I had faith with all the mountaineer activities I went to where there were large pools of men to choose from, that I would eventually find someone compatible.  I almost passed up such an opportunity.  When I noticed an annual Halloween party for singles in the Mountaineer bulletin, I debated whether I should go or not.  I didn’t want to go if it would take place at a hall that was hard to get to as in the previous year, especially where there was an admission charge.  One evening while I was at Bob’s, I had a hunch that I should call about the party.  When I heard that it was to be held in someone’s house in Renton and was to be a potluck without an admission charges, I decided to sign up and go since I liked the more personal touch of meeting in people’s homes.  It was a very good thing that I called and went, since that was to be a very important party.

On the evening of October 28, 1983 as I moved up to the front of the bus to see better where to get off in the dark, I noticed that there was a slim blonde man with a bag of potato chips in his arms getting ready to get off at the same bus stop.  I had a feeling that he was going to the same party.  So I asked him, “Are you going where I’m going?  I’ll lead the way.”  He said “yes” when I told him that it was with the Mountaineers.  Little did I know what this could really lead to?  I was dressed up as a bandanna girl with a bunch of bandannas tied on all over my fishnet style poncho that I had crocheted years earlier and a bandanna over my head.  I perceived him as prince charming, though he wore plain clothes.

At the party, with a plate full of food, I sat down with Kris so we could become more acquainted since having just met on the bus.  He had visual impairments due to complications from a childhood illness.  When he was six he had come down with mumps-meningitis, then a year later he developed swelling in his head as a rare complication and was diagnosed with mumps-encephalitis.  This resulted from the blockage of the vessels that drain excess fluid from the brain.  Throughout his childhood, he underwent a series of surgeries at the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital to have shunts (aqueductal stenosis shunt, a hard plastic tube) inserted to drain fluid from his brain, originally to his nose and later to his heart.  The technology was very new when he began having them in the early sixties and had only been in existence for five years.

Kris had been in and out of the hospital due to the fragile nature of the shunts that malfunctioned often throughout the years of steady and rapid growth.  Whenever that occurred he lost his ability to function properly and went into a coma.  There were times when it was critical and thought that he might die at anytime.  Luckily his mother was able to be with him all the time to watch when problems formed and to be able to take quick action.  Kris was tutored at home when he was too weak to attend school.

When Kris was thirteen, he entered a period of rapid adolescent growth when things were unstable with his shunts which lead to a coma that lasted several months.  He had nine brain surgeries during that period.  When he finally woke up he was blind.  Somehow, the strain from that many surgeries deadened the optic nerve.  Gradually during recovery he gained back some of his sight.  He had tunnel vision and numerous scatted blind spots in his visual field and was without depth perception.  He was classified as legally blind.  Suddenly when he woke up on the morning of January 7, 1982, when he was almost twenty-eight, he noticed that everything looked different.  Overnight he had gained back some of his vision and depth perception to about half way to what is considered normal.  He had had his last shunt replaced when he was seventeen, so it took all this time for recovery.

Kris graduated from high school a year later than most other his age since it took him longer to complete his studies due to illness.  He went to and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Evergreen State College (a non-traditional alternative college) in Olympia, Washington.  This suited him well since he would have much greater difficulty with the rigid examination protocol at a traditional school.  He needed plenty of time to rest since his endurance was low.  Student volunteers read all of his material to him as his eyes tired very easily since the eye muscle worked overtime to compensate for the areas in his visual field missed by the blind spots.

A year after graduation, he got a job with the federal government for the Social Security Administration at the Seattle Teleservice Center as a service representative, mostly working on the phones.  This type of work was ideal for him since he couldn’t do too much paper or visual work without his eyes becoming over strained.  Whenever he needed to look up or read something, an employee, assigned as a reader for him and others who are blind, read things out aloud until more sophisticated computers took over the reader’s job.

Shortly after Kris gained back some depth perception and increased physical endurance from taking vitamins that he needed, he began to go out to dances to meet people.  He joined the Mountaineers to take their folk dancing lessons and go on easy short hikes.  He had dated a few women before he met me.

