FARIBAULT, Minn. — As the mother of a child with autism, Taylor Casanova has a house filled with sensory strategies.
Five-year-old Odin rides a plastic slide down a staircase.
Then, he leaps into a pile of beanbag chairs.
Joyous laughter ensues.
“We tell him, he just has extra wiggles,” Taylor says. “Got to get the wiggles out.”
And when Odin’s mom exhausts all her strategies at home, she has another strategy.
“Let’s get in the van,” she says, smiling. “We’re going to Fareway.”
The minivan door opens, and Odin sets a brisk pace to the automatic doors at Faribault’s Fareway grocery store.
“Tiny cart!” he squeals, grabbing a child-sized shopping cart from the rack.
Odin’s mom knows better than even to suggest they shop at Aldi, Target or Hy-Vee.
“This is his favorite thing to do, probably in the world,” Taylor says of these daily trips to Fareway. “I mean, he’s not this excited when we go to the pool.”
But then pools don’t have produce.
Nor do they have Odin’s favorite people.
“Haley!” squeals Odin as he runs into the open arms of produce manager Haley Yeo.
“Hi, honey, how are you today?” Haley responds as the friends embrace.
Odin invited Haley to his birthday party.
She came.
Two years in a row.
“Not every day my customers are that happy to see me,” Haley says through a wide smile.
And it’s not just Haley.
“Wendy!” Odin shrieks as he approaches the checkout counter, waving boisterously to the cashier.
“Hi Jay!” says Odin, greeting a Fareway bagger with a wave and hug.
All this excitement, and Odin has yet to connect with his best grocery store friend.
Maynard Abraham bags groceries and delivers them to customers’ cars.
You’d be more likely to stop a sneeze than slow down Odin when he spots Maynard returning to the store from the parking lot.
“How we doing, buddy?” Maynard asks the boy who has just sprinted into his embrace. “You ready to help me bag some groceries?”
Maynard is a fixture at Fareway, a friendly man who asks customers their preference of paper or plastic.
When Taylor picks up Odin at school, “He asks to see Maynard specifically,” his mother says. “Every day.”
Taylor snapped a photo the day Odin made Maynard a birthday card. Taylor snapped two more of her son delivering the card, and then, getting a hug from Maynard.
“I think that was the first time Maynard let him hug him,” Taylor says.
Maynard couldn’t care less about Odin’s autism.
“God didn’t make nobody perfect,” he says.
Maynard and Odin just seem to get each other.
“Root beer, I like root beer,” Odin tells his friend as they bag groceries together. “Waffles, I like waffles too,” he adds.
Odin may be wiggly when he arrives at Fareway, but his mother says he’ll be calmer when they leave.
“It is very tough having a kid with autism, for sure,” Taylor says, “but this is like one of the bright spots.”
Fareway: come for the food, stay for the therapy.