When someone asks me how children fare being raised by a parent on the Autism Spectrum, I think about my own childhood with a strong, smart, practical ‘Aspie’ mom and tell them that it wasn’t easy. As a child, and a NeuroTypical child at that, I longed for my mother’s love—a hug, a smile, a special secret only we shared—but instead, I got healthy food and dental checkups.
Today’s article takes a nostalgic and slightly humorous journey into my childhood, reflecting on life with a mother who, in hindsight, was likely on the Autism Spectrum—though never diagnosed. My mother, Irene, was a fiercely practical woman, shaped by her early years on the North Dakota prairie and the hardships she endured as the daughter of Ukrainian/German immigrants.
A Prairie Childhood
Mom really did walk miles through the snow to get to her one-room schoolhouse, and she didn’t speak English when she started because her family spoke a mashup of Ukrainian and German at home. Oddly, my grandfather listed himself as Hungarian on the U.S. Census when Mom was 11—perhaps an effort to protect his family during WWII, given that he had fled Ukraine as a teenager due to Russian pogroms. Mom lost her mother, Emilie, to diabetes when she was only two, a loss that shaped much of her life. She grew up “dirt poor,” as she used to say, sleeping on a mattress filled with corn husks and wearing dresses made from bleached flour sacks. She rode plow horses bareback for fun—because, yes, they had plow horses on the farm.
The Transition to Oregon
Mom and her father eventually left North Dakota for Oregon, where he worked in the shipyards building warships. As a teenager, Mom was expected to work, so she found jobs in cafes and later bars. She was beautiful, which helped her secure jobs in public service, but even as a child, I knew she was different from other mothers. She never hugged me, rarely spoke to me, and treated my sister and I as if we were livestock—feeding, clothing, and sheltering us, but without emotional connection.
A Life of Practicality
Mom was ahead of her time in some ways—she had a compost pile and a backyard vegetable garden in the city suburbs when no one else did. She grew herbs on the windowsill and snipped them into salads and stews. My toothbrush had natural boar bristles, which would break off in my mouth as I brushed with baking soda. She made sure I brushed my hair with a boar bristle brush, too, to distribute the natural oils.
She burned paper and cardboard in the fireplace and used the ashes in the garden. Everything was made from “scratch”—bread, pasta, even meals “stretched” with cottage cheese, beans, and tuna. Sugar was rare; a “dollop” of honey was her sweetener of choice. My after-school snacks consisted of apple slices and celery sticks, with an occasional whole-wheat fig cookie from the city’s only health food store. Every Wednesday, we had liver and onions, which I still detest.
Mom read voraciously, absorbing everything about nutrition and child-rearing—at least the physical aspects. She knew smoking was harmful when she was pregnant with us, even though people claim no one knew in the 1950s. But once we were born, she resumed smoking, unaware of secondhand smoke dangers. She was thrifty about her cigarette habit, not wanting waste money. She rolled her own cigarettes, and sometimes I helped, pinching the tobacco into the rolling machine.
Speaking of Frugality
Our dishes were Melmac—practical and unbreakable. If I got sick, I was sent to bed early to “sweat it out.” She gleaned fields for fruits and vegetables and canned everything, though I always found the pale peaches and gray cherries unsettling. She repaired almost anything with twine and bailing wire, a skill I’ve inherited. No fitted sheets back then—when our cotton sheets wore thin in the middle, she’d cut them in half and sew the outer edges together. Can you imagine sleeping on a seam?
She hated synthetic fabrics, convinced they caused cancer, so our pajamas and clothing were always cotton. She could replace the toilet seal, wash clothes with a wringer washer long after others had modern machines, and used Bluing instead of bleach. There was never a dishwasher—except for my sister and me.
Unsentimental but Brilliant
Mom never decorated the house, save for a patchwork of throw rugs sewn together for carpeting. She repurposed my dad’s dress shirts by removing the collars and cuffs to wear them for sun protection. She was a minimalist traveler—our entire family could pack into two small suitcases for a long road trip. Shoes were optional for her; she preferred sandals year-round so her feet could “breathe.”
