Launch!

On Oct. 17, 2016, at McNally Robinson Booksellers, I launched my first book.

Some 100 family and friends came to celebrate this milestone in my life. They came from my church, parent support groups, poetry circles, my son's school and gliding club.

Seven households on my street, some of whom only know me as the lady on the end of Lily's leash, came to support the author from the neighbour. Some of them met each other for the first time in my book signing line.

There were people who live autism, and who don't know anything about it. People who love poetry and those who don't (yet).

I love that a book (something we usually think of as silent and solitary) has the power to bring people together!

Here are some of my favouite photos from the event. (All taken by my husband Tony, aka Anthony Mark Photography.)

 

My proud parents (who have finally forgiven me for not becoming an optometrist). My mom called me first thing in the morning on the Saturday before my launch to tell me in a giddy voice, "The Free Press gave you a whole third of a page!"

All those book launches when I sat in the audience fantasizing about McNally events coordinator John Toews' sonorous voice calling my name... now it was my turn.

Méira Cook, my mentor in the Manitoba Writers Guild 2012 Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program, introduced me with such glowing words that I was speechless. I had to switch my first poem to compose myself.

Living the dream, with my husband's photos of my kids behind me.

My friend's husband (centre) wasn't sure about this whole poetry reading thing. My first success of the evening: I got him to come. My second success: I made him laugh. Here's proof. 

My children performing with me: my son on an official basis, and my daughter because she felt in the mood.

About twice as many people as I expected. Made for a bit of fast breathing in the bathroom before the reading.

It goes without saying that I love this kid. He doesn't do anything halfway.

My writing partner Joanne Epp, with whom I workshopped nearly every poem.

The best review I'll ever get.

The eBook is now available here.
For upcoming readings, see my other blog: 37 Mice.

Welcome to the land of the red hat

I am often asked to describe the experience

of raising a child with a disability—

to try to help people who have not shared that

unique experience to understand it,

to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

In the "Notes" at the back of my book Tell Them It Was Mozart, I've included Emily Perl Kingsley's essay "Welcome to Holland." In it, she compares learning that your child has a disability to having your plane to Italy land in Holland instead.

It's not intended as my book's final word, but as a reference to give readers context for the erasure poems (like "We come to land" above) that bookend my collection and introduce each section.

A few people have told me "Welcome to Holland" is their favourite part of my book. Um, you know it's one of the only parts I didn't actually write, right? (Oh Lord, keep me humble.)

I'm surprised how many people say "Welcome to Holland" is new to them.

If you Google "Holland" and "disability," you'll find tons of blogs and groups named after Kingsley's essay.

Alicia J. Clarke writes on her blog Lost in Holland: 

Part of the indoctrination into parenting a child with special needs includes a therapist, social worker, health professional, sweet friend or neighbor ceremonially handing you the classic essay Welcome To Holland.

I was first welcomed to "Holland" by the final scene of Kingsley's 1987 movie Kids Like These, based on her own experience of raising her son Jason, who has Down Syndrome (and starred on Sesame Street). 

The first time I heard actress Tyne Daly, the mother in the film, recite "Welcome to Holland," I wept. I loved the message of accepting each person and relationship for the unique gifts they offer.

The second time I read it years later, I thought, "Oh yes, that was lovely." The third, fourth, and fifth times, I sighed.

But by the 37th time someone told me I needed to love it because it described my life perfectly, I felt Weird Al rising up inside me. 

By way of contrast, here's Weird Al glowing forth below me. Acrophobia, anyone? (Photo by Anthony Mark Photography)

It's not that I've lost sight of what attracted me to the essay in the first place. But like the music of Disney's Frozen, repetition breeds the need to play. (Many artists consider it a badge of honour to be parodied by Weird Al.)

No one disputes that Idina Menzel's voice is heavenly. But once you've heard "Let it go" every hour for a week, you start hearing alternate lyrics: let it flow, make it so. The song has become part of this decade's consciousness; it's been used to describe mother stress and real estate.

Do you want to have an ear worm? ("Floral Elsa" art by my daughter G)

"Welcome to Holland" has "Let it go"s notoriety in the disability community, and parents respond in a variety of ways:

Just a Lil Blog's meme page

Some find Kingsley's story too Pollyanna-ish, such as this one: Welcome to Beirut.

