Season of Mourning, the Dawn will Come

weep not beloved, by faithful bedside

watch was kept and angels wept, ‘twas his to decide

no tears, no doubt, no mourning for the living

spirit cried out, unfettered faith all forgiving

his beloved one, whose tethered heart knew home

drifted not from worldly bed but into life alone

awake oh sleeper, rise sweet sister

unencumbered will you dance as victor

released now from affliction, she is whole

dancing unashamedly, unhindered soul

body surrendered, the heart knows life

and with death bury strife

weep not beloved, the dawn is neigh

pain and anguish now subside

celebrate here a life well given

speak words of grace, for he is risen

The Assessment

I never fully understood why we as humans pull away from the painful things. We push away the painful in ways that I cannot fully comprehend and seek the dullness the absence of pain leaves behind. We regard ourselves as healthy when we feel no pain or successful when there are no signs of hindrances. I believe that when we push through the painful we will see transformation.

            We arrived the morning of the ADD/ADHD evaluation armed with the assessments that had been filled out by ourselves and by my son Scotty’s teacher. The pediatrician came in wearing his tattered jeans and T-shirt, a child of the 80s, and sat down on a kiddy chair across from the place where my husband and I sat. Scotty stayed on the exam table, his soccer worn legs swinging back and forth as his hazel eyes grew wide.

            The doctor said, “So talk to me, tell me what this is all about.”

            I began the explanation of what the teacher had told me, what I had observed, and then I handed him a sampling of school work from the past month. He flipped through the papers and looked from my husband to myself and up at my wide-eyed son. After a few moments he asked again what grade that he was in and when we replied he nodded knowingly.

            The criteria for ADD/ADHD was clearly met by the assessments provided, however the doctor explained that usually he would be diagnosed/labeled and treated with the standard treatment that is used by doctors and schools, but that’s not what the doctor felt that he needed. The school work and the observations we shared lead him to believe that there might be an underlying issue, such as dyslexia or Irlen’s syndrome. He readily admitted that he wasn’t comfortable medicating or diagnosing. He referred us to a child psychologist who specializes in learning disabilities.

I’m thankful that this Doctor was willing to admit that he didn’t have the answer, though it would be easy to write a prescription and hope that it would correct all of his problems, but as the doctor explained, medication shouldn’t be our first option, though it may be part of the treatment along the way, it would only be a band aid fix at the moment and would not identifying the underlying problem or problems and addressing each accordingly.

            We were on our way with a few techniques that might helps Scott, such as tactile exercises, such as writing spelling words in pudding, and reading through a different color of acetate paper. A timer attached to a book mark for reading.

            Walking away that day I took away from our visit unexpected hope. I found it in something that he said, he said it simply as if sharing information, but the affect it had was powerful. He said that 85% of people learn the same way, but a few learn differently. It’s as if they speak another language where learning is concerned. It’s not a disability, only a difference. It’s up to us, the adults guiding our children to learn that language and help them to learn ours.

           

 We each speak a language all our own.

       For you, mother or father of a struggling learner, those who belong to the energetic boys, the day-dreaming girls, do not settle for status quo. Seek the answers that are specific to them, learn your child’s language, be an advocate, do your research, and remember, you are not alone.

Stay Hungry My Son

here in the darkness

voice is stifled

here in the darkness

tongue has been bridled

words birthed through lips

consumed by the hearers of them

soul spilled upon the pages eclipses

what reason could not mend

hungry mind seeking knowledge

labyrinth of wanderings

neurological bondage

efforts not traversing

cavernous constraints

rope bridge builders

used string instead

dangling on the shreds,

distance between learning and thriving

living and surviving

poetically forming beneath skin and bone

behind teeth and tongue

words manifesting truth

mind longing to be free

out of darkness comes

from depths unknown

into hearts unknowingly

the light begins forming

it's purpose brings a scope

diminishes blackness

like candles igniting hope

overshadowing hindrances

before the dawn they fled

like sun rays upon pathways

the place where hindrances are shed

and journeys begin

first steps toward freedom

barefoot bleeding

eyes upon an unknown

hope exceeding doubt

stay hungry my son

never stop believing

keep moving dear one

it's freedom you are receiving

This poem has been submitted to  dVerse Poet's Pub Join in and post your own poetic offering. Leave me a comment if you do so that I might visit yours as well. Blessings ~ Apryl

I Prayed that Someone Else Would See.

I’m not certain how to process, or if processing will do my soul any good.  Beginnings are lengthy. I know, I know I’m supposed to tell a story from the beginning, maybe someday I will, but for now, all I am able to contemplate is the now and the various possible futures that will come from tomorrow.

One week ago my beautiful son celebrated his tenth birthday, the boy with the sandy hair and big hazel eyes. He bounced around the dinner table awaiting the opening of a gift from his sisters, he sat on the edge of his chair and rushed through dinner asking continually if it was time. His feet moved from the side of the chair to the front of the chair and they even made their way up underneath him. His normal antsy anticipation seemed to overwhelm him that night. It has always been normal for Scott, and for all little boys. At least I always thought it was normal.

