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A Place To Stand

April 2, 2012 By

I am participating in the Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, in which I publish a post every day for the month of April, based on health-related prompts.

April 2 – Quotation Inspiration: Find a quote that inspires you (either positively or negatively) and free write about it for 15 minutes.

move the world2

Give me a place to stand and I can move the world. ~ Archimedes ~

While I was labouring with my first child, I channelled some of my pain by yelling out swear words about Ontario’s new premier, who had been appointed after the resignation of his predecessor. I did not have much interest in Canadian politics at the time: I had only been in the country for three years and I did not have the right to vote. Adjusting to living in a new country and being pregnant had pretty much taken up all of my energy.

I didn’t know anything about this man I was yelling obscenities about, except that he had this irritating whiny voice that made me wish my head would just explode.

At some later point, after Mr. Whiny Voice had been ousted from office, I asked someone how Toronto’s problem with homelessness had originated. The answer horrified me. Apparently, the former Ontario government – the one led by Whiny Voice’s predecessor – had cut funding to a lot of services, mental health care being one of them. As a result, patients with mental illness suddenly found themselves being ousted from programs that they could not afford to pay for themselves, and in the absence of homes or job prospects, they had ended up on the streets.

When I heard about this, I just wanted to cry for these people. I mean, is that any way to treat a human being? Stop their treatment and put them out in the street?

As an autism parent, I know all about the difficulties with funding. Governments do not have unlimited money, and increasing – or in some cases, merely maintaining services comes with raised taxes, and that never goes down well with the public.

I could offer up a thousand suggestions as to what could be cut instead of services that allow people to have basic dignity and quality of life, but this post is already in danger of being more political than I’m generally comfortable with.

Instead, I will say this: that every single person has a place in this world. No matter what challenges they face, no matter what their strengths and weaknesses are, and no matter what level of functioning they ultimately achieve, they are all rightful members of the communities in which they live, and they should be respected as such.

I often tell the story about the day we received George’s autism diagnosis. In the midst of the devastation that goes with this kind of thing, the doctor started talking about his prognosis for George’s future. He didn’t hold out much hope, and we left his office that day thinking that as an adult, George wouldn’t be able to do much more than sweep floors.

The reality has turned out to be very different, and although George is an eight-year-old with some profound challenges, he is also an eight-year-old with a great deal of intelligence and a ton of potential.

But that is not the point. The point is this: so what if George grows up to sweep floors or clean toilets? Can you imagine what the subway station or the airport or the shopping mall would be like if there was no-one to sweep the floors or clean the toilets?

Whether my son sweeps floors, becomes a computer programmer, works in a library, or wins the Nobel Peace Prize for revolutionizing heart transplant surgery, he has a place in the world.

It is my job to help him reach his full potential, whatever that may turn out to be.

It is up to me to help him find a place to stand so that he can move his world.

He already totally rocks mine.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sporst/6914330609/sizes/m/in/photostream/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: autism, Government Funding, Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, Mental Health, parenting, Respect, Society Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Time In A Bubble

April 1, 2012 By

I am participating in the Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, in which I publish a post every day for the month of April, based on health-related prompts.

April 1 – Health Time Capsule: Pretend you’re making a time capsule of you and your health focus that won’t be opened until 2112. What’s in it? What would people think of it when they found it?

timecapsule

Sometimes, usually when I’m reminiscing about one of my grandparents, I wonder what the world was like a hundred years ago. In 1912, my maternal grandmother was nine years old. Cars were just starting to change the way people lived, and people were starting to realize that planes might be more than just a passing fad.

In 1912, the Republic of China was formed and the Titanic sank. Gene Kelly and Pope John Paul I were born, and the members of the Scott expedition to the South Pole died.

One hundred years ago, telephone communications happened over a party line and computers had not even been dreamed up. There was no such thing as a TV dinner. Indeed, there was no such thing as a TV.

It is very clear that the world was a completely different place back then. If you were to take my nine-year-old grandmother from that time and plunk her down in the middle of 2012, she wouldn’t have a clue what to do.

Now I cast my mind to the future, to the year 2112. What thoughts will the people then have about the way the world is today? What would I want them to think? What would I, the 42-year-old me who lives in 2012, want them to know about me and my life?

Maybe I should put together a time capsule, something that some random stranger can dig up a hundred years from now to get a glimpse into my life and the things that are important to me.