Others see it as open to expansion (like Jesus's parables). On Lost in Holland, Clarke points out that a quarter of The Netherlands is below sea level with 1,860 miles of outer-sea dykes and 6,200 miles of river dykes and canal walls; if the pumping stations failed, the country would be under three feet of water.

 So maybe Kingsley unwittingly nailed it after all. Holland has so many things to appreciate, but it has to work tirelessly against that wall of water threatening to drown it.  In this push-pull, ying-yang, love-hate relationship with that which would swallow it whole, Holland has somehow managed to (no pun intended) stay afloat. Holland is a story of beauty, culture, and success in the face of constant, unrelenting stress. It has not succumbed to ruin. It has found a way to thrive... just like those who find themselves reluctant "tourists turned locals," losing and finding themselves again and again in a land called Holland. A land that overwhelms them with beauty, love, and challenge. A land they someday, somehow, will learn to call home.   

One of my favourite retellings of the Italy/Holland analogy is from Autism, or Something Like it:

We don't wind up in Holland. Being in Holland would imply that we were not involved in the final destination.  But we were. Special needs parents and non-special needs parents alike. We all chose our destination: Parenthood.

We CHOSE to go there.

You see, parenting is a choice. And it's one that is riddled with uncertainty, responsibility and- sometimes- heartache. But it is a journey we chose to embark upon.

None of knew what kind of kids we'd get. None of us can say for certain that our kids will do a, b, or c.  Hell, none of us can know for certain that they won't drown in a pool.
Or lose their legs in a crash.
Or spend a year or more in the hospital, recovering from a brain injury.

None of us know anything about the final destination. We are all flying blind.

So, instead of Holland, I posit this: We all wound up in Italy.

When I was pregnant, I blew up "Italy" in my mind (I was going to go about my regular life, just with a deeper glow on my face and a cooing infant strapped to my back), and I forgot that Italy has 3 am sirens too. Some who visit Italy spend their stay in bed with a head cold. Some find their favourite landmark covered in scaffolding or closed for cleaning. 

Italy even has crooked towers, aka "wonders."

I don't want to give away too much, but this is one of the things I'm driving at in my erasures. While I love the picture of parents of children with disabilities speaking the same language and sharing the camaraderie of a land of our own, I'm no longer comfortable with the idea of being isolated and confined to a separate country from the rest of (struggling, imperfect) humanity.

And the pain of that

will never, ever, ever, ever

go away...

because the loss of that dream

is a very very significant loss.

But ... if you spend your life

mourning the fact that you didn’t get

 to Italy, you may never be

free to enjoy the very special,

the very lovely things

... about Holland.

 
Since these erasure poems of "Welcome to Holland" introduce each section, even though they appear silly, I mean for them to be taken seriously. They probably require the most interpretive work of any of the poems in the book. 

The way to experience the erasures is to read the dark text as my poem, and the whole text as the original I'm responding to - the larger context within which I'm locating my own story. Read one, read the other, read one, read the other, think about what they say in conversation.

The fact that so many parents and writers have stood within - and jumped off from - the Holland/Italy metaphor is a testament to its simple beauty. I don't claim that my "We come to land" poems will have the staying power of Kingsley's piece, or that suddenly there will be blogs and support groups called "The red hat" popping up all over the disability community.

But I hope you read them for what they are: my story (affirming/challenging/playing) within the wider disability community's story.

Go ahead: be awesome (chihuahuas be darned)

I just met a therapist who told me to shoot chihuahuas.

He said anxiety is like a chihuahua yipping and nipping at our heels. We all accept that it's there, and no one does anything about it because we think we can't. But one day, you're walking along with your friend, the chihuahua yipping behind you, and you tell your friend to wait a second. You pull out a gun, and you shoot that chihuahua. (It's more of a rat than a dog anyway.)

I said, "Wait a second, are you saying it's okay to shoot chihuahuas?"

"Yes!" he said, bouncing in his chair. "Shoot the chihuahua!"

 Okaaay. He seems like a nice man, so I doubt he has a mass puppy grave under his tomato plants. While his metaphor is a little shocking, his message is even more unbelievable: it's possible to live without anxiety?

Yes, he says: without the fear of death or what other people think of you. I'm curious how that happens.

I do have less anxiety than I did in my twenties (See my first blog post), but this spring I slipped a bit. There was a lot of uncertainty with trying to find G a school for next year, a lot on my mind with the final edits on my book, the stress of working overtime hours to proof publications in time for an AGM, a little water in the basement, a pair of kids with ear infections, a dead water tank, bills, bills, bills. I had trouble sleeping, which fueled the cycle.

