Love Will Save Us, Right?, livre ebook

48 Hills Best Book of the Year!

A tender, funny, stunningly candid memoir about the joys and challenges of parenting a neurodivergent young adult that reads like a heady concoction of Dorothy Allison, Anne Lamott, Alison Bechdel and David Sedaris.

"Suzette Partido has written the handbook we've been waiting for. Love Will Save Us, Right? is a knockout memoir . . . Essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America's broken promises while finding beauty in all the broken places. A stunning debut from an exciting new voice in American literature."—Ariel Gore, author of Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer

When Suzette Partido's family receives a shut-off notice due to an unpaid water bill, the timing couldn't be worse. She's just left her job to take over round-the-clock caregiving for her neurodivergent child.

Once she finds the money to pay off the bill, Suzette sits down and begins to write about her life, one that centers around mental health struggles, special needs parenting, and "the infallible exhaustion of queer love." That essay grew into this groundbreaking memoir, destined to become a modern classic.

In an irreverent, time-traveling coming-of-age story about family, love, and resilience, Partido strikes a balance between two perspectives — motherly and subversive. She engages her readers in an easy intimacy, bringing them along with her on the relentless pursuit of safe harbor for her family while navigating a revolving door of struggle, exasperation, kindness, community, and laugh-out-loud naughtiness, wrapped in a promise of unyielding love.

Chapter One: Hiding Poverty in the Kitchen

Sent first class and printed on specialty red cardstock, the notice from the local water authority presented the word URGENT in one-inch lettering. On the B-side were instructions in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese, and Arabic. I could hear the pen scratching the cardstock as I wrote the words of WH Auden: "Thousands have lived without love. Not one has lived without water."I put the notice on the refrigerator. $57 DUE IMMEDIATELY. The water district means business, you know.

This is not the first time our service has been scheduled for shut-off, even though we are children of the drought and have always been exceptionally conservative with water. Except that one summer, when the only thing that helped the sensory nightmare experienced by our neurodivergent teenager was perching on a folding stool in the bathtub, under the showerhead, turned on full blast. It didn't matter that the temperature would transition from hot to cold, or that thin streams of water wiggled down the side of the tub, pooling onto the floor. What did matter was having a parental ass in a folding chair planted in the bathroom, next to our kid sitting in the rain.

The water department wants to be paid now, but the electric company seems to be amenable to keeping the refrigerator running if you pay a little something each month. It's unfortunate that when you have nothing, divide by nothing, and add nothing, you come up with a robust zero.

Before I left the workforce, it was a radically normal time, most bills were paid promptly, and our modest car frequently drove with a full tank of gas. Our two-paycheck household allowed us to manage rent, enjoy regular grocery runs and the occasional take-out, purchase large bags of dog food and a PlayStation gift card every once in a while. Today, our normalcy is overdue utility statements and church food distributions. The monthly gathering of rent has become a gauntlet of shame.

After 24 years and seven months of service in a small corner of the not-for-profit world, I abandoned my work in mental health advocacy and walked off the job. With the backdrop of a global pandemic, work had become a sixty-hour-a week grind in which I could feel myself losing the ability to parent a high-need, extraordinary, insatiable human born to the neurodivergent community. I made the decision to walk 48 hours after I heard myself telling a first responder, "It's more important to stay alive than to work at a job that is making you sick."

The fact does not escape me that the healthiest employment move I have ever made was also the worst fiscal action I have ever taken. So far. I don't hide well the fact that I am financially illiterate. Money has always been a foxtail in my shoe, but with enough coming in, the momentum of capitalism kept us limping along and in the game. I knew stepping out of the mill would be difficult and challenging. I wasn't prepared to be hungry.

I have been unemployed for over a year and have had time to reflect on how food insecurity has cast a long shadow throughout my life. I was raised to consume meals with embarrassingly large mouthfuls of food. I learned this eating style from my biological father, who was one of thirteen kids born on this side of the border. His father, a railroad worker, had claimed an abandoned train station for the family home. Because there was never enough food at the table, the kids got as much as they could by speed eating. My father didn't eat fast, he simply ate large. He would fold as much food into his mouth as he could. A cheeseburger would be gone in two bites.

My wife grew up in California's migrant farm-working communities. She babysat for neighbor children, siblings, and half siblings, ranging in age from a few months her junior to bottle-fed babies. The only food available to the kids outside of strict mealtimes were potatoes. On the rare occasion when she was not providing free childcare, she stuffed her pockets with smooth, brown spuds and wandered the canyons and celery fields, spending time anywhere but home.

