Don't be a stranger

Made it! Thirty-one straight days of blogging --- except that my records at NaBloPoMo claim I've only done thirty. Eden Kennedy, if you're out there, it says 31 here at Post-it Notes from Hades, and I've counted my posts at NaBloPoMo. Not fussing, just want full credit.

Anyway, I'll be bidding NaBloPoMo a fond farewell until November 2010, but in the meantime, I'll still be blogging. Just not every blessed day. At least twice a week. I hope.

I've really got to go and bake some hot cross buns now. However as the new Doctor Who season, complete with a new Doctor is due to be transmitted in Britain this weekend (and will no doubt be viewed illegally in this house before the Canadian transmission on April 17 on Space), I wanted to take one last opportunity to sing the praises of the outgoing Doctor, David Tennant. Well, actually I won't be doing the singing. Oh, don't be so relieved; I'm quite a good singer. Yes, really.

Instead, I'm posting this wonderful fan-vid from the meticulous and thorough BabelColour who, by the way, is not a bad way to learn about Doctor Who. Check out some of his videos. The singer here is the rather marvelous Shingai Shoniwa, even if I don't care for her pronunciation of "mischievous":


Oh, and this morning, the man with a mustache from yesterday approached me at the Hurdman Station.
"We're having a good day today," he remarked with a quick glance at younger daughter.
I cocked my head at him, smiling.
"We usually do, you know."

Seeing is grieving

We only knew we were in trouble when the bus came into view.

Yesterday, the bus failed to show up on the scheduled first day back at school for younger daughter after a two-week March Break. Now, a missing bus, in the delicate domino set-up that is the four-to-five-bus journey from home to school and back, throws off the morning's schedule and I had a medical appointment set up for ten, so I took the easy route, led younger daughter home through the rain, phoned the school to say we wouldn't be there, and took her along with me to the ophthalmologist. It's worked before. When younger daughter got up this morning, she seemed no worse than any other school morning, preparing quickly and even being ready ahead of time.

She first started wailing as the bus approached: "No! I don't want to go to school!" I guess she hoped that maybe the bus wouldn't show up this morning as well, and I would take her home again. By the time we'd taken our seats, she was crying openly, and I knew from past experience that any attempt to console her or even engage her would only exacerbate the situation. Finally, I asked her if I should sit with Daddy, and after a few more sobs, she told me to move.

She wept the rest of the long bus ride to Hurdman Station. I sat across the aisle from her, next to the Resident Fan Boy and watched our fellow passengers watching us, and particularly her. We got out to wait for our transfer and younger daughter resolutely moved away from us into a recess of the long shelter, facing the wall.

"What's the problem?"
A bearded gentleman whom I recognised from the previous bus was standing in front of me.
"I beg your pardon," I said, a little sharply.
"I only wanted to know if I could help."
"My daughter has pervasive developmental disorder and she doesn't want to go to school," I said, softening the edge to my voice, but keeping the answer short. You learn to sniff out quickly the holier-than-thous and busy-bodies. This guy wasn't one of them. I don't know what help he thought he could offer, but kind hearts shouldn't be booted around.
"It must be very hard," he said.
"It is. Thank-you."

He walked away. Part of me wanted to say: It isn't like this every day. It isn't. That's why people were noticing us today. They only notice us when something goes wrong. Remember what I said yesterday about being invisible? There are perks...

The Resident Fan Boy decided to accompany us all the way to school. He sat next to her on the second leg of the long journey alongside the barren early-spring fields of the Experimental Farm. I sat in silent misery behind.

We made our way up the suburban street toward the school, younger daughter trailing behind like Eurydice. Naturally, it took some minutes for someone to unlock the door.

"It will be okay," I said automatically.
"It's not okay! It's not okay, Mom," she declared. The classroom was locked; her teacher not yet arrived. Younger daughter stationed herself at the far end of the hall. We met her teacher at the door and gave her a quick rundown.

"She'll be fine," she said calmly. "It will take two or three minutes." If you go right now, she didn't say. I called a reassuring goodbye.

"I don't want it to be a long day...."

We left. The Resident Fan Boy took me to a Starbucks and we slid back into blessed invisibility. Oh God. Dear God.

Can you feel the same?
Yeah, ya gotta love the pain.
Ooh, it looks like rain again.
Ooh, feel it comin' in.
The mountains win again.

The sisterhood

Today, I feel a little more invisible than usual. It's time for my annual ophthalmology appointment, so I've left off the makeup and am wearing glasses. I could get depressed about looking less appealing than usual, but, heck, I'm over thirty-five. Nobody looks at me anyway. It's not all bad; I've discovered that I can cry in public -- no one notices.