The one time she volunteered at school, she took over the Safety Patrol equipment, using PTA funds to buy new reflective belts and flags. The annual Safety Patrollers party? — I hardly remember that.
Mom had opinions about everything—such as believing that if you didn’t use half-and-half in your coffee, you didn’t really like coffee. Or that the only reason her teenagers had acne was because they didn’t bathe properly.
A Life Cut Short
My mother died when I was 25. I had just started my first professional job after earning my Master’s in Social Work degree. Clearly, I had started the journey to find myself by helping others—a practical solution like Mom taught me. I sought out a therapist to help me with all the emotion bubbling up when I learned of her diagnosis. I still remember the phone call I got from her when she told me she had lung cancer. She called me at work—odd—she never called me at work or at home. So this call really sticks in my memory. I asked the therapist to help me process all of this, but all he offered was kindness and support. Years later, I realized when I was writing my first book that what I needed help with was that I was going to lose my mother before we ever connected.
Another distinctive memory is the day my mother made a surprise visit to my apartment. She brought a bouquet of flowers and a gift in a department store gift box. The gift was a beautiful tangerine-colored negligee. Odd gift from one’s mother, but I guess she thought it appropriate for her single daughter. I can’t remember any other gifts or surprise visits from Mom. It’s so ‘Aspie’-like to offer love once in a lifetime.
Mom died of lung cancer at 49, having tried countless ways to quit smoking. She was brilliant and pragmatic but emotionally distant. She would have defended me with her life, but I don’t have the warm, fuzzy memories that many daughters share. No bedtime stories, no cute mother-daughter moments. No albums filled with beautiful, shared memories. Instead she showed me how to work a sewing machine and then left me to figure out the rest.
My Mother’s Legacy
I had to grieve my life first. I was ashamed, always worried that I wouldn’t be loved. I had to be rejected by my own daughters and go through the anguish of losing them before I could come to terms with who I am—separate from the life I have lived. I am not a collection of experiences or memories but I am more about the meaning I have made of my life — the lessons, awareness, and values cultivated.
We often worry about how children fare in NeuroDivergent families, but if we focus too much on what is missing, we may overlook the gifts they receive from their NeuroDiverse parent. We have a lifetime to make sense of who we are, how we are shaped by our relationships and experiences. There are so many twists and turns that you are so much more than the way you were ‘raised.’ We humans make meaning out of life, and it is through that meaning we discover who we are and the mission we are destined to fulfill.
Despite the emotional detachment, I loved my mother deeply, and for years after she passed, I missed her.
I miss how clever she was and how sometimes she was outdone by her cleverness. For example, the time she bought bowling shoes for “cheap,” for my sister and I to wear to school. Even though she bought those bowling shoes on clearance for a dollar a pair, she didn’t count on them wearing out so quickly on our daily walks to and from school. Bowling shoes are designed for sliding, after all. She could entertain my cousins for hours with stories about the constellations, pointing out Orion’s Belt and the Milky Way, and yet forget that all of us kids were hungry.
But it was my quirky mother who introduced me to feminism, handing me books by Betty Friedan and others. She wanted to raise strong, resilient, independent young women—not held back by a patriarchy. ‘Girls can be anything they want!’ she would say.
Her practical, no-nonsense approach to life instilled in me an ability to adapt, to problem-solve, and to find creative solutions in unexpected ways. While I may not have warm, sentimental stories to pass down, I carry with me the strength, resourcefulness, and independence she modeled every day. In learning to navigate the world with her brand of love, I discovered resilience—a gift that continues to shape my life.
Others might remember their mothers through warmth, laughter, or the love that went into homemade cherry pies, but my memories are different. There were no bedtime stories or affectionate moments, yet I was shaped by her ‘Aspie’ love in a way that left its mark. She taught me resilience, ingenuity, and how to make the most of what I had—even if it came without sentimental flourishes.
Today, when I pick up my ball of twine to fix something, or look up at Orion and the Milky Way, I think of Mom—the practical, thrifty, and brilliant woman she was. I never got the bedtime kisses, but I inherited her ingenuity and resilience. That, in its own way, is a legacy too.
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