Read A Thorn in My Pocket: Temple Grandin's Mother Tells the Family Story for Free Online

Temple, knows I need her presence to keep the household running smoothly, allaying Dick’s anxieties. She knows too that, as Temple is gaining a foothold on life, Dick and I are losing ours.
    Finally, I screw up my courage. Despite the closed door, I make a personal call to Dr. Meyer and tell her I’m having problems with my marriage. Her only comment is, “These things happen.” She suggests a psychiatrist who specializes in marriage counseling, a dear wise man I will go to for years.
    The next time I call Dr. Caruthers’ office, I’m told that the department thinks that Temple should see a child psychiatrist. Meaning what? That Dr. Caruthers functions only as a diagnostician? That he knows we have family problems? All I have to go on is a departmental recommendation that Temple should be under the care of a young Viennese doctor whose first request is a session with Temple’s parents.
    Winter 1951. Temple’s new doctor is reading a notebook that lies open on his desk, its pages handwritten in tight cursive, the grooves of its cramped loops almost cutting through the paper.
    The doctor is slight, blonde, good-looking. An arrogant Austrian, a skier perhaps. Perhaps a Jew who has fled Europe before WWII. He has a European accent like Dr. Meyer’s, only more sibilant, more like a war movie Nazi. He stands to greet us. I’m taller than he and I sense it annoys him. He returns quickly to the chair behind his power desk, to his study of the notebook.
    Dick and I wait for him to speak. I wonder why we’re here. What are we supposed to confide in him and how will it help Temple? Dick chews the inside of his cheek and avoids my eye. He’s returned lately to his daily thrashing of words—why I’m not sure because Temple’s doing quite well. No, she still can’t talk, but she’s begun; she’s trying. Yes, she still has tantrums, but not so often and not such big ones. Improvement, isn’t that the point?
    Dick doesn’t think so: “We’ve been recommended to a psychiatrist, who wants to see us first. Doesn’t that ring a bell with you?”
    Should it? How do I know Dick isn’t right? Despite Aunt Ruby’s bracing words, maybe I am guilty. I’ve been harboring secret thoughts of leaving my marriage, but I don’t want to leave. I fear if I leave I’ll no longer be a good person, fear letting go, fear losing some small kernel of hope that I might still be a good person.
    I’m unnerved by the doctor, unnerved by his psychiatric expertise. He’s supposed to help Temple, but already he’s advising us in his sibilant accent that, when Temple reaches her teens, she should be psychoanalyzed. What does he think she’ll reveal about herself when she’s a teenager? Or about me? Pieces of me are already missing. Between Temple and Dick, I’ve pushed them down a black hole.
    Will the doctor define Temple? Will he name her disorder as Adam named the animals? Dick likes names, hounds me with them, forces me into corners—sharp black and white corners that allow no escape.
    “Retardation,” Dick says.
    “It’s not that simple,” I counter.
    “It is simple. You make it complicated, so you won’t have to look at what you’ve done.”
    “What have I done?”
    Dick makes no answer, his focus is on a win-lose battle. Thus far, he sees my insistence that Temple’s improved as my having won the first round, and it infuriates him. Fury has become his attack weapon, his release from tension, his aphrodisiac. It has a rhythm now, like sex. I have sex with him to contain his fury, but it doesn’t assuage his burning need to be right.
    “When I married you, you were a good girl.”
    I’m no longer good?
    “When I married you, you were economical.”
    “Temple has serious medical problems.”
    Dick doesn’t accept that as an answer. He has money, old, conservative money that talks to him in neat balance sheets, and it annoys him to spend it on Temple. Yet, he would pay for an institution, pay more than he pays now, if