Invisibility doesn't just come from failing to be young. Having a special needs child can make you vanish into the scenery more effectively than Harry Potter's magic cloak. I've discussed this with other "special needs mums". One of them described chatting with another mum while waiting outside the school for her son on the autism spectrum. A woman walked up to the other mum and arranged a play date between their respective children. It was as if my friend were not standing there. She tells me this is a regular occurrence. No one ever approaches to make a play date with her son.

I believe her. I'd been at that school for eight years: four with neuro-typical (albeit gifted) older daughter and four with PDD-NOS younger daughter. I was visible and included the first four; invisible and excluded the second four, even though I was at the school every day -- exactly like my daughters.

Actually, invisibility has its own blessings, because the only time you become visible with a special needs child is when there's a problem. One of our national papers here in Canada is The Globe and Mail which, for the past fifteen years or so, has had a feature called "Facts and Arguments", a daily essay submitted by a G&M reader. Not long ago, a heart-breaking piece appeared, written by a special needs mum who is on that still-hopeful-not-yet-exhausted opening edge of seeing her child through school. In an effort to help classmates and their parents understand about her son, who is living with Down's Syndrome, she wrote a letter and the teacher distributed it to the class families. She was approached by a parent who said she was "surprised at the letter" then asked (wait for it) why this mother had not had prenatal testing. This gentle mother managed a polite response, stumbled to her car and spent the rest of the morning crying:

What I should have asked the mom in the playground was, “What if your daughter was in a car accident tomorrow and had a brain injury? Would you love her any less?”

Oh, darlin', I've been there too, leaning unseen against a tree in the little park below the school, gasping and weeping. For myself, what I long to ask those other parents with neuro-typical children is this: "Do you really think that your child's strengths and gifts are your doing? Do you really think that my child's disabilities are my doing? Because, dear people, all it takes is an illness or an accident. Then you can be in my little club."

I have a secret name for my little club. I call it The Sisterhood. I realize that dads are in this too, but it's the mums that I encounter. Have you ever heard of "gaydar"? I'm reasonably certain that there's a similar sort of sense between special needs mums because ever since I came to Hades (mere months after younger daughter was first "identified"), the only true connections I seem to have made have been with others in The Sisterhood, and there's usually been an attraction of sorts, even before we learn about each other's children. Like any club, we have our own sort of competitions; a meeting over coffee includes support, sympathy, and the underlying gauging of whose life is more challenging and whose child is more, or less, challenged. I usually seem to lose in the first category and win in the second, and feel that the other Sister leaves thinking her child is making better progress than mine.

It's a service I provide.

We share our frustrations over therapy, teachers, bone-headed comments (see above), bullying....

Oh yes, bullying. Sometimes it seems our kids are invisible and that's when they fall through the cracks of the school system, but our kids are different, not a desirable thing in school culture and that makes them highly visible targets.

Not long ago, this article appeared in our local paper, about a boy from Alma, Québec, which is about 600 kilometres (a bit less than 400 miles) from Hades. He's been missing for over a year and the events leading up to his disappearance were uncomfortably familiar.

It was sadness for him and his mother (one of The Sisterhood) that had me riding in the bus, listening to Kate Rusby:
Winter comes around,
And he knows he is homeward bound,
His heartbeat is the only sound he's known,

He once lost his way,
He knows now that was yesterday,
He fell down on his knees to pray for home.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

He's found his way at last,
With each turn a new bond was cast,
His friends now hold him steady fast and true.

With peace in his eyes,
The fear now is a pain in the skies,
With friends near he sees only skies of blue

It's clearer every day,
He knows now he is here to stay,
He cares not why he went away so long.

He's found where he belongs,
He know he's been here all along,
He is smiling as he joins his friends in song.

We'll sing to the morning,
We'll sing till the bells they sound,
We'll sing till the wandering soul is found.

And there it is -- all our invisible hopes and dreams for these children who were sent to us. Pipe-dreams, perhaps, but it's what we hold on to.

Oh, my Sisters. This song is for you and them.

Persephone waives the rules

Younger daughter's March Break is drawing to a close. We took advantage of the two-week independent school version (public schools have just one week) to attend shows, movies, museums, go out for lunch, everything younger daughter had mentioned in a poem she wrote for school about March Break. We also availed ourselves of the opportunity for medical appointments.

While younger daughter was having her eye check-up last week, I browsed an old copy of Wired and came upon an article entitled "The New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans", that is, of course, humans with computers, cell phones, Blue Tooths, etc. I'm semi-evolved, having what is no doubt a stone-aged home computer, a recently acquired iPod, a blog, a Facebook profile, a rarely used Twitter account, and no cell-phone, so I read the article with interest. Among the hints was this: Don't Blog or Tweet Anything With More Than Half a Million Hits.

So, of course, I'm gonna. Because Wired isn't the boss of me. (Although the article is quite good...)

