Her strange inventions.

The couch I'm sitting on is black leather, or faux leather, and there is a giant, slobbery St. Bernard sitting at my feet, staring at me with woeful eyes. My husband sits next to me, our bodies sagging toward the middle of the couch, thighs touching.

It is nearing the end of our session and we both have to go back to work. We've covered the usual stuff, and then Mad's play therapist pauses to collect her thoughts, eyes cast upward as she considers her words.

"One thing I wanted to talk to you about is Asperger's," she says, brown eyes meeting ours in turn. Her tone is warm and light, practiced. "Have you -- either of you -- read or heard much about it?"

Everything in me goes still, even as my brain starts spiraling away from the scene, denying where this new line of conversation is taking us. I think back to everything I've ever read on Autism and Asperger's, think of the blogs I've read and the show Parenthood and that one book about the kid looking for who or what killed the neighbor's dog and Temple Grandin, even.

It's easier to say I don't know much about it because what I know of Asperger's comes from loosely associated personal stories and pop culture references. I see Wayland come to that conclusion as well. We both deny, deny, deny.

She explains it to us in simple terms, touching on Mad's social development, her repetitive behaviors and a few other quirks. She asks if we've noticed anything like that at home and I say no almost before I can think it.

Wayland pauses, offers an observation of something he's noticed.

The play therapist nods. "I just want to be able to rule it out," she says. "We're certainly not making a diagnosis or anything. It's more for you guys than it is her - so we know what quirks we're dealing with, what we can expect in terms of development."

We nod.

The session ends and we're saying our goodbyes, then walking to the car.

"I feel....weird," I offer to Wayland after a moment of silence.

"Yeah," he agrees. "But this is not a big deal, really. I'm filing it under something to worry about later, if we need to."

This seems logical. I agree.

Still, ever since then, I find myself watching her behavior, cataloging it, wondering: Is this odd? Is it different? Her obsession with putting things in containers, of sorting things - not as a function of neatness, but because she wants everything to have a home, a place to be contained. Her obsession with footies - another container - and being wrapped in blankets, having a "nest."

Her method of engaging other kids, which involves jumping up and down right in front of the kid, invading his or her space, and laughing excitedly. I think with a wince of watching her do that at school, the way she would pause every now and then to check the kid's face, to see if they were making a connection. So hopeful. And they weren't making a connection - the other kid was confused - but Mad just kept jumping because it was the only thing she knew to do.

Her single-minded obsessions, which right now are 1) reptiles (as always) and 2) coloring every single page in a coloring book in one sitting.

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, is what I come up with. And the steady strum of worry in my chest, low but always there. And then there is the other side of it: her deep brown eyes, the strange inventions she is always imagining up for us, the elaborate stories she makes up as she flips through the pages of her books, the empty notebooks she has filled with scribbles. Each page means something, is a larger story she is eager to share: The Lonely Worm Wants His Family. The Cat Finds a Home. Where Did All the Snakes Go?

At night, in bed, saying she is lonely and asking for cuddle time. Of course, I tell her. She curls into the slope of my shoulder and reaches out to hold my hand. She's perfect.