I have been fighting the demons for a long time…and I’m not speaking of my children. Deep inside of me I know, even when no one else does. They are all the things that I am afraid of; they are what I might have been; and they are the things I mustn’t ever tell. On one of the early days in July, just as a lot of hard things began to happen, one of the boys fell down the basement stairs. I can still hear the sounds: crashing, calling out…and I can still feel the anguish of tryi

Last year, they were probably heard screaming through to the second floor of the clinic, and there were fights…battles…battles that they did not win. No one did. A friend shared a link on social media yesterday, and I read every word, as often I do when this particular friend posts things. If she finds something worthy of her time, I know it will be worthy of mine. What I read was a post on the toll taken by the coronavirus from the perspective of writer and blogger, Helene W

“Everything is either a blessing or a lesson.” Who was it that said that, anyway? Maybe, some things can be both of those at the same time. Perched on top of the hill at the edge of my grandparents’ property, my brother, my sister, and I spent strings of days looking out onto the St. Louis traffic, wondering who inhabited the curious round apartment tower building, talking about where we could hide Grandpa Gene’s cigarettes, and dreaming of getting a can of Faygo Redpop from

We don’t have to go back to some of the hard things. We have come so very far. Last year at this time, as the cold set in, we were planning for a wedding. Our visions were often blurred through the snowflakes, which seemed to come with more strength and fortitude than in other winters. As the seasons turned, the weather didn’t, until the rain replaced the snow and ice. We reluctantly imagined wedding guests wearing rubber boots and holding onto their hats and skirts during wh

I guess you only get so many chances, at least in this life. Nancy, my favorite chicken, went quietly in the early morning cold of All Soul’s Day. She had never really been the same since she had survived the raccoon attack last winter, though she tried her best to keep up with the others in the flock. I could tell she was slowing down. She mostly hung out under the roost in Coop #2, which seemed to be the place for ailing chickens, chickens at low places in the pecking order

It’s the eve of your twelfth birthday. The picture in my head may have been a bit different from what I was expecting, but I should have known a long time ago to stop expecting, because there just doesn’t seem to be much sense in that. I wish you hadn’t told me that you were starting to get a mustache, but I wish harder that I hadn’t looked, because I am not ready to see. I am not ready to see lots of things, but here I stand, knowing that in another birthday or two, I may ac

“I had a great time. Can’t wait until next week.” Well, that was a relief, because the faces he made during the hour-and-fifteen-minute basketball clinic had me believing otherwise. We have come a long way, but we have so far yet to go. Four years ago on this day, I stepped out of character and shared testimony to a room full of people at the Holiday Inn in Countryside. I described, in two-and-a-half minutes, what it had been like to parent my son, and the frustrations and ch

“Is my suit ready for tomorrow?” There was a sense of urgency tainted with a little hesitation that accompanied my son’s question. It was late. I wasn’t planning to do any more laundry. He had been thinking this through in his head, rehearsing how the mornings would unfold, likely since the day he learned of this camp. “You’ll be at the camp all week, so you can wear something else for tomorrow, and I will have that one ready for Tuesday.” There was no lack of guilt in this o

It sure is cold outside. She was as sweet a baby as ever I have known, and I was so happy that she was mine. But actually, she wasn’t mine. The first time I took her to the social services office to visit with her mom, I had dressed her in my daughter’s outfit, the one that had been my favorite from her early childhood. It was the softest pink cotton, a one-piece jumpsuit with rolled ankle cuffs. I have memories of my little girl wearing this in her first days home from Korea

For a span of nearly twenty-five years, children of mine have had the privilege of being taught, nurtured, cared for, and loved by so many extraordinary teachers, men and women who have helped to form these young beings into who they are. My nearly grown son stopped by the farm earlier this week. He was about to leave on a business trip, but he made time to deliver a bag of apple cider donuts from the nearby orchard. I had been harvesting watermelons when his car pulled in; I

It was the wax bottles, the Maryjanes, the sixlets, and the caramel bullseyes, along with a vast array of other vintage candies that held my attention until I looked to the direction of my son. We were at a downtown sweet shop, and he was engaged in conversation with a young girl who looked to be about his age. “What grade will you be in?” asked the girl. “I’m already in fifth,” he answered. “Who’s your teacher going to be?” I don’t ever remember a longer spontaneous conversa

“How long do you think I’ll last? I mean, when do you think I am going to die?” Ethan’s questions still sometimes catch me a bit off guard. I am not sure I ever give him answers that satisfy or even make sense to him. I had to come up with something. “Well, Grampa is eighty. You could live a very long time.” “Grampa eats fruits. If you eat a lot of fruits and healthy stuff, then you can live a long time. I don’t eat that many fruits.” He went back to what he had been doing be

Pillars of light danced from the early evening waters of the lagoon, a thousand glow sticks from a summer’s festival stood mid air. The moon would rise, and the lights would fade as the sky’s darkness would give in to what had been its destiny all along. If there had been magic, still it was there, but hidden away, beneath the angst, the long lists, the confrontations, and the harsh reality of the face of today. “I said, ‘GET ME SOME MILK,’ you idiot.” I know him, and I under

She didn’t say a word, and neither did I. It may have seemed like just a piece of paper, but to me it represented much more. For nearly eighteen years, I had held on to it and kept it safe. And just as I handed it to her, she let it slip away. Wendell was our first rooster at the farm. He was aggressive and would flap up at us randomly. We loved him, but we were all a bit fearful of him, because he sometimes hurt us. Wendell died suddenly last September; he had not been with

Something happened. Something went wrong, or maybe it didn’t. Words that interrupted my idle thoughts as I stood at the kitchen sink, face-to-face with dinner’s aftermath, cannot be taken back. Even as I feel the blood rush through my legs and the empty space grow in my soul, I find solace in a cupcake. It’s the last one, hidden in the back corner of the freezer, leftover from a forgotten celebration. Rich chocolate of the most devilish kind, with a perfectly swirled pi

My own words played incessantly in my head: so many years, so many services and specialists, twenty medications, and no answers. I wonder how we have landed here, in a place of self doubt, where we feel lower than the last few nuts that the squirrels have abandoned along the exposed tree roots on the frosty ground as the inevitability of the cruel cold looms just ahead. This time, it was driving rain and, more than that, the emotions screaming from inside my head, that obstr

We know that people with autism are often in a state of sensory overload. Experiences are more intense: louder, scarier, more painful…often intolerable. I have seen anecdotal studies of children close in age to my son, with similar behaviors, who seemed to get better almost overnight when allowed the chance to have medical cannabis. With Ethan, there are extraordinary swings of angst, fear, and aggression. In the other direction, there are flashes of brilliance and uncanny