WEST HAZEL DELL — What does love mean to Geoffrey Otton?
On Saturday nights in the Otton home, love means Play-Doh turkeys and bird-seed tree ornaments, construction-paper chains and dried-bean collages. “Geoffrey really liked the dried beans,” said Pamela Otton, his mom. “He really likes to touch textures.”
Geoffrey is 29 but lives with severe autism and has the mind of a 3-year-old, his mother said. He walks around the house haloed by a soft, comforting blanket much of the time. He likes to play with stuffed animals and other toys. He easily can get overstimulated — which is why his father took him for a calming drive not long after a reporter and photographer showed up on a recent Saturday night. It’s also why there’s nothing much by way of artwork or decoration on the blank walls of the Otton home.
But artworks and decorations are one way the Ottons and their neighbors create a circle of love around Geoffrey, who stays here on weekends but lives during the week at a foster “companion home” in rural north Clark County.
Every Saturday night is Art Night with the Ottons — an informal gathering of friends and relations to visit and banter while keeping their hands busy with simple-as-can-be projects like adding cotton balls and magic marker to paper plates to make clouds and rainbows. Or, as they did recently, creating valentines with red construction paper, stickers, glitter and glue.
When she was a college student and sorority sister, Otton said, she learned to party on a budget. As Geoffrey’s mother, she employs the same resourcefulness. “We have never let income get in the way,” she said. “The biggest thing is to enjoy your children. One thing we decided early on: Autism will not prevent us from having fun in life.”
Typical start
Geoffrey’s first three years were “pretty typical,” Otton said. He was speaking at an appropriate level and starting to read and write. Then, over a period of a few short months, he lost it all. Geoffrey went from writing his initials to just about managing a straight line, Otton said. He backslid from being promisingly talkative to barely verbal at all.
There were “a few different doctors, a lot of appointments, a million tests,” Otton said.
The family lived in Concord, Calif., and husband Ed Otton, who was in the Navy, deployed for a while to Iraq. His absence made for a home that was calm, quiet and routinized; Otton now wonders whether Geoffrey was already showing signs of autism that weren’t noticeable in that very mellow and predictable environment.
After that, the family moved north, where Ed Otton became a nurse and Pamela Otton a dietician, both motivated in part by their son and his special needs, she said. “There were a lot of years of doing the best we could,” she said. “With schools, we didn’t always get what we wanted. There are more electronics now, more helpful tools. Things are really different.”
Neighborhood network
This is the way neighborhoods used to work: People knew and visited and supported one another.
One day six years ago, Otton was shopping at her neighbors’ driveway vegetable stand when she noticed a couple of young teenagers — her neighbors’ son and a friend — hanging around looking bored. She extended an invitation for them to come visit her own bored 24-year-old.
The boys came over and everybody managed a hello, Otton said — but after that, they just sat in awkward silence. It struck her that “typical” 13-year-old boys could be almost as nonverbal as her own atypical, autistic kid. “Teen guys just don’t talk,” she said.
So, she employed those improvisational party skills from her college days. She asked one of the boys what he liked to do, and the answer was “art.” Otton promptly started reaching for art supplies — and a neighborhood tradition was born.
Early every Saturday night, a visiting gaggle drops by and gets busy with whatever materials Otton has deposited on the kitchen table. The snacks menu used to feature potato chips and Diet Coke, but the dietician in Otton eventually nixed the chips. There’s no denying Geoffrey his diet cola, though, she said.
The Art Night tradition has been unbroken for years, Otton said. Hunter Yost, one of those formerly young teenagers from up the street, is 18 years old now and still a regular. On that recent Saturday night, he brought along a friend, Mariah Huerena, 17.
“I’ve learned a lot about family,” said Yost, who is studying building trades at Cascadia Technical Academy. “This has been my routine for a long time. I feel like I am in this family as well as my own.”
Yost and Huerena discussed school assignments and other happenings while making valentines for their moms. Otton said she loves catching up with their news and gossip. “The school scuttlebutt is better than TV,” she said. One time, she said, she grew seriously concerned about complaints she was hearing, counseled the kids on what to do, and eventually intervened with the Columbia River High School administration. The outcome satisfied her, she said.
“I think it’s good to have someone who cares for these kids who isn’t their mom and dad,” she said.
Art Night was and is for Geoffrey — but it’s also for everybody else who shows up, Otton said. Her growing list of all the positive byproducts of Art Night includes several senior projects that tested Geoffrey’s tastes and communication abilities; Otton has written numerous letters of recommendation for students who’ve been Saturday night regulars.
“We’re gonna love on these kids just like we’d love on our own kids,” she said. “They’re our kids too.”
Tapping, trying
Also on hand most Saturdays is Geoffrey’s sister, 26-year-old Linda Otton, an accountant who lives in east Vancouver — where, she said, she and friends sometimes get together do so similar arts-and-crafts projects, just for fun. Grown-ups these days are giving themselves permission to indulge in what used to seem like childish joys, she pointed out, like coloring books and painting rocks. (Add a little wine for a slightly more grown-up sense of fun, she added.)
“This is my set time to check in with my family,” she said. “It’s a relaxing time. It’s a nice part of my routine.”
But Geoffrey didn’t seem entirely relaxed. He was fascinated by a photographer’s gadgetry but didn’t stick with the art project for long. He wandered the kitchen, grunting and puffing, tapping on different objects while Otton gently asked what he wanted. He withdrew into the quiet garage and returned. He enjoyed pouring cola from one cup into another with great precision and focus. Eventually his dad — who mostly kept himself and his head cold in the other room during this visit — invited Geoffrey out for that car ride.
All of which is perfectly normal, Otton said. She said she and her husband gladly don’t know what sort of “normal” life they’re missing.
But they certainly understand the big picture. As a forward-thinking advocate and activist for children with disabilities and people with autism, Otton drove the creation of the first special education PTA in the state over 20 years ago, and has been deeply involved with grass-roots groups like the Autism Society of Washington. She was also the mastermind behind a weekly but short-lived “Open Sanctuary” at Vancouver First Presbyterian Church that welcomed people who cannot behave the way you’re “supposed to” behave in church.
“We don’t know what a typical family looks like,” she said. “This is our family. We can’t imagine what our life would be like without Geoffrey.”