There would be photos, of course, a visual record of me and my family. Maybe a flash drive of family videos that the finder could watch – assuming, of course, that flash drive technology isn’t totally redundant by then.

I would include a pair of running shoes, and maybe one of my half-marathon finisher’s medals. I would print out a copy of my training plan, so whoever found the time capsule would know that I took my running seriously and tried to be healthy about it. They would know that I cared enough about my feet to use orthotics, that I ramped up my training in a way to avoid injury, and that running was my biggest stress-relieving tool.

There would, of course, be a lot of stuff about autism. A copy of George’s developmental assessment report and the autism awareness magnet that’s on my car. I would put in a copy of the very first “real” picture that George drew depicting a recognizable scene from a TV show. I would have to include one of George’s Mr. Potato Heads, along with a description of how this little character helped George’s development in so many ways. And what about a program from the biannual autism symposium? I could include one of my fundraising appeal letters for my autism runs.

Out of respect for my younger son, I would include a book about raising a child who is the sibling of a child with autism. I would throw in some of James’ artwork depicting him and George, and a leaflet about the autism centre’s sibling support program. I would want whoever found this to know that George’s autism didn’t only affect George, that we also had to make special consideration for his little brother.

And because James is an individual in his own right, I would include some stuff that’s just about him. A Lightning McQueen car. His soccer shoes. One of the T-shirts my mom has sent him from South Africa, that he always loves wearing.

Mental health is a big issue in my life. I would include some of the antidepressants I took a few years ago before the side effects scared me into stopping. I would print off some stats and information about post-partum depression – something that I suffered terribly from and that I still don’t think there’s enough awareness of. And maybe, just for fun, I would include one of my therapists’ bills. Whoever finds it can then gasp in astonishment and say, “Wow, they only paid that for therapy in 2012?”

Family is an important element in my life as well. My family, by their mere presence, enhance my physical and mental health. My husband’s support of my endeavours has an unquestionable affect on my stress levels and sense of wellbeing. So I would have to include a copy of my marriage certificate.

This time capsule is starting to get kind of full, and I haven’t even touched on some people in my life who would have to be represented, like my mom and my brother, and my best friend Jenny, and some other folks who form the fabric of my life.

I’m off to find a bigger box.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/2563369930/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: autism, Children, Depression, family, fundraising, Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, Mental Health, Post-Partum Depression, running, Siblings Tagged With: , , , ,
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Home Is Where The Hat Is

March 31, 2012 By

I cannot say for sure when my firstborn son decided that he had to wear a hat at all times. Looking back at old pictures, it seems apparent that he spent most of his toddlerhood in a hatless state. I don’t remember him ever being resistant to wearing a hat, although from the get-go he was picky about the style of hat that he would allow onto his head.

All I know is that at some point – I’m pretty sure it was during one summer or another, the hat became a permanent fixture. It wasn’t even a gradual progression, like his preference for insistence on striped shirts was. It was an overnight thing. One day, he could take his hat or leave it. The next day, it had to go everywhere with him, even into the bathtub. Even to bed. The absence of the hat became an instant source of extreme distress for him. Taking it away from him would make him scream as if the world was ending. One day, when we forcibly removed the hat to throw it into the washing machine, a complete stranger called us from New Zealand and said that the noise had woken him from his slumber, and had we just removed our child’s kidney?

OK, I made that last bit up, but you get the picture. George will defend to the very last his right to have his hat with him no matter what.

On the surface of it, this may not seem like a big problem, but it is amazing how the full-time presence of a hat can encroach on real life. And so we had to work with George’s teachers and therapists to wean him from the hat, or at least get him to the point where he could do without it for brief periods of time.

Several years later, George is still into the hat. Whenever he outgrows a hat, my mother sends a bigger one from South Africa. We do have hats in Canada, of course, but the ones provided by my mom are so cool, so she is in charge of upgrading the hats.

We are able to persuade him to remove the hat at certain times. At bathtime it comes off his head, and remains out of his reach but always in a place where he can see it. When he is at school, he takes it off and hangs it on the hook in his cubby, only putting it on for lunch and recess. And at bedtime, the hat sleeps on the pillow beside him. To our eternal relief, he now consents (with just a little bit of protest) to having his hat taken  away for the purpose of being washed.

Although he takes it off when he absolutely has to, George still loves his hat and he always has to know where it is.