After Kris and I talked to each other about our past and the challenges we endured, we were drawn to each other by the mutual understanding of having a disability and dealing with it even though our problems were very different.  It was love at the first sight from the mutual attraction that both of us felt that we were right for each other.  Kris was impressed with my college education and intelligence and, likewise, I was impressed with his.  He was also close to my age being only three and a half year older that I.

The next day after we met, Kris invited me to join him at his older brother’s house on Halloween night to hand out treats to the trick-or-treaters that came by while Eric and his wife took their two daughters (ages five and a half and the other almost three) out trick-or-treating.  Kris and I met Eric at the Applied Physic Laboratory at the University of Washington where he worked to ride with him to his place in Redmond on the Eastside.  His wife prepared dinner for all of us.  I enjoyed very much meeting the family while they had a chance to check me out and give Kris approval that made him feel good.  Eric drove both of us home.

The following week he began to take me out to restaurants for dinner one evening a week.  That first dinner out at downtown Seattle we had only complimentary cocktails, due to last minute cancellations of all dinner reservations to have space for a special function.  We walked a few blocks up the hill to Kris’ one-bedroom condominium, in the First Hill neighborhood.  Luckily Kris had things to prepare for dinner in his small kitchen with painted white cupboards.  That was the only time he cooked for me, not that he was a bad cook.

Kris had a loft style bedroom that was extra large and extended further out than that in most other units in the building.  He was able to fit in a full-sized bed, a chest of drawers, a long and narrow desk and a card table.  The bathroom was upstairs close to the stairs.  There was one huge window that covered the whole side and expanded to both stories.  The kitchen had open space between the sink and cupboards to look out into the living room.  Kris had a few musical instruments, organ, accordion, and harmonica that he played occasionally.

Following the first date in Kris’ place, when I went home after the visit, I would spend the night and sleep on his old sofa that flattened out into a bed to save time commuting.  The next morning I went straight to work.

For our weekly dates we generally ate out at restaurants where we could get discounts by 2-for-1 coupons from the newspaper or ten percent off by showing our bus pass.  We often chose Mexican food with the coupons.  To impress me early in our relationship, Kris took me out to a fancy Japanese restaurant and a movie afterwards that was an exception and we usually went to his condo after dinner out.

After we had been dating for several months, I made an offer to begin cooking dinner at Kris’ condo for us instead of eating out.  I realized that he took me out to eat to impress me, since generally boyfriends are expected to take their girlfriends out to dinner.  But, since neither of us drove and it took more time to take a bus to a restaurant, it would be much easier and less time consuming to cook and eat in.  Kris was elated with my suggestion, since it would be even easier for him.  Without going anywhere in the evening, he could rest his eyes more without having to navigate different places.  From then on I asked him what he would like ahead of time and fixed it during our date.

As our relationship progressed and we became closer to each other by spring of 1984, we began to see each other more often, a few nights a week and a few weekends a month.  We went out together on more Mountaineer activities.  I took him along to picnics and parties with my contacts from the autism society and the Jewish singles.  During the fall of 1984, we enrolled in Mountaineers folk dancing classes so I could learn new things and Kris wanted to take them again to brush up on what he had been taught and to get addition practice.

I got a chance to meet Kris’ parents after we knew each other for several weeks when I was invited to join him to go down to their house for Thanksgiving of 1983.  They lived on Harstine Island, an island in south Puget Sound.  A friend, who was an exchange student from Norway, at the University of Washington drove us there and back for the day.  It was about one hundred miles each way from Seattle.  Eric, Terry and their girls were there whom I met on Halloween night, so there was a full house that was nice.  We all ate at a big table in the big kitchen with an old wood-burning stove that was mostly used as a heater in the mornings and cooking breakfast.  The more modern electric range was used for cooking other meals.

The kitchen was extended from the original one of an old farmhouse that had been transformed into a two-bedroom house with two bathrooms.  Kris’ father had a construction business of aluminum siding and products before he retired and moved out to the island.  So he had extended and added rooms to the house.  The house was heated in the winter by wood in a big stove in the original living room.

