IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Have Autistic Brothers
The New York Times Sunday Magazine profiles 14-year old Tarah Perry, whose older twin brothers, Justin and Jason, are autistic. Here, excerpts of the opening paragraphs:
Other 16-year-olds … don’t need to be reminded of that by their 14-year-old sister [to put on deodorant]. … Tarah’s family is … different from other families, and generally speaking she is perfectly O.K. with that. It’s all she has ever known. But lately she has been fighting more with her brothers. They irritate her, she says. They stink. She tells them as much, and they squabble about it, as any siblings might - only when you’re 14 and your brothers are disabled and you don’t know whether they’ll ever make it on their own or whether you’ll be responsible for taking care of them, then even the little things take on greater weight. …
If you were to meet Tarah apart from her family, there’s plenty you might learn about her before the subject of her brothers ever came up. She is in the ninth grade and likes to clown around … There is no mention of her brothers on her MySpace page, and she is more likely to talk about the marching band or her best friend, Alex, who sits near her in band, or the music she likes or gossip from school. Or trees. For some reason she can’t stand pine trees. …
Yet she has no doubt that growing up in her brothers’ shadows has shaped her own character. "I think I’m a much nicer person than I would have been if they weren’t autistic," she says. "I would have been pretty mean and snobby. Still, I’m kind of mean sometimes, but I don’t think I’m snobby." All her life, she has been not just their younger sister but their de facto older sister, sometime translator and mom’s right hand. … Tarah’s mother, Jennifer: "It was like she knew what they wanted when I didn’t, and she would help me figure it out. Tarah was mother hen to these boys. I probably shouldn’t have put her in that position, but oh, my God, she helped me so much."
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