As we drove up to the beach house---which we’ve been renting for the past five years---Charlie was crying and saying, over and over, “no beach house!”. He’d been peaceful-easy-feeling on the ride down and started weeping and saying “no beach house” with about a half-house to go.

Charlie has a lot of feelings about this place. He’s been coming to this same beach since he was a baby (we only didn’t come one year, when we moved from St. Louis to St. Paul). One of the local papers often runs a “Letter to the Editor” that isn’t a soapbox creed about local politics, Obama’s healthcare plan, or why bikes shouldn’t be allowed on the boulevard. One letter is often a reminiscence of childhood days spent digging the sand, sporting in the waves, crabbing. In the paper I read last night, a banker wrote about his two best buddies and him growing up together on the beach and, every summer over the years, sitting together and talking in their beach chairs. But now, he’s the only one left sitting on the sand, with so many memories.

Charlie’s memory of this beach runs equally deep and, too, bittersweet. He love loves it here. The beach fulfills so many sensory needs, with sand and water aplenty, with water that moves and is full of salt and seawood and foam. Leaving the beach is physically and emotionally wrenching for Charlie, and has been so since he was a toddler and Jim had to carry him, kicking and howling, away from the water. Often it’s seemed that Charlie’s love of being here is in danger of being overwhelmed by his sorrow at having to leave.

Saturday, Charlie sat in the car saying “no beach house, no beach house!”. After twenty minutes he got out and stood in the gravel in the front yard and cried some more. And then, sniffling, he walked in, headphones and iPod in his hand. He asked to see some old PBS Kids videos on YouTube, turned on Jimi Hendrix, and started smiling and loosening the muscles in his back.

Some say that autistic children are “emotionally withdrawn”---but nothing could be further from the truth.

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We loaded up the car and drove away at 11am---as planned!

Traffic on the Turnpike. Good thing Jim has Local Knowledge of New Jersey roads.

Scrubby pines signal we’re in South Jersey.

Charlie called for “kayaking” --how could we say no?