This fall, I had the good fortune of reading Kate Goldfield’s book Common Scents: Adventures in Autism and Chemical Sensitivity. The book concerns itself mainly with the past five years of Kate’s adult life. Her chemical sensitivities forced her departure from college with only six weeks left until graduation, and in the years since then, Kate has taken a long and winding path toward finding a safe place to live while also dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome and its attendant anxieties.
The book begins with short vignettes from Kate’s school years: her inability to connect with other children, her preference for the company of supportive adults, her years as a target of bullying, and her college life. Kate sets the scene with memories that bring us directly into the most vivid moments of her life and then moves directly into a narrative about being a young disabled woman in her 20s, trying to find independence and a meaningful life.
As I read of Kate’s travels from Maine, to New York, to Montana, to Oregon, and back again, I was most impressed by her resilience. She describes a life of increasing sensitivity to chemicals (such as those found in perfume, paint, cleaning products, and new carpeting), her difficulties in finding chemically safe housing, and her limited ability to enter most public buildings. Far from engaging in self-pity over her challenges, Kate brings creativity, courage, and wisdom to the task of remaking her life. Her description of how to adapt to a disability is especially telling:
When you have a disability, you have to accommodate it, and change your life around it, in a multitude of different ways. At first you say to yourself, “But this is the way it has always been. What will happen if I do it another way?” And then, after you’ve adjusted a bit and accommodated a bit, you find yourself having to accommodate more, and to tweak more things, and you find it increasingly difficult to get around your disability. Eventually, though, you go back to the basics and find very creative ways to accommodate your disability and function in the world around you.
Eventually, as you become more self-reliant, you become proud of yourself for being able to handle so many things. You eschew society’s conventions in favor of what actually works. And you learn to take joy in the simple things….Disability makes you downsize, re-shift priorities, and keep only what’s important in your life. And sometimes, although you want so much more, that can be a good thing.
Into her tale of becoming disabled by MCS, Kate weaves her lifelong story of dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome and all the ways in which it threatens to isolate her. With her characteristic style, Kate insists upon a life of meaning, a life with friends, a life of meeting new people and having new experiences. Although she registers the difficulties posed by other people’s desire for her to be “normal,” she doesn’t let their limiting attitudes stop her. She learns to make friends, to appreciate the people in her life, and to feel satisfaction in the quality—not the quantity—of her relationships.
Kate’s descriptions of life with Asperger’s are especially apt, and I found myself nodding in recognition of our shared experiences, particularly those that entail not being able to read nonverbal social cues. Because both Kate and I share a love of language, we both find ourselves at an impasse when we are unable to tell whether people have understood our words. As Kate writes:
When I talk, I feel like I am throwing words out into a void, hoping they get to their intended destination. It is a production to say anything at all, and when I finally do, I stand there anxiously, trying to figure out how my words have been received. Did the other person understand the words? Did the person comprehend their meaning? Did the words anger the person? Did they make him or her laugh inside? Does the person agree? Does the person disagree? Does the person want to keep talking to me? Can anyone relate? Do people think I’m stupid? What are they thinking?
It’s almost as though I am the producer of my own theatre company in my head; to talk feels like acting, even if I am being myself. I am putting on a production when I try to communicate with others, and if the audience doesn’t applaud, I don’t know whether the show was any good or not. Since I am driven to connect with others, this problem doesn’t stop me from trying to interact with people, but it definitely makes it more difficult.
But Kate’s book isn’t simply about MCS or Asperger’s. It’s a travelogue from the perspective of a disabled person trying to open up the possibilities for her life. I loved reading Kate’s detailed descriptions of small towns in upstate New York, the beauty of the Oregon coast, and the sights, smells, and foods at the many farmers’ markets she found in her travels. Her passion for good cooking, for interesting people, for new experiences, and for natural beauty shines through in this book about growing up and out into the world.
My only caveat about the book is that it could use some editing and proofreading, but these imperfections did not detract at all from my enjoyment of it. I’ve known Kate through her blog, Aspie from Maine, and I’m very glad that I got to know her even better by reading her first book, Commons Scents: Adventures in Autism and Chemical Sensitivity.
© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
“”I feel like I am throwing words out into a void,…. It is a production to say anything at all, and when I finally do, I stand there anxiously, trying to figure out how my words have been received.”"
I can certainly relate to that. It is a production for me to say anything, or even to write anything. I am very anxious over how my communication will be received or interpreted. This comes from a history of being out-of-step or the odd-man-out as they say.
As for the smell of perfume, I remeber vividly how some perfumes would make me gag and feel like I was choking. But for some unknown reason my nose has stopped working about 95%, so smells bothering me are a thing of the past!
So at least one problem has been solved. Now if only I could get over communication anxieties!