ON WINTER mornings, as I took our daughter Isabel to her pre-school at the Smithsonian Institution, we could see the glow of sunrise above the Capitol, sometimes turning the Washington Monument pale orange, yellow or even purple. Around the nearby museums there are lindens, hollies, weeping birches and 7-metre-tall saucer magnolias, trees whose shapes and textures made Isabel stop and stare. I recall most vividly the Corylus avellana 鈥淐ontorta鈥�. In winter, its branches twist and curl as if afflicted by a mysterious disease. It doesn鈥檛 grow the way a tree is supposed to.
In 1996, Isabel鈥檚 pre-school teachers showed her a book, Linnea in Monet鈥檚 Garden, the story of a Swedish girl who travels to France with her elderly neighbour to Monet鈥檚 house and garden in the village of Giverny. Isabel carried it with her everywhere.
She couldn鈥檛 read or write and, like many autistic children, didn鈥檛 like talking to anyone but herself. At 5, she could speak only 200 words, all nouns, mostly Disney characters or Thomas the Tank Engine trains. She had just learned to say 鈥淢ommy鈥� and 鈥淒addy鈥�. For three years, my wife Joyce and I had battled Isabel鈥檚 inability to relate to people, and she had made steady progress. But Linnea had a power we didn鈥檛.
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As we read the book to her, maybe a hundred times, Isabel started to sound out the words and read. It cast a spell on her. Three years later, Joyce bought an animated video version and Isabel became hooked on that, too.
We took her to the National Gallery of Art to see one of Monet鈥檚 paintings of the famous lily pond and Japanese bridge. Isabel stared at it from around a corner, peered briefly then darted away, seeming to take in the entire image in a split second.
Sometimes she stood on our shiny marble coffee table dressed in a black T-shirt, sun dress, black shoes and hat, looking just like Linnea, and said 鈥淛apanese bridge鈥�. As she focused on the table鈥檚 surface, I imagined she saw in it Monet鈥檚 double garden 鈥� the pool with its water lilies and the reflection of the sky and landscape. At those moments she was uncharacteristically calm, a calm that would not return until the following August, when we took her to Monet鈥檚 garden in Giverny.
The place was a marvel. In the late morning, after a shower, the garden was overwhelmingly green. Just like the painting, the garden and the water blurred where they met. Isabel raced to the Japanese bridge, stood at its apex for an hour, mesmerised and more serene than I had ever seen her.
Did Isabel notice the pond changing with every new breeze? There were carpets of flowers, streaks of colour she probably never saw. For her Giverny was the repetition of a script. Dressed like Linnea, she sat on the same steps where Linnea sat, lifted her right foot and stretched her arms above her head in joy just as Linnea had. She had her own impressions, but I think they were of completeness: the book, the video, and now reality.
Call the trip extravagant, but that single day in Giverny transformed her in a way we never anticipated. She started saying words in French so often that we enrolled her in a French class. It was like speech therapy 鈥� simple conversation in pretend social settings 鈥� and she blossomed. She absorbed the vocabulary and pronunciation with such speed that her teacher asked if her mother was French.
One day, she approached a stranger walking his dog and asked: 鈥淟e chien est gentil?鈥� I translated: 鈥淚s your dog nice?鈥� He nodded yes, and Isabel, who had been terrified of dogs for years, touched the top of its head.
Few experts would suggest that a child with autism study a foreign language, but it worked for her. She applied the French lessons to new situations, at home and in public. The people she spoke to didn鈥檛 speak French, but it didn鈥檛 matter to us. She was interacting with the world.
Today, Isabel is more social than we ever expected. She also has her own dog, a French bulldog, registered with the American Kennel Club as Linnea of Monet鈥檚 Garden.
