Virtual Fence

Dearest Red Bird

We are a long way from where we started aren't we. I think, with the new experiences we are having separate from each other, we will inevitably feel like the distance is growing between us, but only because we don't have any common experiences to share. But my dear one, we never did. Being two so very private (read: antisocial) beings our interactions were more weekly round ups with news from your side of the fence being the weird and wacky variety and mine the introverted ramblings of an indoctrinated mother! How fortunate then that we have this 'interweb' thing and 'the Google' to bridge that gap (sorry, that's what my mother calls it and now I can't call it anything else!) So let's pretend that our laptops are the fence and we are still the same, clucking and giggling about the woes and highs of our week. Having said all that, I too am feeling further from you these last few days, so for goodness sake get Skype already will you!

How about I tell you about my day. You of all people will understand my poor boy's struggles. It was not a good day, typical, but not the best.
So it started with the whole badly (not) worded Science assignment I wrote for him. As I told you in my email he had a terrible time with the language I chose. For those reading this who are not Red Bird, my son's autism leaves him with rigid thinking and an incredible sense of fairness. He will take the written or spoken word literally and will fight you to the death if he feels duped. So here's what I wrote. He is currently doing a unit on ecology and the affects of invasive species and human interaction on native species.

Question 1
Find 4 species which are endangered, threatened or at risk due to poaching or habitat destruction. These species do not have to be all from the same region. Of the 4 species at least one of the animals must be hunted illegally (poached) and at least one must experience habitat destruction.

Species Name                       Motivation for poaching?                          Cause of habitat destruction?
1
2
3
4
He wrote down 4 species and filled in the column about poaching for one and the column for habitat destruction for another, the other two he left blank.

He read the instructions literally. One must be poached and one must be affected by habitat destruction, the others didn't matter. So my friend, you know what happened next. He lost it, he was so angry that I was telling him he did it wrong when that's what the instructions told him to do. It took a while and he finally sort of calmed down, but refused to answer the question as written!

We then took him to the University of Victoria as they were having their 'Happy 50th Birthday' celebrations. We got there too late, the place was pretty deserted other than a few students mingling around but we hung out and toured the campus for a while. If he could have climbed inside himself I think he would have. You know how it is Red Bird, it's a kind of physical pain for them to be around people and he has a particularly hard time with people in his age category. We dug in our heels, refusing to leave and had him persevere. How on earth he's going to manage higher education I don't know. Looks like we better start thinking about plan B and increase his interactions with the outside world.

Going back to the badly worded science thing, as he was raging at the injustice of the situation, all I could do was laugh. Am I a bad parent? I couldn't help it, it was such a text book response from him as someone with autism, it was just funny. I don't know that I'm explaining this well, but he was so flustered about the injustice of it all when it really wasn't a big deal. I didn't criticize him when I pointed out the mistake but he took it as such a personal attack and all I could do was laugh. I know it meant a lot to him, but I could only say, 'It's alright mate, it's not a big deal.' so many times before it became funny as he made proclamation after proclamation about the unfairness of it all and my incompetence as a science worksheet writer! Yes, I am a terrible mother laughing at her child, but I don't think I am able to handle this any other way. There is no point in worrying or pacifying. That will not benefit him in the long run. I point out he is being rigid, I point out he is being rude, I point out that this is not typical behaviour and he will not fair well in the world if he acts this way with others and I do it all with a smile because it's not his fault. I point out that this is his autism and he needs to be calm and let it go. We must agree to disagree, he must learn to compromise and let it go. I have to laugh at the insanity of it all because there is no point doing it any other way, we will end up in the same place so might as well end up there happy.

You had mentioned in a facebook post about things not starting well for Fledgling at school this year and we haven't had a chance to talk about it. I worry about her everyday. Is she happy? Does she have friends? Are they understanding and forgiving? Is she eating properly? Does she know she has two mothers? By the way all those questions are not a reflection on your parenting skills, I know she's eating properly as she has the most excellent parents, but I worry (picture hand gestures and an Italian accent plus me 100lb heavier, all in black with perhaps a lace collar and grey hair pulled back in a bun as I said that!)

I miss you my friend.
Always yours ,unless you fail to install Skype this week where upon I will become someone else's,
Sparrow.... aww crap, you know that's not true.

Get Skype NOW!