Four years ago, I moved my small family onto seven acres of undeveloped, indigenous, coyote land. The rental house on the property was built in 1925 and was just a touch over 800 square feet. We were grateful to become tenants for a friend of a friend who offered us the house for $500 less than our monthly rent at the time. This beautiful, wild, and private address turned out to be a poster child for 98 years' worth of neglect. We quickly learned that the friend of a friend, a military veteran, lived with traumatic brain injury and pivoted between apathy and aggression. We paid rent quietly, and in cash, as requested. We also played it safe and made no maintenance requests, tolerating uneven, unfinished floors, exposed thresholds, and termite damage. We learned to ignore sagging counters and to work around the faulty, antique locks, ancient windows, and holes in the ceiling. Despite all of this, our house is a safe place. Mostly. I sometimes think of home as a stage set for a musical about working-class, bohemian poverty, updated with lo-fi chill beats and WiFi.

Back in the elementary school years, our son tapped into enough self-discipline to achieve a black belt in martial arts. As a young adult, however, he lacks the restraint to stay out of the kitchen while meal preparation is underway. This is not attention-seeking behavior. This is a coping ritual. On any given night, twenty minutes before dinner is served, the dude bursts into the kitchen with the urgency of scarcity, searching for something to eat, anything to eat, while simultaneously looking to "add" to whatever dish was in process. On good days, kitchen tasks are staged, ready to be completed, and such hunger storms can be channeled into corn shucking. Coffee grinding. Lemon zesting. On bad days, things go south quickly.

Years before we were all surprised by a teenage diagnosis of autism, my family leaned into the experience of living with children's mental health issues. Life was shaped by child psychiatrists, school psychologists, therapists, interns, special education teachers, and even attorneys. We learned from the National Alliance on Mental Illness that one in five children, youth and adults, live with a mental health condition, and the average time between the first symptoms and getting help is ten to twelve years.

The one thing we hadn't learned was the difference between an eating disorder and disordered eating, frequently found within the autism population. When active, disordered eating appears in our home as restrictive (eats one type of food) or compulsive (continuing to eat well past the point of being full), or irregular (a very necessary stovetop meal at midnight), or rigid (first salad and bread, then main course, then coffee, then dessert, then tea). Holidays are a very special kind of shared hell for us. The panic that is triggered by a sparse refrigerator and bare shelves is explosive and can quickly consume the household. Self-soothing behaviors often involve repeatedly taking visual inventory of available food to assuage the fear of being without food.

As a newborn, our baby displayed a voracious appetite yet refused to nurse. This led to his mother pumping breast milk around the clock for 365 days. As a pre-verbal toddler, it was clear the kid had an urgent need to express the concept more. More wagon rides, more ice cream, more dancing, more pleasure. Once we adopted the American Sign Language word for "more," his eyes bubbled with joy, creating laughter you could lose yourself in. It took very little time to realize he was insatiable. Today, our newborn is 20-something and still signs "more" when overly excited, each hand pinched into a "chef's kiss," clapping fingers together.

The food we prepare for our neurospicy citizen must be perceived as edible, be a specific dish with an actual name, and be properly presented. This may seem like a terrible issue when food is unreliable, but we like to think of it as a daily, juicy, creative challenge.We could not practice this kind of kitchen witchery without my wife's ability to identify and use raw ingredients, chef without a recipe, cook with substitutions, and patch together a three-ingredient meal worthy of its own Instagram account. Our youngling can only see the ingredients, not the meal, often screaming into the open refrigerator, "There is no food! Only ingredients for food!"

Our kitchen shares a common wall with our living area, one open room. Shortly after we took up residence, a catastrophic sensory meltdown destroyed the doors of two kitchen cabinets. The incident left six feet of exposed shelving. After a minute, I decided the best way to cope with this free kitchen upgrade was to work with the open space. I had half a dozen glass jars and lids from Goodwill. New, these quart-size containers cost $15 each. We got the lot, all with matching lids, for twelve bucks. Displayed on an open shelf, matching clear containers give off a hip café vibe. After a food pantry run, jars are filled with cereal, chips, crackers, biscuits, anything that fits. If no goodies are in the church haul, five dollars will get you five different types of cookies or candy from the dollar store. We usually get candy canes in February, Valentine chocolate in March, and Jellybeans sometime after Easter. Small canning jars stuffed with these colorful treats help the cupboards look not only well-stocked but abundant.

We have discovered that small, inexpensive, recycled take-out containers go a long way to dress up a meal presentation. A stack of red plastic food baskets from Salvation Army at 50¢ each, combined with a restaurant supply store box of 500 wax paper sheets are magic. Lined baskets make a hotdog look like it came from the county fair, or the sandwich, pickle, and chips like they just came from an expensive food truck. Edible, nameable, properly presented.

