My mother-in-law recently moved into a long-term care home in our neighbourhood, so I am able to walk over to see her. Her present health on account of aging has made it difficult for her to remember names and events well. When we talk together, there are times when she has difficulty recalling. Yet when…
He holds honorary degrees from 10 Canadian universities; he’s received both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada; he’s in the Terry Fox Hall of Fame, and the town where he was born named a park after him. Yet when he answered the phone for our interview, the Honourable David Onley sounded like…
When large group meetings were suspended a year ago due to COVID-19, churches scrambled to figure out what an online church would look like. Would it be on Zoom or YouTube? Would they be able to compete with all of the professional quality videos already posted? Should each church continue to create their own sermons?…
I’m sitting down to write on the first open-yer-windows day of 2021. Birds are hollering at the humans to get outside and soak up the sunshine. Walks with our girls on days like this are a gift. Though we loved the wheelchair skis on snow, it is easier to move wheels on bare pavement and…
In 1999, Ralph and I were living in Minneapolis, and there was hype over the impending switch from 1999 to 2000. Given that computers were programmed for just two digits (keeping 19 as the understood first two digits), experts feared the systems that ran everything, including banking, power plants and library fines, would not be…
“The end of summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October…” – A.A. Milne The cooler weather prevails, as do the yellowed leaves falling on our butterfly garden. The random scatterings make our new garden look settled, and I’m already looking forward to the spring when everything will bloom again. Mind you, I’m…
“Mom, do we have any clean masks? Soph and I are headed out.” The times they are a-changin’. We are now required to wear a mask to go to the bank, and a grocery store’s recent radio ad boasts a delivery service that features food picked from a warehouse and packed by robots.
It’s 7:30 in the morning, and I am pulling a shirt over Janneke’s head. Rachel is already in her wheelchair and watching us intently. She’s typically more cooperative with getting dressed, offering me a gentle grin after stretching her long legs.
For those unfamiliar with my column, I’m a mom to four great girls. Caring for neurotypical teens is not without its challenges, but I have chosen to focus my writing primarily on my two younger daughters. Rachel and Janneke are neurodiverse with specific medical needs that create an added layer of complexity to mothering. Juggling their care alongside engineering the home routine keeps me more than sufficiently busy.
To follow my previous column (CC May 11), our family has appreciated having a community nurse return to our home for weekly hours. I am thankful for the help with medications, pain management and extra time over the dinner hour. Though a sense of familiarity in routine has returned, I cannot ignore the persistent feelings of discontentment. Rachel and Janneke cannot verbalize this to me, but they are missing the informal connections with classmates.
As I write this, our family is preparing to welcome a nurse back into our home after suspending our community nursing services for the last five weeks. The stories in early February of a contagious yet elusive virus created concern for us with the possibility of a community transmission into our home. Our younger daughters, Rachel and Janneke, are part of the vulnerable sector in this province, and our caregivers also work with multiple clients and in long-term care homes.
Shortly after Rachel was born, I spoke with a mom who had two older children with disabilities, and she wisely encouraged me not to hide. Her own experience had taught her that people will not help if they do not know the need, and people will not know how to respond unless they hear the story. Because Rachel and Janneke were not able to verbalize their stories, I took that advice and chose to share glimpses of what I called our story. Interestingly enough, Janneke’s sounds are now increasing in volume and range, leading me to wonder if she’s trying to tell me her story.
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