It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's Jumby!

I've always wanted to fly. Not in an airplane, although I admit, I find great joy riding through the skies while peering through the clouds. It's likely as close to heaven as this heathen will ever get.

I always wanted wings. The freedom of birds. The ability to soar through the air and feel the wind in my hair.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't have wings. I do, however, have a beak as sharp and pointy as any birds, but my nose can't carry my arse through the sky.

My son Jumby, is like his momma. He wants to be able to fly.

He can't walk. At all. He can't crawl and instead half slithers, half rolls to get where he wants to be. He can barely sit. If you place him on his bum to sit he immediately topples over. He doesn't have the core strength to sit up right. He's mastered squatting on his knees but only because he's stubborn. Even then, a cat's sneeze can quickly tumble him from his position.

The violence inflicted on Jumby in his young age robbed his body of any independence he hoped to one day achieve. A man's anger stole everything from my son, leaving him trapped in a broken, blind, deaf body and left his brain to wither, cementing him to an intellect of a baby forever.

What that violence didn't manage to steal however, was Jumby's soul. Somewhere in the twisted rubble of what is left of the boy I call my son, is a willful child who is tired of seeing life from lying on the floor.

This boy wants his freedom. He wants to fly.

You can see it in his eyes when he's strapped into his wheelchair and we push him as fast as we can in the grocery store aisles, yelling at people to get out of the way as we run. His face lights up when his siblings bounce him on the trampoline and his shrieks of laughter ring in our ears when his dad tosses him high into the sky.

My son wishes he has wings.

I wish he did too.


A swingset really can cure the evils of life. So says Jumby.