So if you’re ever in my neighbourhood and come across a shy, sweet boy who doesn’t say much and wears a striped shirt and a hat from Africa, chances are that you’re looking at my beautiful son.

Filed Under: autism, Children, Hats Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Taking Care Of Mom: A Story Of Survival

March 29, 2012 By

I don’t usually take calls on my cell phone during meetings, least of all calls from numbers that I do not recognize.

Answer the phone, said a little voice in my head. It was the same little voice that has guided me many times in the past, the little voice that I always listen to, because when I don’t, I regret it.

I excused myself from the meeting and answered the phone.

To my surprise, it was the lady at the pharmacy down the road from my parents’ house. My mother had come in to the pharmacy to fill a prescription, and while she was there she had started complaining of abdominal pain. Could I please come and get her and take her to a doctor right away?

Bear in mind that this happened in a country that did not have 9-1-1. I was definitely a better and faster bet than the local ambulance service.

I made the fifteen-minute drive to the pharmacy in about eight minutes, only to find that my mother was not there.

“I’m sorry,” said the lady at the pharmacy. “We couldn’t wait. Your mother really needed to see the doctor immediately, so Michael drove her.”

I didn’t know who Michael was, but that was the least of my worries. I thanked the lady and drove to the doctor’s office. I was ushered into the consulting room immediately, and Michael – who turned out to be a kindly delivery man – was free to leave.

My mother was lying on the examination table writhing in pain. Her body was burning up with an ever-climbing fever and her face was the colour of paper. The doctor, who I had known for years and who had always, up until this moment, been completely unflappable, was trying everything she could. Although she was displaying an admirable calmness, I could see undercurrents of desperation.

An ambulance had been summonsed. It arrived and ferried my mother off to the hospital, with me following in my car.

At some point during all of this chaos I got in touch with my dad and my brother, who were out of town on separate business trips. While I took care of admission paperwork at the hospital, they were trying to get themselves onto last-minute flights home.

With the admin taken care of, all I could do was wait. I discovered that hospital waiting areas are every bit as bleak and depressing as movies make them out to be. After what felt like hours, the doctor came out to see me. The bad news was that my mother had an infection so severe that her kidneys were failing. The good news was that the fever was under control and the pain was being managed. I was allowed to go in to see my mother. She looked dreadful, but with the pain and fever taken care of, she was at least able to talk a little.

She was very afraid – and who wouldn’t be? I was terrified myself but trying hard not to show it. The doctor came back into the room and gave my mother some milky-looking medicine. She sipped the cloudy colloid as I gave her assurances that she was OK, she would be OK, the doctors were taking care of her.

I’m not sure when my dad and brother arrived. All I know is that at some point, they faded into the hustle and bustle as people entered and left the room, trying to get my mother’s body to work the way it was supposed to.

This story has a good ending. My mother recovered and thankfully she is in good health.

On some dreaded day – hopefully a long way in the future – I will lose my mom, because no-one lives forever.

But I am eternally grateful to whatever powers prevail that that day, Mom stayed with us.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Cedar challenged me with “She sips the cloudy colloid. ” and I challenged Leo with “Tell a story that makes a lot of use of contrasts, like light/dark, big/small etc.”

Filed Under: Emergency, family, hospital, Illness, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Medical, Mother Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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When I Grow Up: Six-Year-Old Musings

March 27, 2012 By

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an air stewardess. I was a very well-traveled kid, and every time I boarded a plane I envied the slim, pretty ladies in their smart uniforms. They were always so elegant and friendly, and they were unfailingly kind to me and my brother. A career of jet-setting around the world meeting all kinds of people greatly appealed to me.

Of course, now that I am a well-traveled adult, I cannot think of a job I would like less. When I board planes, I want to be given my mini-bottle of wine and left alone. The last thing I want to do is walk up and down a narrow aisle handing out peanuts and smiling at strangers until my face hurts.

Anyway, when James was about three, he started having his first When-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be discussions. I clearly remember the day it started. Our walk to the daycare he attended at the time took us past a little restaurant that happens to be a popular breakfast spot for the local police. As usual, all of the parking spaces in front of the restaurant were occupied by police cruisers. James stopped to count them, and then said, “When I grow up, I want to ride in the back of a police car.”

Well! That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear! No parent wants to know that their three-year-old aspires to a life of crime.

Fortunately, he met a cool policeman a short while later and changed his goal to driving the police car.

