A: No, it took me a long time and a lot of hard work. Even before i spelled I communicated with picture symbols and had a lot of therapy. It did not happen over night and i worked so hard to get to this point. “Carly’s been writing all day,” Howard said excitedly into the phone. “She’s been doing what?!” I yelled back. I was swerving down Route 64 from the south rim of the Grand Canyon toward Flagstaff. It was March 10, 2005—spring vacation—and Tammy and I had decided to take Taryn and Matthew away for a break in the routine. Years before, Tammy and I had fallen in love with the isolating openness of the Arizona and New Mexican desert. Somehow the ocean of multicolored sand interrupted by sun-toasted red clay mesas and grandfatherly Saguaro cacti brought us peace. We had made several trips to the Southwest in the years before autism framed our life. Now that Carly was ten years old, we needed solitude more than ever.
