My wife, daughter, and younger son will be flying overseas in a few weeks to see my wife's parents. My wife's father developed a degenerative disease a couple of years ago, and there has naturally been an increased emphasis on meeting her parents since then. We did so twice at a geographic middle ground for both sides, but his condition is now such that we need to travel to their home to meet them.

As implied above, however, Anthony and I will be not be going. Earlier airplane flights with him led us to realize that, even with medication, he will not make it very long without becoming disruptive or at least making his presence unwelcome to other passengers. Anthony is also far too much trouble to ask relatives to watch for more than a few hours, and none have the time available to deal with him for several days regardless. We considered looking for a group home for him so that I could join my wife and other children. If we successfully placed him, though, we would not be in the position to return quickly to address potential issues such as Anthony seriously hurting other people or himself. Perhaps more importantly, a normal child would not be happy being handed over for a period to people he doesn't know. Maybe Anthony's cognitive ability is sufficient that he would not be happy, either.

My wife and I occasionally browse a local thrift store in hopes of finding the odd gem. We particularly favor shopping there for Anthony since he is hard on his clothing, and does not express preferences about what he wears. Because he is also considerably more corpulent than he should be, we were grateful recently to have the idea of women's jeans with elastic waistbands recommended to us. They fit him well where we otherwise have trouble finding suitable men's pants, and they have the added bonus of costing less.

On one of our trips to this store not long ago, I found a sweatshirt that I particularly fancied for myself. The color was right, the fit was right, it clearly had not been worn much, and it felt good. I wore it a few times, and each time had that singular feeling of satisfaction that comes with paying $3.00 for something I would not have considered buying at retail price.

It now belongs to Anthony. This sweatshirt was of sufficient quality that my wife matched it with a turtleneck for him when we were going out for a formal event with extended family. We went for pizza afterward, and Anthony used his shirt as his napkin as he customarily does. The result is about what it would be if I had worn it while changing an oil filter. Easy come, easy go. I went to the thrift store a couple of days ago with the hope of striking gold again, with no luck. I did, however, find several more inexpensive sweatshirts for Anthony.