Since then, James has changed his career aspirations several times. He has considered being a fireman, a race car driver and a builder. Sometimes his sole ambition is to be a dad – hopefully not too soon. Other times he wants to be a Transformer, but he doesn’t say exactly how he will become a thing that’s sometimes a car, sometimes a scary robot.

It doesn’t bother me unduly that James is so undecided about what he wants to do. I mean, the kid is six. He has time to decide.

This weekend, he suddenly came up with a new career idea. The conversation we had went something like this:

James: Mommy, we’re going to have a party.
Me: Oh?
James: Yeah! We’re going to bake a cake and put out some snacks and juice. But the cake will take longer to do so we have to get started on that right away. So I’ll find the juice and Daddy can go and buy snacks while you and George start looking for ingredients.
Me: Silence. Goldfish-impersonation. Thinking: cripes, this kid is bossy!

After a pause, the conversation continued.

James: Mommy, I know what I want to be when I grow up.
Me: Oh good! What’s that?
James: I’m going to be a caterer, and I’m going to tell everyone what to do.

So, he’ll be a caterer. Other than that, nothing much will change, since he tells everyone what to do now.

At the end of the day, I have the same hope for both of my boys: that they will find careers that will make them feel fulfilled and happy, and that they will not ever feel limited into doing something that they do not really want to do.

What career aspirations have your kids told you about? Did you end up doing anything remotely close to what you thought you would as a kid?

Filed Under: Ambitions, Careers, Childhood, Children, Dreams, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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No More Teachers, No More Books!

March 25, 2012 By

George doesn’t want to go to school.

Big deal, I hear you say. He is, after all, an eight-year-old kid, and if I got a dollar for every eight-year-old kid who didn’t want to go to school, I’d be signing up to be the next space tourist.

His reluctance to go to school has escalated, though. It started mildly enough about five weeks ago. I was getting him ready for bed one evening when he said, “School is closed.”

“No,” I said. “School is open.”

He went to school without resistance the following day, but this became a nightly ritual. Each evening, the frequency of “School is closed” statements would increase, but as far as I could tell, there was no anxiety associated with it.

Then March break happened and everything changed. Over the course of the week-long break from school, both of the kids were sick. James recovered fairly quickly, but George had a bad cough that lingered, so I got him some natural-remedy cough syrup.

And what has cough syrup got to do with this story? Well, George hates taking cough syrup. In order to give it to him, I have to wrap him up in a blanket and give it to him with a syringe, a tiny bit at a time so he doesn’t spit the whole lot out at me. So when he reached for the cough syrup on Monday morning, indicating that he wanted that rather than school, we knew that this school aversion was serious business.

The following morning it got worse. George woke up very early and for over two hours, he constantly said, “School is closed. No school. School uh-uh.” All the time, his anxiety level was steadily rising. The pinnacle of all of this was George going into the bathroom and trying to force himself to throw up.

Despite all of this, when the school bus arrived, he got onto it without resistance, albeit looking absolutely miserable.

I sent an email to the school describing George’s behaviour and asking if anything was going on at school that I needed to know about. I didn’t think so: this is George’s third year with the same teacher, and she’s been absolutely fantastic for him. But there is, in all likelihood, something behind this and I needed to either rule out or confirm problems at the school.

Because she is so awesome, George’s teacher called me back within an hour of me sending the email. She reassured me that everything was fine, and that she would not have known that George was having a problem if I had not gotten in touch with the school.

Then she said something that was so obvious that I felt stupid for not having thought of it immediately. She said, “Did this start after you returned from your trip?”

Of course! I had been to South Africa for two weeks by myself, leaving husband and kids to hold the fort at home. The last time I had been to South Africa, when my dad died, George was 15 months old and James wasn’t even a gleam in my eye. My absence was a highly unusual state of being for both of the kids, and George, with his autism, must have had a very difficult time processing it.

And within a few days of my return, he started his nightly “School is closed” routine.  The idea that he is working through some separation anxiety makes perfect sense. The break in routine resulting from March break would have exacerbated the problem.

On the one hand, I am relieved to know that everything at school is fine. But on the other hand, I feel guilty about having been away, even though my presence in South Africa was so badly needed at that time.

I can only hope that with a bit more time and many more hugs, George will feel reassured. And if I ever have to go away unexpectedly again, I hope he will know that I am coming back.