Dear Sparrow,

It’s funny that you should say, in your last entry, that Fledgling's posting made you feel closer to us because, sadly, I feel you and yours getting further and further away from me.  I know, I know, I can hear your voice – “if you would just get on Skype already!” I recall an email you sent with the subject line of GET SKYPE NOW and my return response had the subject line:SKYPE WILL BE INSTALLED THIS EVENING :)

It’s been over a week, hasn’t it?! Emailing, texting, Facebook chatting; and, soon Skype, we do it all and, yet, I feel your presence getting further and further away. I can no longer step out into our adjacent yards and see you there but, if I close my eyes, I can still see it all: our kids playing, your dogs (hard to believe they’re gone), our gardens, you. I can even feel the sun on my back as we weed and chat and see the tree we planted in the dead centre of both yards with its precarious lean towards your yard.

Even though I can see all of this so clearly, I’m also feeling a lot getting away from me: memories, occasions, traditions, they all seem to be a part of another life that I haven’t brought with me to the new house. It was driven home for me a few days ago as I walked by the old place and memories came sweeping past me (I sent you a text that morning telling you I was heading out for a marathon power walk but I now realize some of my texts don’t make it through to you!). As I walked by our places (for those new to our blog, Sparrow and I were side-by-side neighbours in a semi-detached house until we both took off on our journeys), it felt like I could just unlock the door, walk in and be home. I could smell the house, even, with its  "Pier 1 imports" potpourri smell that always welcomed me. I could feel you guys, too, just across from me. I could see your kids as if they were right there in front of me. It was a good thing I was wearing sunglasses so no one could see the tears that came so unexpectedly. The past really did come flooding back like how they say your life flashes before your eyes before you die.

But, that kind of relinquishing of the past, that’s all a part of the journey, isn’t it? I mean, we brought this on ourselves. I walked away from that house and into my new life willingly but that doesn’t mean I’ve shaken the old life off. It still feels very much a part of me and I’ll carry it around, much like I carry you around.

I’m starting to build new memories here and new friends have entered my life and my home. I hosted my first dinner party and it was a huge success. I did it very differently from the way I would have in the past. There were no days of planning a menu and getting out my best dishes. It helped that most things were still in boxes in the basement so I couldn’t go “whole hog” like I used to.  Even without those things, though, everything felt more relaxed and comfortable, somehow. Two of the faces at my table that night were new friends, people who have never sat around a table with me before and it was a beautiful experience. Another was a dear “old” friend, Raven, who is central in my daily experience and having her there made me feel at peace.

So, here I am building new memories and walking a new journey but I keep feeling a tug of old connections and the old house. You are as dear to me now as ever, probably more so now actually, but I do feel you getting further away from me. We’ve left a lot behind, Sparrow. A lot. Sometimes the weight of that is heavy on my shoulders and, at other times, I’m okay with it. It was just that, on that beautiful morning as I was power walking through our old stomping grounds, I couldn’t believe that that house wasn’t home anymore and that you weren’t right there, next to me.

I love you, dear one and I send you best wishes. I’m hitting the hay early tonight but will you believe me if I say Skype will be installed this week? ;-) Say hi to your young man for me and your older one, too. I’ll drop a personal message for your gorgeous eldest born and I’ll drink a cup of tea. This journey is a joy to me, Sparrow, but sometimes…just sometimes…

PS you know what else struck me as I walked by the old place? Pets. How many pets are buried in those old gardens of ours? We have a few fish and 2 beloved dwarf hamsters, Henry and Peanut, on our side. I’m pretty sure your oldest darling’s guinea pig is there, isn’t he? His name was Coconut, wasn’t it?

A lot was left behind.

Don’t worry, tomorrow I’ll spend time thinking about all the good things I brought with me on my journey.

Love Always, Red Bird

Text and email fail!

Dearest Red Bird

As you will see this was going to be an email to you, but I thought about what we had said to each other about our emails being more interesting than our posts sometimes and decided to prove our theory wrong;p



So I sent you a text today to say, Hi, I miss you, and my phone let me down. So an email will have to do:)

Lovely post with Fledgling, she's so intelligent, you can hear how smart she is, her replies are not that of a typical 12 year old. Also, when did she become a 12 year old? Life is flashing past way too fast. I'm trying to get the boy to do something similar, but it may take a while, you know how hard it is for him to access any thoughts or feelings about subjects that he doesn't initiate. Talking of which last nights question of the night was;

 "Do you think humans are interfering with evolution? Basically are our medical advances causing the delay or halt of survival of the fittest if we are curing or finding ways to live with illness rather than it being bred out of us as in the past when those with genetic defects would simply die and there would be no offspring to continue the spread of the genetic disease. Or is the fact that it is usually the rich who can afford these medical interventions and, with the rich being typically more educated, is this in itself a form of natural selection where we will be left with a race of highly intelligent beings? Will it matter that we still have genetic diseases if we are able to control their affect on us? Are we heading towards a time when we will chose who will live at conception, a human helping hand if you will, for evolution? If so is that a bad thing or are we simply doing what nature does?"

