world to navigate. Finding me as his native guide to explain how the world works from his point of view has been a way to open up his world. Since meeting me, he's visited several fast food places he's never been to before. The prospect of navigating alone the different rules of ordering, comprehending the concepts of one restaurant's value meal versus another's platter and why he should fill his own drink at one place at not another is extremely stressful. In Dave's ideal world, each fast food place would be laid out uniformly as the streamlined Soup Nazi of Seinfeld renown. As such graceful streamlined activity rarely exists in our world, I stand as a buffer between worlds for my love.

Creating new traditions after the holidays

As newlyweds, my husband and I enjoyed sharing each others traditions this past holiday season. We are a mixed marriage-- he is a pagan and I am a metaphysical Christian. We created a new tradition for both of us which involved reading to each other. First is was the novel The Handmaid and the Carpenter and later a series of Bible readings that traced the lineage of Christ as part of a Joshua tree custom I had found. As spiritual people we both enjoyed reflecting on the metaphysical meanings of the old scriptural texts and the modern telling of the story as well.

Now that the holidays are over, I commented to Dave that I missed the reading to each other so we have started a new tradition in our home of reading to each other in the evening from our spiritual texts. For me it's a chance to not relearn the scriptures that I have been away from for a long time but have always loved and look at them with my new learning. It's also a time to hear the stories that are close to Dave's heart as he reads me The Silmarillion.