We took Liam down to town yesterday to get his passport. We are going to Ireland this summer! and this is the last time he’ll really be home before spring, so we wanted to get him set up while he’s here. Then of course we did some shopping and errand-running. I got my See’s chocolate– my best friend gave me a certificate for my birthday and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to collect on it. It has been a Very Long Time since I have had a box of See’s chocolate around, and it’s definitely my Favorite Kind. I feel I ought to compose a Hum in honor of the occasion.
While we were driving down to town, Aidan started talking about “buying a leaf”.
Aidan: “we need to buy a leaf at the store.”
Me: “A wreath?”
Aidan: “No, a leaf.”
Me: Aidan, we live in a national forest. We don’t have to buy leaves.”
Aidan: “A LEAF. And we’ll buy a circle for Paddy and a wheel for Kieron.”
Finally, due to his patience, I got it. On the walls in the children’s hospital where we go all the time, there is a border of international flags which has always fascinated him. The leaf, I would assume, is the Canadian flag since I know the circle is the Japanese flag and the the wheel is the Indian flag.
Me: OH, a LEAF. Well, I don’t know if they sell them at the store.
Aidan: “We’ll put it on the list and buy the leaf!”
This continued ALL day. As he got tireder and tireder it got more and more negative sounding. “WE’re NOT going home. I’ll stay in the car. We need to buy the leaf!” Our traditional method is to go with the perseveration as long as it sounds positive. But when it starts getting to be a stressful thing, we usually start shutting it down with some sort of ritual phrase: “We will buy one with your Christmas money if we see one” or simply “Let’s talk about other things now.” Or Kevin tries to joke him out of it. We know it’s really a problem if even the jokes make him look sour, because usually their humor is exactly on the same wavelength — Silly!!
Anyway, the stress built until we came home and then vanished like smoke when he saw the kitty and helped me with the fire. In the evening he said, once, “Next time we go to the store, we need to look for a leaf,” but that was it. He also spent the evening jumping all over me and roughhousing and laughing while I was trying to read my book. That seems to be a typical finale to these stress build-ups and it’s certainly better than some kind of meltdown, though those happen too. I have a feeling that The Leaf is like the German Blue Flower of Longing and wouldn’t be so important in the actuality as it is in the aspiration. Or maybe he’s channeling his inner Canadian since his Mom is part Canadian? 
I worry about his neurological connections when he does this though, particularly since his seizures tend to come this time of year for some reason, and the “aura” he gets previously seems to be associated with loops in his thinking and a build up of anxiety. But sometimes he has that without seizures or illness, too, so ya just never know.
THE LEAF! (he wanted me to print it out for him!)