My book will arrive in the mail this week, and I've been having nightmares that instead of poetry, it turns out to be a cheesy murder mystery and my mom hides all the copies in her freezer.

Obviously, I'm nervous: will people buy the book? Will they like it?

I just remembered this from my daughter's last music therapist's report:

"I just feel like being awesome for a moment" is what she said before playing an amazing rendition of "He’s A Pirate" along with the recording.

That's my girl.

It's not easy being 14 and on the spectrum. She adjusted to a whole new group of teachers and classmates two years ago when she moved from public to private school, and now she's about to start over with a whole new set of people and expectations as she enters high school. We both have a few things to be nervous about.

This past winter, she wrote a song at the piano that goes something like this: "l am safe through the day because God washes all my demons away." (Then she complained that all her songs turn into worship songs even when she doesn't want them to. Officially, she's a skeptic.) 

Demons. Mental chihuahuas. It's hard to ignore their yap. But even if we don't know how to completely shut them up yet, why not enjoy a few minutes of this music instead:

I just feel like being awesome for a moment.

(Say it with me. Feels good, no?)

So here's the most awesome thing I've been working on for the past five years (and the main reason I've blogged so little): my completely frost-free non-murder-mystery poetry book about autism, Tell Them It Was Mozart (in bookstores Sept. 1, 2016).

Read the book's description here: www.brickbooks.ca.

Join me at my Winnipeg launch at McNally Robinson Oct. 17, 2016, at 7 p.m.
For more event dates, visit my other blog, 37 Mice.

Vasectomy poem

One of my favourite things about this poem is that it came to me in church, a place where the transcendent meets my nitty-gritty. I know that sounds strange, but it makes a lot of sense: church is where I cuddle and coo over other people's third/fourth/fifth child. It's my every-seventh-day reminder that I was going to have that many until, well, real life children happened to me and I realized surgery was inevitable, either a grafted-on third hand, or...   

 

Vasectomy

is a safe and highly effective form

of border control, a virtually painless pro-

hibition of my lifelong plan to become

the Waltons, one snip

seals off vessels carrying sperm from

your rotting gene pool to mine in late-night

fluid movements, cutting the risk of conceiving more 

frightened rabbits than I have hands,

to ensure a severed

marriage is pulled in no more than two

directions, the area is frozen with a prick

of remorse, and then tied or sealed to prevent

culpability for knowingly creating

another autistic mouth to

concede, most men return to their normal life-

style following this minimally

invasive form of permanent

hearth patrol.

"Vasectomy" first appeared in CV2. 

By the way: My poem "Black with a vengeance" is shortlisted for the Poem of the Year! Go read/vote for your favourite poem (or mine) at Arcpoetry.ca.

For yonder bakes a skewed and spurious form

I'm not very crafty, but I made Christmas ornaments this year: half cinnamon, half applesauce; mix and bake. They smell so good! 

The friend who told me about this recipe gave me star and angel cookie cutters (because last year I was limited to making Christmas whale and rooster cookies). So for the first time, most of my creations looked fairly normal. 

But then I decided to get creative. I made an NHL puck for G's gym teacher, a soccer ball for a Brazilian co-worker, and a bike wheel (that looks like a lemon slice) for my year-round-biking editor.
 

For Gemma's music teacher, I made a trumpet. Only it looks like a rifle.

Nothing says "Peace on earth" like a Christmas rifle.

With all the brutal violence in the news this year (particularly Islamic State), the last thing I want to think about over the holidays is guns. 

But then a friend told me, "A rifle on the Christmas tree makes perfect sense. It reminds me of Isaiah 2:4: "'They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.' 

"If we'll someday beat swords into tools for growing food, why can't we bake our rifles into cookies?"

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease

Merry Christmas!

10 things I've learned in 20 years of marriage

This year my husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage. Even though it sounds like a long time, some days, it feels like we're still slushing through the same interpersonal messes we faced in 1994. But there are a few things we've learned along the way.

1. Fire hardens brick

We had a pretty negative marriage counsellor when we were first married, but one thing he taught me was how our opposite ways of communicating pull us apart. The angrier I get, the louder I get and the more crazy my metaphors become: I go from feeling "stuck" to "a kitten clawing my way out of a drainpipe" to a "banshee in a burning pit" in an attempt to express the seriousness of the situation and engage my husband in the conversation.