All this came from watching the new milk ad's on television with the cave men and the recent vote on motion 312 in the House of Commons. That's how his brain works!

So the flip side of this is that he was able to bring that question to the table but was not able to engage in conversation with us about it. He had obviously been thinking about it and had come to some conclusions, but when asked to express his opinion in front of us he simply couldn't. It's such a strange thing and I will never understand it. If I could flip back the top of his head and peek inside I imagine it would be full of profound topics swirling around, characters similar to the great thinkers of our time would be deep in discussion about wondrous phenomena, yet not one word of it can be heard and their heads are bowed making it impossible to read their lips.

We'll see what the next few days bring, but in the mean time I hope Fledgling will share her insights with us again. Selfishly it makes me feel like the two of you are closer, and I like that.

Always Yours

Sparrow

p.s.  I just want to add that if you were to flip back the top of my head it would reveal a really bad rendition of 'Shake it out' by Florence and the Machine you sent me except I can never remember the words so all you would hear is a lot of out of tune 'na na naa's'. I swear, if he wasn't the spitting image of his Dad I would bet my life on them having given me the wrong baby!

Let's Chat or Meet fledgling As Herself

Sparrow,

My last entry, as you know (!) was a love letter to my youngest daughter, a girl I think many of our readers feel like they’re starting to “know” because, of course, I write about her – A LOT!!!  She’s a character, this girl of mine and, let me tell you, she came out of the womb that way! Both of my girls are “characters” and, while I write mostly about my youngest born so far, my eldest, with her permission of course, will make an appearance as well because she, too, is central to the heart of my journey. For this entry, however, I’m concentrating yet again on my Fledgling, and I’m doing it “interview style” in order to allow her to speak for herself.

To start, let me give some background. Fledgling, at the time of this blog entry, is 12. She is a petite miss with short brown hair and a smile that lights up a room. She is a spirited girl who will, when she grows up, most certainly be a beauty. What marks her though, are her “exceptionalities”; those things that make her neurologically unlike the average child her age. Fledgling has a long list of labels that we have uncovered through years of being followed by Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Pediatricians and Occupational Therapists.

When she was in the first grade, and was extensively flipping letters and numbers (with entire words being flipped mirror image and writing starting on the right side, rather than left, of the page), we brought Fledgling in to see a Psychologist to have “psycho-educational testing” (an assessment of psychological aspects of learning and of academic skills). Through this testing, we (her father and I) found that there were several things “going on” in the head of our wee offspring and years of follow up testing confirmed and highlighted her needs. We learned, then, that our wee one is profoundly gifted (in case our readers aren’t aware, gifted has several ranges: mildly, moderately, highly and profoundly gifted with profoundly falling in an IQ range of 180+, a tiny minority of the gifted population), and is LD (ie has learning disabilities) and, hence, has extreme difficulty getting her racing intellectual thoughts out of her head or interpreting intellectual information. She may, or may not be somewhere on the Autism Spectrum scale and may/or may not suffer from childhood bipolar disorder. Childhood neurological issues so often mimic each other that it can take years to completely understand a child’s labels. She is, however, going through a diagnostic process for both of the latter mentioned issues.

One recent evening, I bribed my wee Miss with freshly baked peanut butter cookies and hot chocolate and I met her for a Facebook “Chat”. She typed on her laptop from the comfort of her bed:

 and I from the comfort of mine:

The conversation is here recorded word for word, spelling errors and all. I have, of course, taken out our names for privacy.  Here goes:

Red Bird:  Hey You!

Fledgling:  hi there

Red Bird:  Thanks for joining me...I may have to take pauses to murdelize your puppy every now and then, k?!

Fledgling:  kk.

Red Bird:  Okay, so let's start with this: Sparrow and I have been talking about the term "exceptional" a lot, do you know what is meant by that term?

Fledgling:  yes. in the way we’re talking about, it means"not average" for lack of better words

Red Bird:  Ya, actually, that's a great way of putting it. So, with that said, let's agree that you are "not average" in several ways, right?

Fledgling:  hehehe that's foe sure

Red Bird:  I'm laughing so hard at that answer I scared the dog!

Fledgling:  poor little bunny!!!

Red Bird:  He wants my cookies! mmmmmm peanut butter cookie

Fledgling:  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm                                                                    

Red Bird:  Okay, back to serious, tell me in what ways you've been labelled "exceptional"

Fledgling:  like, just a list of my labels? 

Red Bird:  Ya, just a list

Fledgling:  profoundly gifted, adhd, ld, mood disorder, am i missing any?

