Spread the Word To End the Word

These are my children:



One of them is different than the others. I'll give you a hint:



Clearly the Jumbster is younger than his siblings and obviously much more hip. I mean, just look at the boy's shoes.



And unlike his siblings, he already owns his own set of wheels:



This is a boy who clearly knows how to party:



How many people do you know who can rock wearing a balloon on their head?

My son believes in dental hygiene and practical jokes. Which is why he actively seeks out his older brother's leg just so he can gnaw on it. I'm pretty sure he's using Frac's leg hair as dental floss.



This boy is patriotic:



But he's no jack ass whisperer.



And like all good boys, he's clearly a momma's boy:



He's all of these things, and more. He wears more labels around his neck than most people wear in a lifetime. He is all of those labels, those random tags pinned onto him to help other's identify and deal with his uniqueness and he is more. Strip away all the medical and legal jargon and maybe you'll see my son the way we do.

There is one label, however, that my son refuses to claim.

Jumby is many things, but he is not, RETARDED.

He is not the butt of your jokes, he is not what you mean when you accidentally or casually toss the 'retarded' word around.

I've written about why using the r-word hurts and demeans not only my child but everyone. I've explained why this word, this slang that is so often accepted and ignored is wrong. I'll keep writing about it, banging away on my little keyboard, hoping one more person takes the time to read my words and see the world filtered through my family's eyes.

Through Jumby's eyes.

I hope you'll re-read those words today. And then I hope for one small moment you will put yourself in the shoes of a boy who was born at 24 weeks because his birth mother was high on crack. Wear the shoes of the boy who spent five months in a hospital after birth just struggling to survive. Take a few steps in those shoes of a boy who was shaken when he was six months old. And then walk another couple steps for the time he was violently assaulted, smothered and shaken again before he turned two.

There is a reason my son is blind, deaf and in a wheelchair. There is a reason he will never be like you or like me.

My son is many things.

But he's not retarded.

Spread the word to end the word.

Peace out peeps.

Leap Year Magic

Random odd fact about me: My third child was supposed to be born on Feb 29, 2000. Not the Shale-ster,  no, not unless he had the gestation period of an elephant, but a different third child, lost to the whispers of feint hope somewhere along week 16.

I'm not, nor was I, overly devastated at the loss. I was more irritated that I went through weeks of morning sickness with nothing to show for it other than faulty biology. I didn't know my identity would soon be shaped by the loss of children. Those born and those not.

But every leap year that jumps on by, I wonder about that would-be baby and what he or she would have been like. Just for a moment really, the amount of time it takes my heart to beat once and then I'm past it, onto other wonderments like how I managed to have a daughter who is so perpetually perfect until she is not or a son who seems to be allergic to hygiene or another son who fears marshmallows the way I once feared toy poodles with pink shiny bows in their hair.

I've always been fascinated by the leap year. As a child the bonus day seemed so special. Like it was filled with magic and possibilities. I both envied and pitied the one person I knew whose birthday fell on the date. It was a curiosity I couldn't help examine, like an old seashell found on a sandy shore or the bird's nest found while climbing a tree.

I woke up this morning, the day swollen with possibilities, a remnant of my childhood innocence I suppose, only cemented by once, fleetingly, being the mother to a child to be born on the day.

Except today turned out to be just like every other day before.

The dogs still snored at my side, shedding their black hairs all over my comforter. My husband was still away at work. My children, those who live, still bickered in the kitchen about arms being shoved into sleeves, toast that was too burnt, milk that seemed to disappear too fast.

Life carried on with out a hint of magic the day once seemed to promise.

What a let down I thought, as I took my dogs to trudge in the snow with me to our mailbox down at the end of the road.

As my dogs marked their territory on the small mountain of dirty snow alongside the line of rural postal boxes, I bent down to open my little metal box.

I peered into the dark hole and started pulling out flyers and envelopes, which surely contained bills and other trivial boringness, and then I saw it, all the way in the back of the box, pushed almost out of reach.

A small package.

The dogs and I turned to make our way home and as we walked I wondered what was in the box. It was a curiosity and I was most certainly the cat.

At home I ripped open the envelope to find inside it, a small purple box.

No note, just the box.

Curious and curiouser I thought.

So I lifted off the lid, and thump thump went my heart.

I squealed with delight.

A gift. From a blog reader. A friend.

Made especially for me.

And now I may tell my children, those born, those unborn, those no longer here, that dreams can come true. And I'll send them all my love on the wings of an angel. Or rather, in this case, a dead bird.

Lovingly crafted into a necklace just for me by the incomparable Vicki Pyle who got tired of reading about me wanting a necklace made out of dead animals.

Sometimes you wake up thinking the world is just a little bit blah. And then sometimes you open up a box and a bit of magic is restored to your universe.

I hope everyone's February 29 is filled with a little magic. Even if it's not the taxidermic kind you can hang around your neck to gross out your kids with.