Fancy glass sundae cups and clear glass bowls do a great job of presenting layers of things like canned fruit and granola or even rice with butter and cinnamon. When whipped cream is available at the grocery outlet, these dishes rise to gourmet levels. My favorite serving tool is a round Indian spice box with seven small, stainless-steel removable cups. Any meal or snack presented with this is an automatic winner, winner, chicken dinner. You can make carrot sticks, saltines, hard boiled eggs, and ranch dressing look like something elegant and exclusive. Toss on a little smoked paprika and fresh ground pepper, and you're good to go.

It is not that I seek to hide the struggles my family experiences, it is that I aim to keep in check the shattering panic and doomsday anxiety that can explode if the kid gets the idea that scarcity is the only thing he'll ever get more of. My ice box holds plenty of cold beverages like sun tea, iced coffee, and pitchers of water with sliced cucumber or fresh mint. Any drink can be extended and made fancy with ice, free to make as long as the freezer's working. I collect second-hand silicone ice molds to make golf-ball sized ice cubes, or Star Wars Millennium Falcon molds, turning tap water into a five-star beverage.

Other coping strategies include buying generic or bottom-shelf food and gratefully accepting contributions of leftovers, groceries, and toilet paper from generous local family members. We shop at food outlets and food rescues and we extend dishes by adding water or oatmeal or broth. Counting change and selling things online for cash are frequent supports at the end of the month. Occasionally my wife and I step back from a portion or plate so that our ravenous guy can feel like he's had enough to eat. While we can tolerate dry cereal for dinner, our adult child cannot.

The US Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life. In our experience, food insecurity is also the fear of not having (enough) food. Scholars know that food insecurity is a continuum which is not easily measured by economic or caloric indicators. What is not talked about is coming out around food insecurity. It's a constant reminder that food insecurity, hunger, and poverty in general, can be seen by others without really being seen. You run into a colleague you haven't seen for some time. They marvel at the weight you've lost. You smile. They ask you how you did it. You smile again, hoping they don't press you because you have not intentionally lost weight, you just haven't been eating enough.

Not long ago, our young adult offspring dipped his toes into the public pool of employment. It was a thrilling time, watching him take pride in bankrolling his special interests (video games and cannabis) and insisting on eating his way to happiness (fast and ethnic foods). Next week, he'll start his first full-time job. Our kitchen is filled with pride, excitement, relief, hope, and fear. We will be working out the daily problem of what foods to pack for meal breaks that might possibly override a compulsion for takeout. Once the lad has an income, there is little doubt he'll be spending much of it on food. But for the next two weeks, it's going to take all the creative chops we can muster to keep the foray into full-time work as well-fed and panic-free as possible. The real challenge is to do this without grocery shopping.

As I wait to be able to apply for my own retirement income, I see myself becoming limber at workarounds of all kinds. I have become familiar with being a less familiar presence in my community. I have moved away from weekly in-person and online check-ins to radio silence. My whole being has shifted from relying on value from a career in non-profit service to leaning on friends for cash-paid janitorial work. In many ways, this new rhythm is liberating. Grant writing was never as satisfying as vacuuming a dirty rug. The downside is the further you travel away from a healthy checking account, the more you rely on your bones as your primary income source. And my bones hurt.

Last Sunday morning, I was an hour deep into my "full clean" playlist as I washed the surfaces of my favorite community birthing center. As the floors dried behind me, I wiped down the waiting room coffee table, stacking books on top of magazines and placing a small, colorful box on top of the books. The phrase "a field guide for the weary and hopeful" caught my eye, for it was an accurate description of my life. I am weary. I am hopeful. I had not heard of Tricia Hersey's New York Times bestseller The Nap Ministry: Rest Is Resistance, but in my hand rested a boxed set of fifty cards that were titled The Nap Ministry's Rest Deck: Practices to Resist Grind Culture. I have no idea what the other 49 cards said but the message for me is Rest Is Resistance. Once this concept found purchase, it was as though a paywall disappeared. I began to unlock and extend the grace of self-forgiveness as an act of resistance; my weariness and my hopefulness, both welcomed.

This new practice of forgiveness is not easy, but there are ample opportunities to try, try again. For a few moments, I can forgive myself for leaving a regular paycheck. In passing, I can forgive myself for living in substandard housing or running out of medication. Again. I will attempt to forgive myself for sucking at finances and for only having the capacity to deal with things in the order that they are killing me. For now, because I am weary and hopeful, I will focus on how to best manage food insecurity, autism, and an insatiable appetite.