2004-03-24 - 6:12 p.m.
So I was walking the dog this morning...this is when I do some of my thinking, even though I really should be paying attention, as the dog is very strong, like a poodle sledge dog. They actually have these you know. there is a guy who has a whole "set" (or whatever the word is) of poodles for his sledge. This is not the guy who just won the long and important race after 11 tries, recently. I know, I know, you have been too busy watching the world championship of POKER to watch the sled races, but there is room in my world for many many things and I am a woman of vast and varied interests, which is what makes me so fucking SPECIAL.
Anyway.
I was walking the dog this morning,and as he paused by the soon to be blooming forsythia, I was thinking about my kids. As he dragged me with his big shoulders back lunging forward toward the house and then tried to wrest the handle of the leash away from me so he could "walk himself" back to the steps, I continued to think about the kids. Jean and her poorly trained poodle are a sight of high comedy in this town in the early morning hours.
So, now one of my kids is twelve. And today is the second day he has gotten up and gone into the bathroom and peed, IND. Unless you have a kid with a disability, you probably don't know what IND means. It means independently. It is something people who are parents, or caretakers, of children who have disabilities, look for and hope for and pray for and work for in a number of areas. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Sometimes you win for a while, sometimes there is a step back and you don't know why. All I can say is, this is major. MAJOR. For this kid. And he knows it. He knows it perfectly well, although he cannot speak.
Often to my friends, I have said how I consider my children the most beautiful children. I see them as having a purpose just in existing to be beautiful... Quoting that line: "Consider the lilies of the field, they do not toil, neither do they reap..."<--Pretty sure that is how it goes.
Anyway, I think I am selling them short. They have more to offer than that, after all, and I can see it as they get older. OK, ok, so *I* am just a pretty face (ha ha) ... they...they have MORE to offer, and not just in teaching ME lessons. They might just potentially contribute in ways I have no ability to forsee yet, and I am darned if I am going to try and stop the unfolding of the process. As we put in the back of one of their yearbooks once, where you pay to put an ad:
"IMAGINE".
Of course, that was Jim who thought to put that.