The house was a brief walk through the woods to the beach along the Puget Sound.  There were ducks and chickens roaming around the house and a small duck pond.  There were grapevines for wine making and gardens of flowers, herbs, vegetables, and berries.  Kris’ folks also had a big dog (mostly German shepherd) and two cats.

Kris’ parents had kept themselves physically fit by working the land, walking on the beach, playing golf, and going ballroom dancing.  They kept mentally active by reading and playing bridge with friends.  His father, of Norwegian descent, with some Irish, loved to joke with people with his good sense of humor.  The mother, of English decent who was raised on a farm out in the country, was very well organized, which made her dependable and a great planner.  They were friendly and loving with strong family values.

Kris’ mother as she got to know me more after meeting me several times began to work with me on improving my appearance–gait, posture, and table manners.  She gave the constructive criticism that I needed never in a condescending manner but only from the concern of her caring heart.   She wanted me to feel better about myself as others become more accepting of me.  Due to autism, I wasn’t aware of what I did that was wrong.  I walked with my legs so far apart that I appeared to wobble.  I began to practice walking with one foot directly in front of the other as I had been shown by a social worker years earlier during my teens, but unfortunately put aside.  Whenever I was standing, I had a tendency to slump forward and stick my stomach out.  Sitting at a table or a chair, I slouched over my food or over my reading material.  I worked on standing and sitting straight, though it took me a long time to perfect it since old ingrained habits are a challenge to transform.

In addition to improving my appearance, I needed to work on how I greeted people.  One day in the spring of 1984 at work in my cafeteria, a friendly woman pointed out to me that whenever I greeted people I never used their names.  Due to autism, I was unaware that it is considered proper etiquette to include the names following hello.  It began to occur to me that whenever others greeted me, they addressed me by name.  Whenever I saw someone, I only said, “hi”, “good morning”, or “hello”.  From then on I had included names in my greetings.  It felt strange in the beginning until I got used to it.

To further my confidence, Kris, who was in the Toastmaster International (training in public speaking), got me to join in the summer of 1984.  I began after I completed my drafting class to avoid schedule conflicts.  Kris said that it had helped him overcome his shyness and thought that it could boost my ability to talk more fluently.  My speech sounded as though I was talking in a second language, rather than native, due to my stuttering.

During the summer, the Toastmasters meetings were informal: meeting one evening every other week at people’s homes when we had potlucks.  The rest of the year the meetings were more formal where we met at Mulligans, a nice bar and grill restaurant at University Village shopping center close to the University of Washington.

During each meeting three speeches (three to five minutes) were scheduled with evaluations following for feedback.  There was a short dinner break and impromptu questions on general topics and vocabulary, where guessing was encouraged, to practice responding to questions on the spur of the moment.  This was a good speaking exercise for me since I had great difficulty in responding to thought provoking things that I hadn’t dealt with much due to a time lag in auditory processing and in accessing knowledge I didn’t use very much.  We also had a contest each meeting to see who used the fewest non-verbal sounds–”umm”, “ohh”, or “okum” (interspersed in my talk).  I made a great deal of improvements after I joined due to greater awareness.

On my first presentation, the “ice breaker”, I was nervous since I wasn’t used to talking in front of a group of about twenty people.  Though the group was interested in listening to my life story on dealing with autism, they pointed out to me in the evaluations that my constant repetitious motion of swaying back and forth was very distracting.  I wasn’t aware at all that I tended to do it whenever standing in place for a while.  While I was working in the cafeteria a few co-workers asked me about my swaying.  From then on, I worked on eliminating swaying during my subsequent speeches and at work, though it took me awhile since old habits aren’t easy to extinguish.

In some of my speeches, I didn’t use good judgment of how to make my topics more interesting but yet clear and easy to understand.  I had a tendency to go too much in depth and get too technical in things that I had strong interests in such as biology and nutrition.  I threw in excessive jargon and terms.  Those with a more limited knowledge of the subject weren’t able to keep all the things straight due to information overload.  It is common for those with autism to delve excessively in a topic that is interesting to them, due to lack of regard of how others would respond.  After I received my evaluations, I learned to tone down on jargon and use more in general terms, but yet keep it interesting.  I did develop a very good sense of what to include in my talks and the timing of things.