One of my Facebook friends who is clearly less evolved than those geeks at Wired posted a link to this gem taken from the Jimmy Kimmel show (which is on way too late for me to watch; thank gawd for YouTube):
Clearly this is ten minutes well wasted. My only quibble are the missing club members. I'll let you fill in the blanks.

Time flies when you're training dragons

Another 3D IMAX extravanganza. Another five minutes sitting through that increasingly annoying laser show introduction: IMAX....It's Canadian....The sub-base is HERE....Small stuff? I don't think so...

Yep. The novelty is definitely wearing off.

Besides, I'd seen the trailer for this one umpteen times at other 3D screenings and it had the usual shtick: British book, so of course voiced by young American actors playing American high school stereotypes; gruff and stubborn adults with the wrong idea; hero with the right idea and an underdog to protect; lots of explosions and smart-assed humour, etc, etc.

As we set off for Silver City to see How to Train Your Dragon this morning, I comforted myself with the thought that at least we were catching the early show and so would still have Saturday afternoon to play with. Also, David Tennant was voicing someone named Spitelout, so I could at least amuse myself by listening for him...

Somehow, as our hero Hiccup (Vikings need horrible names so the gods won't hurt them, or something like that) bonds with an injured young dragon he dubs Toothless (he isn't), I found myself being won over.

This movie has something that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland didn't have: it has heart, and it has enough of a story that it really doesn't need to be in either IMAX or 3D. It also featured a really nice soundtrack that enhanced the action instead of distracting from it. I floated through this with a general feeling I haven't had at a movie in a while, that of relaxing into delight, silently thinking to myself: Hey...this is rather good!

Just as our own little claim to fame: one of the directors is younger daughter's ex-tutor's brother-in-law. I can tell you're impressed.

Oh, and David Tennant? He's in the cast list, but darned if I know which Viking he is. Elder daughter claimed she could tell from one of the trailers on the internet. She said he says something like "Well, good luck with that." It's his distinctive Scottish accent, she said.

"All the grown-ups had Scottish accents!" I groaned in exasperation.
"No, it was definitely him!" she insisted.
"Which web site?"
"I dunno," she shrugged.

Oh well. I'm ordering one of the audio-books from Amazon.uk. David Tennant narrates all of those...

The Joys of Madeleine L'Engle

When Madeleine L'Engle died nearly three years ago, a little something shriveled up inside me. It was just a little dream, a fantasy of some day meeting this woman whose books stood out like hand-holds on the steep and slippery rock-face of Life: starting with (but of course) A Wrinkle in Time when I was ten or so, to the various "Chronos" and "Kairos" books throughout my adolescence, to the Crosswicks Journals that I returned to time and again during young adulthood, to the more overtly religious essays, dotted here and there with her adult novels.

It probably would have been a disastrous or at least disappointing meeting. Although I responded to the seeking and agnostic nature of her religious views, there was enough in her writings to tell me that she might have found my Unitarian Universalist (and quasi-Quaker) views dismissible. Still, I've been married for several years to a committed liberal Anglican; maybe Madeleine L'Engle and I could have found much common ground. I'll never know.

I've been thinking of Madeleine L'Engle a lot this week. I thought I'd read just about everything that she had published, so I was astonished to see a book entitled The Joys of Love turn up on a search for something else entirely (which is usually how things work for me).

The Joys of Love was published last year by L'Engle's granddaughters. This is a very early novel, based on a short story she wrote in 1942 at about the age of 24. She reworked the story into a novel in the early fifties and re-set it in 1946, which was the year she met her husband the actor Hugh Franklin.

As I'd read pretty nearly everything she wrote, including such nascent novels as The Small Rain and And Both Were Young, I was braced for a rather dated and slightly awkward book. L'Engle really hit her stride as an author in the early sixties, and The Joys of Love, being such an early work, only gives a hint of the skilled story-teller that L'Engle later became. At this stage, she was a very good descriptive writer; her scene-setting is an effective time machine, taking me back to a New England summer sixty years gone. However, although her granddaughter Léna Roy said in the introduction that L'Engle's dramatic training gave her "a keen knack for dialogue", this book is a poor example. Even as a lifetime fan, I found myself groaning inwardly (and sometimes out loud) at the painfully artificial conversations these characters have.

Eventually I caught myself wondering if I'd somehow outgrown her other books to which I haven't turned in some time. This morning, having finished The Joys of Love, I seized half a dozen or so of my favourite L'Engle books, blew the dust off them and flipped through them. (Younger daughter is still on March Break, so there was no matutinal rush for the bus.)