Filed Under: anxiety, autism, School, School Bus, Separation Anxiety Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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A Father, A Daughter, And Cricket

March 22, 2012 By

April 2005

It is a mild Saturday morning and I am home alone with my son. I am enormously tired: I put this down to the fact that I am newly pregnant and my body is devoting all of its energy to the growing of a new human being.

My 18-month old son is curled up on the couch with me, and we are watching TV. He has no interest in the kid’s programs, so I am flicking through the channels in search of something good.

Unexpectedly, I come across coverage of a One Day International cricket match between South Africa and England. This is a surprise because Canada is not big on cricket, despite the fact that many of its immigrants come from cricket-playing nations.

Delighted, I settle in to watch. I start describing the rules of cricket to my son and he listens intently, as if he knows exactly what I am talking about. Or perhaps he just realizes that he’s a captive audience.

The South African fielder throws the ball towards the stumps and the batsman is run out. Instantly, I am taken back to a summers’ day long ago, when my father took me to my first-ever cricket match.

February, 1992

I was 22 years old, and having gone away to university for a few years, I was now back living with my parents. I walked into the living room one day to find Dad yelling at the TV, calling someone a “damned idiot”. I looked at the screen: cricket. A sport that had never managed to grab my interest, mostly because I had never paid any attention to it. I always thought it seemed unnecessarily complicated.

On this particular day, for whatever reason, I didn’t simply tune out. I stared at the screen and asked Dad, “How does this game work, anyway?”

And Dad, thrilled to have a pupil, explained the game to me as it unfolded. By the end of that day, I was hooked. The intricacies and strategizing of the game suited my personality perfectly. The numbers geek in me loved the mathematical formulas and equations that came part-and-parcel with the commentary.

And so, when Dad offered to take me to a match the following weekend – a one-day provincial match – I eagerly accepted.

To say that the day was exciting would be a big understatement. By lunchtime on the day of the match, I completely understood why Dad got so passionate about this sport.

It was a riveting match – one of those where you cannot tell until the very last ball is bowled who will be victorious.

It’s the most basic cricket equation. Six runs to win with one over to go, and one wicket in hand. Simply translated: a run had to be scored off of each of the six remaining balls in the match, and a single mistake would mean defeat for the batting team.

It came right down to the wire. One run needed to win. One ball left to be bowled. One very shaky-looking batsman standing at the wicket. It could go either way.

Dad and I, who had spent a wonderful day together, just the two of us, held our breath and watched.

The bowler measured out his run-up, paused, and started loping back towards the batsman. He exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, and the ball flew through the air. The batsman swung and missed, and the ball went sailing past him and hit the wicket so hard that the middle stump broke.

And so the team that Dad and I had  been rooting for lost by the narrowest of margins. It was an incredibly exciting day, and now that Dad is no longer with us, it is a father-daughter memory that I will treasure forever.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Allyson challenged me with “Take the opening line from the book you’re reading. Use that somewhere in the middle of your piece.” and I challenged Jester Queen with “Tell us about an event that forces you to abandon a belief that’s been with you all your life.”

The book I am reading is a wonderfully humourous mix of fact and fiction called “What I Love About Cricket”, written by Sandy Balfour. It opens with the following sentence: “It’s the most basic cricket equation.”

Filed Under: Cricket, Daughter, Excitement, Father, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Special moments Tagged With: , , , , ,
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Running: Breaking A Personal Barrier

March 19, 2012 By

My Distance Enjoyment Chart

Yesterday morning I went for a 17km run.

As usual, I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. As usual, I seriously questioned the sanity of what I was doing as I got ready. And as usual, I ended up enjoying the run far more than I had thought I would.

Whenever I’m ramping up my distance, 17km is a milestone distance. If you were to plot my enjoyment of distances on a graph, the line would rise steadily from 5km to 10km. Then it would start to drop, and the lowest point would be at 16km – a distance that for whatever reason is hell for me. After 16km, the line climbs and reaches its highest point at 21.1km – the half-marathon distance.

So 17km is like a magic number for me. It means that I have broken the ugly 16km barrier at which I never really know how to pace myself, and I am free to run true to my natural style.

I knew going into the run that it might be a challenge. Two decades ago I sustained a serious injury to my left ankle that flares up from time to time. On Saturday night, I had woken up multiple times feeling as if someone was sticking a red-hot skewer right into the centre of my ankle joint. Sure enough, when I started running on Sunday morning, my foot felt a little tender. In addition, my left hamstring was a little tight, probably due to the fact that I added hill training to my routine last week.

