After writing about my twins’ experiences making movies—Sarah as leading lady in Keep the Change and Max as co-author of Being Charlie—you’d expect me to change my focus back to real life dramas, right? Not so fast, as it turns out. Coming back to earth from watching my 24 year old son and daughter live their dreams at such a young age, turns out to be a bumpy landing. I tried to immerse myself in global news headlines: the pope… Trump… Putin… the pope… (Snooze). As the family nest manager, I was also busy solving minor problems: the drugs CVS failed to deliver, two broken tea kettles, a
clogged toilet, ink for the printer (more snoozing). With such a paucity of inspiration, I was really hoping that the autism program I attended at Pace would inspire me to write about a new approach to transitioning out of college, job leads for Sarah, anything encouraging or exciting. The panel was an impressive group, but I didn’t learn anything new. I tried calling GRASP, hoping they might help Sarah find a job or provide information that would be useful to aspiring empty-nesters—parents of 20-something kids on the spectrum. An electronic voice told me “no one is here to answer your call,” so I left a message. What was my next idea?
Improbable as it sounds, my next idea was to write about reconnecting with an old friend at—you guessed it —ANOTHER movie premiere. A year ago Carrie Schoenfeld and I had bumped into each other randomly at the gym and recognized each other instantly. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other since the two of us were friends in the second grade at Lenox more than 50 years ago. Lenox may have merged with Birch-Wathen, and the uniforms might have changed, but Carrie still looked amazingly like the slim, straight haired, blue eyed girl who sported navy knee socks, white Peter Pan blouse and a pleated skirt at age seven. Unlike me, Carrie had always been athletic and musical, sharing a love of piano with her father. So it wasn’t surprising to learn that she loved dance classes (though her favorites were different than mine) and had ended up in the arts.
More important than the movie, was seeing my old friend reinvent herself in her 50s after raising two children and working at various jobs. After two years of writing her script, composing the music and lyrics, her movie was premiering at a New York theater. Bravo, Carrie! I couldn’t help but notice that all the pride, excitement and apprehension that I saw in Max’s blue eyes at the Toronto Film Festival were also present in my friend’s nervous smile and restless gaze as the audience filed into the theater.
Marguerite Elisofon is a New York City writer and the author of My Picture Perfect Family, a memoir about how her family navigated life with a child on the autistic spectrum before the internet and support groups existed. She also blogs about parenting young adults and disability related issues in The Never Empty Nest. Her writing has been featured in a variety of publications, including Time and NY Metro Parents magazine, and her family’s story has been featured by the NY Post, Fox News, The Daily Mail, and on Jenny McCarthy’s Dirty Sexy Funny radio show. A Vassar graduate, Marguerite was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives with her husband, Howard, in their mostly-empty nest. She is available to speak about a wide variety of issues relating to twins, parenting, and autism. 