Folliculi, Follicula
TEND and SAVOR “Why the hair is attached to the head it will not come out please respond to me in a video.” These were the first words Bink communicated to me today, shortly after she got up. I’ve answered this question—one of about six in the current sequence that makes up part of my […]
Headway Happening Here
Smile Last time it was Tuesday, six months and four days ago. The incredible Dr. S managed a first— pedaling the chair back just a bit, your face more accessible, sunglasses shielding your eyes from too-bright light. He touched twenty dulled pearls with his counter, probing slyly, quickly, distracting with wide smiles, silly faces, a […]
WALKING HER HOME
Adrift. That’s the word that floated into my teary vision as I sat in my car outside the facility my mother has resided in for the past seven years. These after-visit pauses have become part of my ritual in the past few months. There is always someplace else I need to be, fitting in my […]
What Do You Know?
What do we know for sure? I find myself wondering, lately, if we mostly hold the beliefs that suit our ease. For some, self-contempt can provide a kind of familiarity which becomes belief. For others, there is ease in what’s left after all the anger—which is really a mutation of pain—gets bored and leaves, or […]
Categorically Speaking
Dubbed One name for a collection of can’ts, of never wills and less-thans, a singular bucket into which they dump the myriad ways she comes up short. Autism. The rusty scuttle whose name expands to encompass the collected others— Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Severe anxiety disorder. Chronic polyuria. Lordosis, Kyphosis. Intellectual Disability. Oh, I’ve made peace […]
Accepting Autism
Ten years ago, April was designated Autism Awareness month. April 2 is World Autism Awareness day. There has been a movement towards renaming both of these, replacing awareness with acceptance . Robert Frost wrote,” Always fall in love with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My […]
Literally
I suppose all parents have those first moments of recognition; the sudden realization that the world has pushed itself inside your child’s innocence, the bittersweet rush of comprehension that s/he will never be quite the same again. Having a child with disabilities creates a different trajectory. Timelines are unpredictable. Those milestones that mark the development […]
Me and My Shadow Go to Market
It is May 2020, still early in The Covid Times. We take ourselves to the market, by which I mean our whole selves, me in my layers of self-consciousness— the run of the mill kind that most of us don without thought— she baring all, as usual: no pretense, nothing to hide. The market rule […]
Gifts and Visitations
It’s been just over a month since my dear friend and soul sister Marina died, after a quick and nasty tussle with appendiceal cancer. She visits my consciousness daily, in ways both fleeting and substantial. We talked a lot about the afterlife in her last months. She told me clearly that, when she visits me […]
Dragonflies
As I write this, my dear friend Marina lies dying in a lovely room inside the oldest house in an historic and pretty New Hampshire town. A wonderful woman who worked with her in the local general store has taken her into her home. Hospice has set her up well with a hospital bed that […]