Just Ask Her

She planted herself in front of us this morning teetering on her twisted legs like a tree swaying in the wind.

Her teeth trapped her bottom lip inside her mouth.

With elbows locked, she held her thumbs and forefingers outstretched. Her remaining fingers curled into her palms giving her the appearance of a gunslinger.

A strap around her neck held a laptop sized key board with a built in screen for reading digital text.

Like most mornings, she stared at us with something like defiance or urgency… or something else.

Upon encountering her, both The Mayor and The Rooster grabbed one of my hands and snuggled against my legs.

Despite having drawn close, they were both wide-eyed with curiosity.

They see her everyday but have never said anything about her.

Though she’s a teenager, her mother drops her off at The Mayor and The Rooster’s daycare every morning, presumably because it opens and hour earlier than the high school.

I think she has cerebral palsy, but I’ve never asked.

She can walk but to communicate she has to bang away at her keyboard with her outstretched first finger.

While The Mayor and The Rooster huddled against my leg, I realized that I’d better think about a way to talk to them about this girl.

I've had minimal exposure to people with disabilities and lack confidence in knowing exactly what to say.

I worked with a woman with cerebral palsy once.

In reverse of this girl, my colleague could talk but she used a motorized wheel-chair to get around.

When I got used to the way her speech sounded and could easily understand her, I learned that she was hilariously funny.

Sadly, we only worked together for a short time.

Later, I did a consulting project with a state-wide coalition of activists working for equal rights for people with disabilities.

One, a woman with spina bifida, told me that their work was the civil rights movement's final frontier and that as late as the 1970’s it was illegal for “deformed” children to play outside where they might be seen.

That stuck with me. Can you imagine?

Before I left them at daycare, I pulled The Mayor and The Rooster aside.

“She was born with something that makes it hard for her to move her body the way she wants to,” I said.

My children listened, but said nothing.

“She thinks all the same kinds of thoughts as you,” I said, “but she can’t make her body do what she wants it to do.”

They nodded.

I kissed and hugged them goodbye.

Walking to the car, I wondered what else I could have said.

I guess I should just ask her...

At Home with Ram Dass

K was moving to a town called Somewhere Colder.

Have you heard of it?

[It's north of here.]

For all thirteen years that I've known him, he's been on the verge of moving there.

[Or to Spain.]

Because of his imminent move, he has always been hesitant to commit to this place or to invest in anything close to permanence.

Build an addition on our house?

Perish. The. Thought.

Why would we build an addition when we are moments away from The Big Move?

[Not THIS kind of big move, toilet head.]

Anyway, moves (and movements) aside, K has all of a sudden decided to live here now.

It's his new motto.

Live here, now.

He's decided to treat this town like home.

He's been scheduling appointments with a realtor in order to find what he calls "our last house," the one we'll stay in until the end of this story.

"I only have one move left in me," he says.

Friends raise their eyebrows skeptically.

"Why now? What about the economy? Surely you don't want to get involved in the housing market now?!" they say.

I shake my head and smile.

K is a fussy home buyer and he makes decisions about as rapidly as plate tectonics shift continents.

We looked at sixty five houses before we made an offer on the one we own.

SIXTY. FIVE. HOUSES.

This time, I'm not looking.

"When you find one you like enough to buy, let me know," I told him.

New house or not, I'm glad he finally lives here... in this town... with us.

It's good to be home.

Sleeping with Diana Ross

"Mama! Mama!" she cried.

The digital clock in our bedroom read 4:45 a.m.

I hurried to The Rooster's room to quiet her so she didn't wake The Mayor.

"I want you," she said with arms outstretched.

I climbed into her tiny toddler bed and rubbed her back until she fell back to sleep.

When I heard her breath rise and fall in a steady rhythm I tried to sneak back to my own bed, but she called for me again.

She left me no choice but to squeeze in next to her on the bed's crib mattress.

