Queen for a Day by Maxine Rosaler; Delphinium Books, © 2018; 9718832-85753; 243 pages.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – In this novel, Mimi is the mother of a strange, yet wonderful, boy named Danny. At first, Mimi didn’t want to admit that her son was developmentally disabled; she told herself repeatedly that children develop at different rates. But after a while, and a doctor’s diagnosis, Mimi could evade the truth no longer. Her son was autistic.
From that time on, Mimi’s life changed. In her words, she lived every day on a “battlefield,” trying to prevent Danny from hurting himself as he recklessly pursued his desire to learn more about the world. He was the type of child who, seeing something of interest across the street, might dash to the object, oblivious to the dangers that oncoming cars posed. Open windows were places to crawl through.
The toll on Mimi was tremendous. Soon, she separated herself from friends who either had no children or had children developing typically. They just didn’t understand. At classes and seminars on autism, she met other mothers of children with autism. The children were as different from each other as they were from typically developing children. The mothers tried to arrange play dates, but the children didn’t connect. At best, they tolerated each other. So, Mimi—and occasionally her husband Jake—were Danny’s only companions.
Danny didn’t mind children at school teasing him; in fact, he was oblivious to most other humans, except his parents. He understood science intuitively; the natural world was a source of wonder for him. Some teachers thought he might even be brilliant. However, even as a teenager, he would do pre-school types of things. For example, he would go to a book store and find all the pop-up books, then take them to a corner of the store and read them over and over – the fact that they were intended for children 10 years his junior not bothering him in the least.
Mimi went through stages. At first she denied her son’s autism. Then she tried to correct it. Later she apologized to strangers for it. And, finally she accepted it.
The emotional cost, however, was tremendous. Her marriage was always strained. She got into fights with receptionists and bureaucrats who refused to see the urgency of helping Danny. She at times seriously considered suicide. Raising Danny was a battle without respite.
The book is titled Queen for a Day, after an early TV show in which women told their troubles to a television audience, and the one whose life seemed the hardest was pampered and showered with gifts. Sometimes, Mimi felt that she should be one of those queens, hoping that her troubles were worse than others, so someone might come to her aid.
Danny wasn’t self-aware, until one day, remarkably, it seemed that he might, in fact, understand his place in the world. “God picked me to be a sample boy,” he one day declared out of the blue. “God picked me to have my own unique point of view … “
Parents with an autistic child will recognize many of the dilemmas and emotions faced by Mimi. The rest of the population will learn from this novel, which can at times can make readers happy, and at other times, very sad.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com