But when he's angry, he gets quiet. His hope is that I'll see how much nicer it is to speak calmly and that will rub off on me, but his silence makes me crazier. And all my efforts to prod him into responding to me make him shut down more. Because when you put a raging fire near a brick wall, all it does is harden the brick. He already knows how intensely I feel pain; what he needs to see is my willingness to give him space to think before he responds. I already know calmness feels better than craziness; what I need is for him to show me that he cares about my pain.

The same goes for other areas. I can't convince him that saving money feels more secure by criticizing his purchases, nor can he convince me that throwing money away is fun by drinking a $7 coffee in front of me. He needs to show me that he's concerned about our future, and I need to show him that I want him to enjoy life now. I'm not here to teach him to frugal and he's not here to teach me to be carefree; that just pulls us in opposite directions. We're here to meet in the middle.

2. Everything has a history

Often the things my husband does that make me mad have nothing to do with him. When he doesn't hear what I say, I snap because it reminds me of the painful year my dad started losing his hearing. When my husband naps, I get antsy because it reminds me of when he stayed in bed for days after being downsized. When I ask him a question he can't answer, it reminds him of the French teacher who called him stupid. I didn't cause the bruise; I just accidentally bumped into it. It's freeing when we begin to acknowledge this.

3. Our marriage is an object between us, not a subject in us

When I say how I feel, even if I use "I statements" (I felt hurt by your words), invariably he'll hear "blah blah blah bad husband, blah blah you stink." We all tend to take things personally. But it's not about what one of us is doing wrong, it's about this thing in our hands called "our marriage." It's an object, not a subject. It's not about trying to change each other, it's about working together to make this thing we share better.

4. Never tear him down in front of his friends

Only speaking well of people is a good rule of thumb in general, but it's particularly important with husbands. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach (or another organ), but I think his ego is bigger than his stomach, more fragile than anything a cup could protect. More than meat and apple pie, my husband craves respect and admiration. It can be tempting to get sympathy from friends for your side of a disagreement, but in the long run, even in a joke, it's never a good idea to make your husband feel small.

That includes bad mouthing him behind his back. Chances are you'll start a group man-bashing session, and you'll feel closer to your girlfriends, farther from the one friend who shares your bed. You won't be any wiser. All you'll have is more ammo. If you need advice, see a pastor, spiritual director, or counsellor. Save girlfriend time for bashing Sponge Bob.

5. He changes faster than the version of him in my head

1 Corinthians 13 says, "Love doesn't keep a record of wrongs." My husband and I had a disagreement recently that ended with us realizing that I was arguing with Tony circa 2002 and he was fighting with Ange 'o the 90s. Neither one of us still felt the way the other assumed we did. But we never corrected the picture in our heads. Someone once told me, every time you see someone, it's a first time. Keep an open mind and expect change.

6. We don't know what each other is thinking

This is a big one. I know of marriages that have failed because one or both partner assumed they knew what was behind the others' words.

Hints don't help. Rolling my eyes because he should know by now doesn't help. Ask for what you need. Say how you feel. Listen.

7. Dare not to compare

This is a big one for me in every area of life: finances, parenting, publishing. My husband and I get along well in some areas; others are harder for us. The tendency is to look at other couples who have what we lack and think they're better, instead of celebrating what we have.

How many couples could work together at their days jobs and a photography business and not drive each other crazy? We actually like it because we get to see each other doing what we love, in nice clothing, in the hours before we're frazzled. So what if we can't dance.

8. Connection comes in all kinds of flavours

My husband loves me the way he wants to be loved, and it doesn't always feel like love to me. I like cuddling in front of the TV. He likes frequent, quick hugs, usually when I'm in the middle of something and need my arms. I've learned that even the stuff that doesn't do it for me "counts."

Some days we're better at connecting in writing. When I type my thoughts to him, he can process them at his own pace and without all my drama. And I know he's "heard" me.

9. Do unto my husband as I want my future daughter-in-law to do unto my son

I can imagine my son's wife someday being so frustrated with the way the guy gets lost in a book or daydream. He could step over a dead racoon all day long and not notice, never mind a dirty cup. But I want her to appreciate the way he keeps his promises or makes people laugh, the sweet way he hugs goodnight, and not focus on his dirty socks. My husband deserves the same.

10. Why reread the last chapter when we can start writing the next one?

It's easy to rehash, to "what if," to regret. But moving forward is so much more...better. Here's to 20 more years!