Adam’s Delicate Line

The Wild Boy
We all love to read to our children. I have my own favorites and Adam has his. He will sit calmly in my arms reading The Giving Tree by Shel  Silverstein.  His favorite are The Mr. Small and Mr. Giggles books. Adam can begin to tell me his favorite parts and why they are his favorite parts — something that he could not articulate when he was two

A Mother’s Writer’s Block
There are days I’m not sure how to write. This ache of inertia stops me short — what do I tell, what do I leave out? It’s a problem, actually, of writing about oneself; a problem that many writers experience when writing about life. The mother always has to think twice. More like a thousand times a day. A mother has to wear a shield around her so she does not upset the children she loves so much. A mother has to be solid, grounded — a monolith MOTHER as described on the tombstones in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto where many of us Torontonians walk and run through every day like Central Park. I know, it’s a more melancholy park, you’re thinking. But it’

Slipping Through My Fingers All The Time
“Barely awake at the breakfast table, I let precious time go by…” Hovering over the small stainless frying pan I cook his eggs, sunny side up. He always likes them sunny side up. I think it started when I started making them into “Baby Einstein Eggs,” I would call them where I would place his favorite vegetables and transform two eggs into eyes, then glasses then thinly sliced peppers into cow-licked hair. “Baby Einstein Eggs,” he said back deliberately, his voice still sweet and squeaky with staccato rhythmn as the words were hard to say. I watched him look at the eggs with such delight, moving his head closer and then back again l

The Fight of Our Lives
Picking up on Virginia’s Woolf’s quote I picked yesterday in “Writing About Illness” quite intentionally, I consider all some of the historical and contemporary writings about illness and disability. Michael J. Fox talks about his Parkinson’s as a “blessing” and how he would not change a thing about his life. Putting aside the cure arguments that occlude the real issue, there are many perspectives on being ill –  the most important theme is of how we begin to see and appreciate our lives. I know it’s very hard to separate the idea of illness and disability. I’ve protested against calling autism an illness for many years.