Naked and Dancing

By Daniella Mini

Following a visit to the Botero Museum in Bogotá with my 31-year-old autistic son, I was curious to know what he made of the plush ladies Botero liked to paint and sculpt.

“So, Diego,” I said, “What were the women in the paintings like?”

“Naked,” he said.

“But Diego, what did they look like? I mean, were they large or skinny?”

“They were naked and dancing.”

“Nooo, Diego,” I insisted, “What were their bodies like?

“Like a snowman.”

I was fishing for “fat,” or “big,” or even “They looked like so-and-so,” as Diego tends to liken people to celebrities and Disney characters. Well, he outdid himself with the snowman answer. Botero’s women look just like snowpeople: rounded, serious, squishy.

Diego is his most serene self when he travels with his family because he knows we’ll be together the whole time, no matter what we do. So he’s game for everything and doesn’t mind if the plan for the day changes. He’s calm, as if he’d taken a tranquilizer.

On our Bogotá trip, which centered around his cousin Isabella’s wedding, his one worry was that he would miss the Turkey Trot back home. Because it’s one of the five or so 5Ks we do every year, skipping it registered as a bit of a calamity in his routine-oriented mind.

Oh no! I thought to myself, Will he stay stuck on the subject forever, like he did with my getting mad at him on Columbus Day 2009? Fortunately, after bemoaning the missed race a few times the first day, he brought it up no more.

“I handled it,” he said.

“I can’t be in two places at once,” he figured.

Whoever came up with the wise statement “I can’t be in two places at once” should really get a statue displayed in a prominent location, an Ivy League university quad, maybe.

As always, Diego enjoyed our trip to the utmost. We visited the museums, walked around downtown (where we came across a llama!), had dinner at the famed Andres Carne de Res restaurant, and hiked up to Monserrate, a hike more grueling than the 1.5-mile distance would suggest, given the 10k-feet altitude. Not a complaint came out of Diego’s mouth.

The highlight, however, was the wedding. He couldn’t have been happier for his cousin Isa (who he says looks just like Leighton Meester) and for her affection.

“She kissed my hand,” he kept saying, with such delight in his gaze I thought he might never want to wash it, and “She said she loves me.”

We had a final memorable moment on our last day in Colombia’s capital. On our way to the airport, Diego suddenly realized he’d left his backpack behind, the sort of mishap that would’ve caused a massive freakout in his teenage years. I mean, his iPad and his beloved Polar Animals were in that backpack!

But experience is just as important as intelligence in learning, and over time, experience has taught Diego, whose autism comes with intellectual disability, to trust that lost items can be found. Still, he listened so intently as we discussed how to recover the backpack, you would’ve thought it contained the Holy Grail.

The backpack was soon located, and shipment to the U.S. was arranged. All the while, Diego kept saying under his breath, as a person reciting a mantra might, “I’m handling it.”

You handled it great, my sweet son.