In June of 1984 when I visited a neighbor who was a single parent with a four-your-old son living in a basement apartment in the same rooming house, I became gullible as she talked about gas leaks in the building and its effects on health.  I mentioned to her that on some days I felt lower in energy than other day.  I had known that exposure to gas could cause flue-like symptoms.  My tiredness could have been from any of the numerous factors–emotional states or certain foods or less stimulation.  I became so concern about gas leaks that I started to look for places to move to.

From work one afternoon, the same woman who taught me to greet others properly took me to her place in Bellevue to show me two rooms available for rent.  She wanted to move out.  Though the house and the area were nice, the rent was too high.

One Saturday, I had a negative experience of looking at a room in someone’s house in Northeast Seattle.  When I met the woman who had a room for rent she had a chilly reception for me.  She made an excuse that I was too young and that she wanted someone who was older.  Apparently she was turned off by something about me.  I was taken aback that she wouldn’t even give me a chance.  I took this as a put-down of my character.

After I saw a few places in the University District, I found a medium-sized furnished room in the basement of a very old rooming house.  It was very close to the University and in a nice neighborhood where sororities were concentrated.  The rent was very low, but yet it was nicer than some of the more run-down places with higher rents.

The charming old-fashioned kitchen with a lot of natural light streaming in, that I would share with all of the tenants in the house was one of the selling points.  The bathroom in the basement, that I shared with one man, who also had a room in the basement, was run-down with holes in the wall and pipes sticking out.  That didn’t matter much as I hardly spent anytime in there.  The main drawback to my room was that it was difficult to heat in the winter since heat goes up to the upper stories.

Even though I realized later that my neighbor from Wallingford, who scared me into moving out, was paranoid and tended to exaggerated and worry about things that weren’t so, it was just as well that I moved into a much cheaper place to save on rent.  I needed to save more money.  By the time I moved in July of 1984, I was getting closer to Kris and spending more and more time with him and seeing him almost everyday.

One aspect I liked about the move was that I was only a mile away from the Ravenna Puget Consumers Co-op store.  That made it more convenient to shop there while I got my walking in.

Shortly after my twenty-seventh birthday on July 24, 1984, Kris and I became engaged.  He had Martha pick up the gold and diamond ring from a dealer.  She had a store in Downtown Seattle selling antiques and was experienced and knowledgeable in old and used jewelry.  When we visited her and Dani, she presented the ring in an Oriental style satin purse and a small carved wooden jewelry box as a birthday gift.  Kris and I felt that the time was right, that we had known each other for nine months and were sure of each other.  We planned to get married in early spring when it would be easy for both of us to take time off of work to fly to my folks.

The timing was very good for our engagement since my mother had planned a family reunion a few weeks later in middle of August and would be a good time to introduce Kris to my family other then Bob whom he had already met.  I was very lucky to get that week off since it was generally hard to take time off during summer with high demands for vacations.  I didn’t know the dates until after the vacation requests were due and weeks were filled up on the colander.  Kris didn’t have any problems in taking the week off.

My mother and stepfather had moved into a large townhouse with three bedrooms and a family room in the lower level in Rockville, Maryland.  About thirty people on her mother’s side of the family, the Chasans, came from all over the country, including those whom I knew well from our New York days.  We were lucky with the beautiful weather, sunny and not too hot or humid.  It was good for Kris to meet his in-laws-to-be before our wedding and for my mother and other relatives to meet him to be more familiar with one another by the big day.

After living on my own for over two years I finally was able to obtain steady employment through making the right contact at the right time and when the economy began to improve gradually.  This provided a boost in my confidence that I would be able to support myself.  As I interacted with many kinds of people day to day at work, I experienced a growth in social skills that enabled me to form intimate relationships with a close friend and even a steady boyfriend.  My feet were in solid ground with secure employment and a good boyfriend.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”—Ephesians 2:8-9