My new necklace is going to go so well with my gopher feet earrings! 

My husband is going to be THRILLED!!

Waiting to Inhale

It was one of those hot summer afternoons where the heat bounced off the sidewalk in blurry waves. I was fourteen years old and unsupervised and my best friend Jojo and I had this wild idea to hang out in her back yard pretending we were grownups.

After walking to the nearest gas station to each buy a pack of cigarettes and slurpees, we shuffled to her house, the heat licking at our backs and I remember wiping beads of sweat off my brow and onto the cotton dress I was wearing.

We set ourselves up in the shade of her back yard, with our slushies and smokes and we  each ordered our own pizza.  I ordered mushroom and pepperoni she chose ham and pineapple.

We paid the delivery boy for our pies, feeling very much like the grownups we hoped we were and then got down to the business of relaxing adult style in the shady city yard.

We each lit a cigarette and grabbed a slice of pizza and we alternated between smoking and chewing, each bite a little more toxic that one before.

I never finished my pizza that afternoon, or my pack of smokes. I managed to make it through half a pizza and almost as many smokes before I turned completely green and had to run to the bathroom to empty out the contents of my stomach. The heat made me feel worse and the nicotine thrummed in my veins, making me even more nauseous than the greasy cheese and fried pepperoni did.

To this day I refuse to eat pepperoni on my pizza.

And after that sweaty sick afternoon I was zealous in my proselytizing against the evils of nicotine. There was no way I would ever be a smoker and I sneered at those who inhaled the noxious tar with obnoxious disdain.

My body was a temple and for years I pampered it. I was an athlete, who watched what type of food I consumed and made sure to never pollute my body with either the carcinogens of cigarettes or the evils of alcohol.

For 16 years I was obnoxious about it. That single afternoon as a 14 year-old-chain smoker clung to my memory the way cigarette smoke sticks to skin.

And then it happened.

My son died. And I lost my mind in an ocean of pain; the waves pulling me under, only to push me up again for a breath before pulling me back down.

I wasn't coping, or healing or even really surviving. I rather just existed at the very bare minimum. I was completely numb to everything and everyone, devoid of any sensation at all.

And then someone exhaled their stinky second hand smoke into my face as I was inhaling.

And my eyes watered and my lungs constricted and the world tilted slightly.

It was, for the first time in almost a year, that I felt something, anything, at all.

It was the day before the first anniversary of Shale's death. On the day marking his actual passing, I went to a gas station and bought my first pack of cigarettes since that hot summer afternoon so many years ago.

I've been smoking ever since. I told myself that it was likely better than drinking, or losing myself in drugs, both of which held a certain appeal after my son died. I just wanted to feel. I started chasing joy as I breathed in my nicotine fix.

I started to finally, at long last, heal.

Smoking is BAD yo. I don't recommend it. Even if I do so love it. Call me Captain Hypocrite

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I understand now that I was already in the healing process when I inhaled my first cigarette. And if I had waited just a bit longer, I'd likely be in the same relatively healthy headspace I'm in now only minus a nicotine addiction.

But those cigarettes, they were sweet. And some of them, I'm sure, saved my life as surely as they shortened it every time I inhaled. I didn't just smoke, I savoured. I enjoyed every cigarette I lit up as I rediscovered who I was.

But like a sweet dessert, or a great vacation, all good things come to an end and I knew my time as a smoker had run out. My husband, god bless his cotton socks, puts up with a lot from me but even I couldn't blame him for not wanting to kiss someone who smelled and tasted like an ashtray. My kids, preoccupied with sudden death, worried endlessly that I was puffing my way into the grassy patch we've reserved next to their brother.

And so began my quest to quit. For over a year, maybe two, I'd suffer through the agony of trying to quit only to announce my defeat with a sweet long drag of nicotine and tar. I never lasted more than a week or so without giving into my cravings, listening to my demon. I'd stopped telling people in real life and online that I was quitting smoking because I knew I'd eventually fail.

I don't know what changed. Maybe it was finally understanding that I actually liked smoking and enjoyed it when everyone around me told me I shouldn't.  Maybe it was allowing myself the promise that if I made it to 80 years old I'd march myself to the nearest gas station, buy a pack of my favourite tarsticks and smoke myself to my death. Whatever it was, something clicked in me, allowing me to toss away a half pack of ciggies and not look back since.

I still want to smoke. Every day. And let's be honest here, holy hell this was, is, hard. I can't imagine struggling with an addiction to alcohol or drugs because I am fairly certain I'd never be sober. Quitting cold turkey was probably the least fun thing I've ever done next to burying my child and waxing my own bikini line.

Enough days are now behind me, all of them without cigarettes, that I now want to add another nicotine free day to my history more than I want to smoke.

That's something, I suppose, even if it means inhaling just isn't any fun any more.