I ran anyway, reasoning that I could always stop if I had to, and yet knowing that I wouldn’t. Little aches and pains that I feel at the start of a run have a way of disappearing as I loosen up.

Apart from a couple of little twinges, I pretty much forgot about the pain in my ankle. The hamstring never really loosened up, but it didn’t get worse either, and I was able to pace myself more or less consistently throughout the 17km. I had my usual difficulties at the usual times, and got through it as I always do: positive self-talk, upbeat music, and a reminder that my whole reason for running is to raise funds for autism.

It’s amazing how the thought of doing something for your kids can put things into perspective. My son lives with the challenges of autism day in and day out, and it will be this way for the rest of his life. Surely, surely, I can cope with the challenges of running for a couple of hours once a week.

And so I finished my 17km, and returned home to be greeted by the child who motivates me to do all of this. This little dude is the only person in the world who can hug me fiercely without caring that I have 17km worth of sweat and salt all over me. Sure, it’s a little gross, but at the same time it’s totally endearing.

After the run I may not have felt as good as new, but I was in reasonable enough nick. My hamstring hurt like the blazes for the rest of the day and I needed to stay off my ankle as much as possible, but I felt the sense of triumph that always comes after a successful long run.

My next long run will be 19km, and I say: BRING IT!

Filed Under: autism, Injury, Mental Barriers, pacing, running, Running for Autism, Training Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Blog Beginnings: A Funny Guy Made Me Do It

March 17, 2012 By

Tim “Red Barren” Carter, who gave me the idea for my blog

Two years ago today, my blog was born. When I wrote my first post, I didn’t really give much thought to where it would all lead me. I wouldn’t have even started the blog if I hadn’t been pushed into it.

Here’s what happened:

Over a decade ago, a super-cool dude by the name of Bruce started a super-cool ezine called Really Good Quotes, and I was one of the original subscribers. In the early days of the ezine, Bruce did everything himself: the research, the writing, the sourcing of quotes, and the compilation of the issues. Five days a week he did this.

After a while, Bruce realized that it would be nice to have a life, so he cut back from five days a week to three, and he started enlisting help. He recruited a couple of writers and asked me to be the editor. And so it became my responsibility to collect everyone’s submissions and format them into something resembling a respectable ezine. When I’d been doing this for about a year, Bruce offered me my own column. I handed off the editing responsibilities to a guy named Cliff, who does it far better than I did (and writes an awesome column to boot), and I started focusing my attention on writing.

Through this whole process, I became friends with the other writers on the ezine. We were a close-knit little group from the start and our friendships started to extend beyond the bounds of Really Good Quotes. One of my fellow writers – a guy who, sadly, is no longer with us – was called Tim. Tim had a heart the size of Texas and he was an amazingly funny guy. He was also a technogeek, so in addition to being a friend, he became my unofficial tech support person.

It was Tim who got me into writing outside of Really Good Quotes. My older son’s autism diagnosis came when I was in the midst of post-partum depression, and I felt myself buckling under the weight of everything. Tim contacted me during this dreadful time and told me that perhaps I needed an additional forum for my writing.  He offered me a space on his website where I could write whenever I wanted. There was no requirement to post, there was no pressure and no expectation. I simply had a place to go when I needed to vent.

One day more than a year later, Tim told me I needed to spread my wings. He wasn’t booting me off his site, and in fact he wanted me to stay and continue posting, but he felt that my writing was good enough to warrant a wider audience. He encouraged me to sign up with one of the well-known blogging platforms that came complete with a large community of bloggers. At first I was resistant to the idea. It sounded like more hard work than I was in the mood for.

Tim’s idea would turn out to be a bug that, once planted in my mind, kept nagging at me. After a couple of months, I thought, What the hell? I signed up, and here I am, celebrating my blog’s second birthday.

Many things have happened since then, both in my blog and in the broader context of my life. I have seen all kinds of growth in my kids, I have watched my son beat out all of the doctor’s predictions, and I have done some growing up myself. I have run all kinds of races and beat my own personal best times. I have voted for the first time as a Canadian citizen, I have tied the knot with my long-time partner and I have taken on extra responsibilities at work.