You know what? They were as good as I remembered. I looked at The Young Unicorns, one of my favourites when I was about twelve. The gang-members that figure in the plot are a little "West Side Story", but the characters are whole and believable. I skimmed The Wind in the Door, the sequel to A Wrinkle in Time and still found relevance in the themes of "naming" and the need to slow down to put down roots and grow. Finally, in A Circle of Quiet, I browsed where I had underlined and bookmarked this non-fictional work about L'Engle's own meditations on art, faith and life. This was a book that I used to re-read whenever I was feeling lost and homesick. Today, I found this: We, as adults, often fall into perversity in other areas of discovery: i.e., some modern (and not so modern) art in all forms, where the artist is concentrating more on himself than on his painting or music or story. I would venture a guess that an artist concentrating wholly unself-consciously, wholly thrown into his work, is incapable of producing pornography. All perversion is self-gratification.

I think there's a key here to the problem with The Joys of Love, not that I'm suggesting for a moment that it was pornographic. It was, however, self-conscious, in the way something by a very young artist is. And for a blogger, this message about self-involvement and self-gratification may be very timely indeed...

I'm grateful for stumbling across The Joys of Love. It's not a fabulous novel; it's a green and naïve novel. It is however, a novel of promise, and it has led me back to the later, greater works of Madeleine L'Engle.

To the thirty-something blond on the bus

If you had glanced over your left shoulder while riding into town in the bus this morning, you might have seen me. I was mouthing lyrics and you would have known right away what I was lip-syncing because they were blasting into your ears at the time:

They call me "girl"
They call me Stacy
They call me "her"
They call me Jane

That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name....

And if you had caught my eye, I might have said: "So.... you like the Ting Tings?"
Except you wouldn't have heard me. Because the song was systematically destroying the hair cells in your inner ear.

Listen, sweetie (except you can't, of course), what does it tell you if I'm able to not only make out the song to which you're listening on your orange iPod, but also the lyrics?

Dabbling, Doodling, Fiddling, Wordle-ing...

Okay, I admit it. I cyber-stalk my elder daughter. She didn't give me much choice. She "unfriended" her grandmother, her father and me a few years ago when she came to the conclusion that "none" of her high school pals had their parents as Facebook friends. (She kept my sister and her husband on, presumably because they're way cooler...) When confronted, she pleaded: "Mo-o-o-o-om! Facebook is private!"
"No-o-o-o-o!" I responded in the exact same timbre (irritating her royally), "Facebook is the polar opposite of private!"
No dice. We were out.

Do I respect her wishes? Damned right I don't. I can still get in and see her photographs and while on one of these online field trips, I came across some Wordle pictures she'd put together, mostly for school.
For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, Wordle is a web site which can make any text you choose into a kind of abstract text picture. The first two I've included here are the results of entering: a) a whack of text copied-and-pasted from one computer page of my blog which is about ten posts along with some other stuff; and b) one very long post about Christmas.However, I think it works best with shorter bits of writing on one subject, such as the one just above which is a recent post about a little girl talking to a clown on a bus.

My favourite so far is one I made from my post about pilling my cat:


Try it, with a post, a term paper, a newspaper article....

Your call is important to us, please stay on the line...

Elder daughter is home, full of stories: of attending a performance of La Traviata in Liepzig without actually knowing the plot; of attending a performance of The Magic Flute in Prague where several lines of singing were translated in the English surtitles as "Yes."; of cute Italian and British guys (how worried should we be?); of the prettiest girl in the group, all of sixteen-years-old, being hit on by the sixty-year-old tour director (seriously, how worried should we be?); of British Airways pilots fumbling their way through the safety demo because of the shortage of crew due to the strike...

So to buy myself time, I'm posting a YouTube video. Except I can't embed this particular one, so here's a picture of Olivia Ruiz:
The song I wanted to post is here. I first heard the song on CBC Radio a few weeks ago, googled it and this delightfully dippy video came up. Only the French could get away with this. Please watch it. See you tomorrow...

Write of Passage Number Eleven

This happened in a bygone March of my student days:

This morning, two young girls got on the bus accompanied by a very short little boy with glasses. He was in a boisterous mood and the girls had their hands full trying to keep him in line:
"Be quiet!"
"Yeah, be quiet, or we'll make you kiss Tanya!"
A very tall girl with dark eyes and a strange hair-do boarded the bus, and the pipsqueak couldn't contain his excitement.
"Woo-hoo!" he sang out.
"Shhhhhh!" said the girls.
"I can't help it! She's sexy!"
"Hush! She's older than you are!"
The trio got out at Hampton School and the little boy lingered near the doe-eyed beauty.
"Bye," he said. "Boy, do you look good!"
One of his sisters (?) cousins (?) yanked him down the exit stairs. The pretty girl shook her well-coiffed head, extracted a textbook from her back-pack and set to reading, ignoring the smothered grins around her.