I fought for my share of the covers and a comfortable position.

I somehow managed to fall asleep and stayed there until K came in and whispered that breakfast was ready.

I gently nudged The Rooster.

"Breakfast is ready, sweet girl. Time to get up," I said.

She flipped onto her side, threw me a squinty look and, from out of nowhere demanded,

"Breakfast in bed!"

Next she'll be asking for a cocktail umbrella in her sippy cup and cereal service on the lanai.

Oh, the DIVA

Awakenings

I have this bizarre faith that when my children are sleeping they are actually hard at work growing gynormous brains.

When they sleep late in the mornings, the world seems GLORIOUS.

Freakish as it is, my children rarely sleep late on weekends.

[What is that about? I’m thinking it's a dag gam CONSPIRACY!]

Regardless, I facking HATE to wake them.

Sleep ON, my sleepy sleepers!

Alas, sometimes The Mayor and The Rooster have to be roused from bed..

On weekdays, K’s got a train to catch and I have a standing date with the cabana boy lap lanes at the pool.

My hindquarter has lately realized it's potential as a life-saving, inflatable device and I MUST swim.

But oh, to wake them...

-sigh-

My mom used to come into my bedroom and ask me to get up in the mornings.

After asking me 1,000 times, she’d send in my Father.

My Dad would stand at the end of my bed and grab a handful of my covers.

Then he would VIOLENTLY RIP THEM FROM MY BED.

FACK!!!

Startle much?

Oh, how I hated that.

For the last few mornings I’ve been waking The Mayor by wrapping his body in my arms and kissing his little face.

One kiss on the cheek and one on the forehead…

He stretches his arms out straight and rolls over in the bed.

One kiss on the other cheek and one on the chin.

He wraps his arms around me.

Slowly he comes into wakefulness.

This is the way my Grandma, my father’s mother, would wake me when she visited.

She was a fierce, battle-ax of a woman who could (and would) kick your ass from here to next Tuesday in a game of Yahtzee, but she woke me that way every time she woke me – even when I was in high school.

Despite giving Death a noble thrashing, she died in the late nineties.

When I realized that waking The Mayor this way was her gift to him it made me smile, remembering her.

A Small Dose of Acceptance

For the last seven months I’ve been a hermit, holed up on my own and keeping to myself.

[You know, doing the whole grief thing.]

Sometime in the recent past I noticed streams of stubborn, persistent sunlight sneaking through the slats of my down-turned window blinds.

Curious, I opened the front door with squinted and adjusting eyes to see that my entire yard was full of people.

At first I hurried back inside and shut the door.

Oh, my GOD! Who ARE all those people and what are they doing in my yard?!!

Gradually I went out among them.

They invited us to their houses for dinners and play dates and we invited them back...

They made us laugh.

They have us out and about, walking around our neighborhood.

"Let's go on an adventure!" The Rooster says.

I like thinking of our walks that way.

The other day we were strolling up a quiet, neighborhood street hand in hand letting the perfect evening breeze billow all around us.

I beamed, feeling happy.

I thought about the new people in our lives and the accompanying new social dynamics.

Do they like us as much as we like them? I wondered.

Then I thought of my Granny... how much I miss her... how much I have missed her.

I started to feel guilty for enjoying myself, but then I felt her presence all around me, everywhere.

Her fingertips were the breeze rustling the flowers from their beds.

“I want you to be happy,” she said.

Later, at the farmer’s market, I bought a pint of blackberries.

They were fat and juicy berries -- my favorite.

The Rooster, who loves them too, got nose deep in the box before we finished checking out.

As I watched her devour berry after berry, I thought about picking berries with my Granny and all the times she made blackberry dumplings for me.

Snapping back to the present, I realized that The Rooster intended to eat the entire pint of berries before we even left the store.

I started to say something but then I heard my Granny again.

“Everything is as it should be,” she said.

The sun is shining and everything is as it should be.