As far as my writing goes, I still write for Really Good Quotes. I am also a writer and scheduling editor for World Moms Blog and I participate regularly in the Indie Ink writing challenges. I have been invited to participate in the Health Activists Writers Month Challenge which runs in April. I have been voted as one of the Top 25 Canadian Mom Blogs. And very soon, my website will be going through an overhaul. I am excited at the prospect of launching a new look to showcase my writing.

I feel like I am entering a whole new phase and I cannot wait to see where it brings me.

Happy 2nd birthday, blog!

(Photo used with the kind permission of Kristen Carter)

Filed Under: autism, Birthday, blogging, Encouragement, Friendship, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, Milestones, Post-Partum Depression, Really Good Quotes, Uncategorized, World Moms Blog, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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The Final Rose

March 14, 2012 By

I am at the top of the hill with the humans. The rain that threatened earlier has held off and the sun has come out. I can feel the warmth touching me lightly. The humans cannot see me, but it’s not their fault. They feel my presence, but they do not realize that I still have a physical form, albeit one that has almost faded completely. If they were looking intently through one of the shafts of sunlight, they might just be able to make me out. But even if they could, they might not realize it was me.

I was a human myself until very recently, although my memory of that time is fading fast. I know that this place, and these people, were somehow important to me, but I do not know what my name was or how I left my human form.

One of the humans is talking while the others listen. Some kind of water is leaking out of their eyes. I detect a great deal of sadness in the group and I somehow feel that it has something to do with me. I wish I could comfort them, but I instinctively know that they must find their comfort from one another.

Now the humans are taking turns to take a gray powdery substance out of a little wooden box and scatter it to the winds. I feel a very strong connection with that substance, as strong as the connection I felt a couple of days ago when I saw the body I used to inhabit. Two of the humans are climbing out onto a ledge holding the box. One of them pours the rest of the gray powder under a tree, and the other reverently places the box beside a rock.

What a strange ritual. My memory has dissipated too much for me to understand it, but even though I cannot be seen, I feel as if I am a central element in what is happening.

The humans are starting to make their way down the hill, some more quickly than others. Unseen, I flit between them and among them, catching snippets of conversation as I go. They are taking care of each other, the humans are, making sure everyone gets down the hill safely. I see a woman taking off her hat and tenderly placing it onto the head of an older woman to shield her from the hot sun. I sense a lot of distance among this group. Some of the humans have come from far, far away. Some of them have not seen each other for a long time. Even though my sense of who they are is so vague, I feel unsurpassable happiness at the sight of them together, leaning on one another, supporting one another.

With me in tow, the humans reach a house, and a jolt of crystal-clear memory pierces me. This was my home when I was a human. I lived here for a long, long time. As I look at the woman who had received the hat coming down the hill, the word “sister” floats into my consciousness, along with a sense that we spent a lot of time together in this house. A sense of loss emanates from all of the humans, but none so much as this woman who was my sister. I hope she will be OK. I think she will. Everyone seems to be rallying around her.

The woman who had given my sister the hat wanders off into the garden. I decide to go with her. She walks slowly, stopping now and then to smell a flower or look around her. She cannot see me, but I feel that she knows I am there. I float along beside her for a while, looking at her face that seems to be lined with sadness and her shoulders that slump under the weight of regret. Regret for what, I don’t know.

I feel that I have to give her something, some kind of comfort, but since I left my human form, I have been unable to communicate with the humans. I drift away, in search of some way to leave a message.

I find myself standing among some rose bushes. All of the flowers on them are dead, and for some reason that makes me very sad. These roses must have meant something to me.

All of a sudden, I know what I have to do.

I embrace one of the dead roses, enveloping every part of it with my being. I infuse it with my energy, and I become one with the flower as the petals start to fill with colour.

When the human comes around the corner moments later, she stops as she sees a single red rose in the rose garden. She approaches me and gently touches one of my petals. She inhales deeply as the sweet scent of the flower fills the air.

She knows it’s me. I can tell from the way she stands looking at me for a long time, and from the way she lovingly says goodbye before she turns and walks away.

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, kgwaite challenged me with “Write a story from the perspective of someone just entering or just about to leave earth (or life).” and I challenged Eric Limer with “Write a story in which social media is the main driving force.”

Filed Under: Afterlife, Death, family, Indie Ink Writing Challenge, life, Loss, Love, Roses, Saying Goodbye Tagged With: , , , , ,
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