Red Bird:  A few. Auditory Processing Disorder, Motor coordination Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder and I want to clarify that when you say LD you mean Learning Disabilities in which you have several and when you say mood disorder you mean anxiety disorder and clinical depression

Red Bird:  I'd like to add that you are currently being re-evaluated for Asperger's Syndrome as well as possible childhood bi-polar disorder.....wow!

Fledgling:  woops i guess you better add forgetful to the list

Red Bird: Ha! Good Response! Did either of us add profoundly gifted to the list?

Fledgling:  i did.

Red Bird:  Okay. That list was long! How do you feel about that long a list?

Fledgling:  well, some of them are fine with me. like adhd and profoundly gifted. Others i am more bothered by

Red Bird:  I didn't know that. Can you tell me which ones?

Fledgling:  well ones that affect me all the time like sensory prossesing, depression, motor  coordination

Fledgling:  did the dog just hit his head?

Red Bird:  He did! Did you hear him?! He's such a dunce.

Fledgling:  yes he is!

Red Bird:  HMMMM Depression is the one that bothers me most for you. Depression is hard on me to watch you go through and I can't imagine how it feels, especially to a child (though there's not a lot child like about you!). 

Red Bird:  Can you sum up in just a few words what depression feels like?

Fledgling:  its lethargy, anger, and a general "do not want" to do anything

Red Bird:  Tell me, if we could take your labels off of your shoulders, would you give them up?

Fledgling:  yes, except for gifted. but i would need to keep the memories because they make me in a way, less naive, more aware of the real world.

Red Bird:  Beautifully well said! I love you, I hope you know that; labels and all. I just hate that you whoop my butt so often at Connect 4. Seriously, you couldn't let me win once in a blue moon? 

Fledgling:   http://www.google.ca/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&biw=1366&bih=667&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsa&tbnid=-P0x3Y4SUJwWrM%3A&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fknowyourmeme.com%2Fmemes%2Fno-rage-face&docid=spFkSmlp8FNO4M&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.kym-cdn.com%2Fen

Red Bird:  Can you hear me laughing all the way from your room?!

Fledgling:  oh yes, hyena woman

Red Bird:  Goodbye BRAT! Thanks for joining me and eating my cookies. Now, I have to find puppy, he escaped. He's probably pooing somewhere :0 Arggggghhhh smiley fail!

Fledgling:  nice going

Red Bird:  BRAT!

Fledgling:  bye

A few notes on this conversation: Make sure you click on Fledgling’s link, if you didn’t. She came up with that in seconds; literally! Also, a comment on her grammatical errors: My young lady never capitalizes and rarely uses punctuation. She knows how to do both but, for some reason, seems incapable of doing it. She does, however, often accidentally capitalize words at random places throughout a sentence when she’s printing though.  Even for school, Fledgling uses a laptop as an accommodation for her learning disabilities. Also, in case you are old like me, KK is used to mean okay (check out urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kk). And, on a final note, murdelize is a word and I’ll stand by it!

With all our love,

Fledgling and Red Bird!

Dear Fledgling or A Love Letter to a Little Girl Who Might Need a Love Letter

Dear Fledgling:

You should know:

I love you.

You make me smile.

You make me sing.

You challenge how I see the world.

You challenge how I participate in the world.

You make me cry, scream, cower. You make laugh, dance, and question. You are the bain of my existence and the reason for every breath I take.

You break my heart.

The world is a challenge for you. Eye-to-eye contact affects you in a way I can’t understand, depression tears at your sense of well-being in a way I can’t fully realize and anxiety closes you off from experiences that would make another child shine.

You break my heart.

The world is a challenge for you. Abstract thinking makes you light up, new information sends you racing for Google for more, and a good book has you passionately and intensely lost to the world.

You, fledgling, are a conglomeration of learning disabilities and profound intelligence, mood swings and laughing fits, anger and love.

How is it, beautiful being, that you survive me in my bumbling attempts to bring you through a dark tunnel. 

How is it, beautiful being, that I survive you and your desperate attempts to get lost in your tunnel.

Fledgling, I hope, in your life, you come to realize what I already know is true: Exceptional is not just a pretty word used by professionals to describe something that is a challenge. Exceptional is EXCEPTIONAL. It’s seeing colour where there is none, as you so often do. Exceptional is an inability to make eye contact but an ability to hear and see in a way that most of us will never be able to hear and see.  Exceptional is an intellectual capacity that will take you to the world of abstract thinking that is so lacking in most of us.

Exceptional is you, my love.

I love you.

You are a challenge my girl, a challenge that I could never live without

Never doubt it.

With gratitude for your life,

Mama Red Bird

PS If your sister thinks she got off the hook by not being included in this letter, she should think twice!