My Scotty is a healthy, happy boy with limitless energy, explosive sounds and a kind spirit. He has been a gift far greater than I thought possible. My beautiful boy curled in my arms from birth, and has slowly unfurled and has begun to walked into the world.

Before his birthday I spoke with his teacher on the phone, she had sent an email and we had been corresponding back and forth. The subject line read simply Concerned. She explained that we needed to meet immediately because she was concerned about Scott’s skill level. I replied stating that I had expressed concerns for the past few years during IEP meetings and parent teacher conferences. Scott has an IEP for speech therapy, he stuttered badly as a Kindergartener and still struggles with sounds. His teacher said that Scott is eager to learn but inattentive and impatient, and she encouraged me to seek an independent evaluation while she sought an internal one.  She then spoke the words I never thought I would hear, ADHD and potential learning disabilities.

Honestly, I prayed that someone other than I, saw what I saw.

I’ve heard the nightmares, read the articles and overwhelmed myself with information I’ve sifted through google search results for. Reactions from others have been strong, medicate, don’t medicate, food therapy, occupational therapy, caffeine therapy. The reactions, I must admit, have been as strong as my own, and sometimes just as severe. I felt it rise like a stone in my throat, this heaviness I carry, and in spite of it, I have become a passionate advocate for moving forward. I don’t think it matters the specifics of any problem facing a child, as a mother your heart seeks answers. I found myself groping for answers and feeling as though I’m drowning in them. None have yet to provide me with the necessary tools to sit beside my son and help him find a word, a simple word, an illusive and lost somewhere in his remembrance and spell it correctly. And still I try.

Tomorrow begins our journey. Tomorrow is the first of the consultations and evaluations will follow, and those will inevitably lead to an answer. I pray that it will be an answer that will join us at the kitchen table with the tools that will enable my eager to learn son to at last be successful in that endeavor. I am a woman of faith, and my faith is the reason that I have hope. I chose to hope and so we move onto the next phase of this journey. A journey that promises revelation. Whether that revelation comes in the form of the confrontation of my own demons or those of a broken system, I prayerfully hope for the revelation of the lost path to learning my son has yet found. Pray I have the courage to share those revelations and in doing so I hope to tell those parents like ourselves that they are not alone, and I hope to find those who would say that neither are we.  

Restoration of Truth

razor edged
raw heart
continually hedged
I’m about to start

open this can of
confrontation
bleeding prayers
on transparent pages
this religiously-gagged mouth
will speak
words from fingertips dripping ink
keep moving, don’t stop
utter only truth, don’t think

paper cut fingers turning
gold edged truth and the death of lies
through mad pages I keep burning
meditate on that and your spirit flies

I am the resonation of a dream
voice uplifting
all alone and unseen
using my gifting

through the cotton mouthed oppression
of the spiritual rejection
affiliation with the elite
never mind the transgressions in the back seat

oh hell no

I can not, I will not be silent
rise up
generation of the resurrected and awakened
rise up
fulfill your calling, stand and face the giants
rise up
lead not a life of absent worship

tolerate no longer the tolerance of falic fallacies
the death of self and all who grasp
with both hands, this love most powerful
and with it find life beyond the boundaries
you are not, and will never be irrelevant

spread seeds of life
those lips crafted by the holy one
in these moments
words saturate like oceanic immersion

lights dim
darkened by the vanity of absence
we are clean again
well done, my dear ones
every worker earns his wages

be still soul,
weep no longer
quiet spirit,
rouse me not, to ignorance
rest now, world weary flesh
until his razor edged tongue
awakens us to life once more

restore

Poem submitted to dVerse Poet's Pub, if ye be of the poetic persuasion, come and have a pint and share a verse or two with friends

Older Than

Posted for http://thegypsymama.com/ won't you join me? It's a free write for five minutes then link to her page and share. Have fun with it, I know I did!


I am older now. She has undone me, the ravishing redhead with innocent blue eyes, about to don the cap and gown that I never wore.

I’m older now than my mother was when I remember her seeming old to me. The wrinkles show, my hair I keep much shorter now. My eyes are not as wide as they were when I was a girl and my glasses obscure the angles of my face. I am easing into another life, or so it seems, one not riddled with the insecurities every young woman carries, but a woman now with more comfort in her skin. I am enjoying this stage where vacations are possible, choices are easier and I care less about what others think of me and more about the relationships I’m building with my children.

Older they are, older than I want them to be growing faster than I had anticipated and time, passing through open fingers as I grasp it’s liquid form begging to have some of it back.

Older are the stories I tell, the memories I cherish, and the photographs that fill the shelves where once a single scrap book stood, lonely and alone.

Older are the thoughts I have of returning home again to live in the places where my children were given birth to, somewhere between mountains and sky in the Denver of my adolescence. Older are my parents, my grandparents are fewer now, and I carry some with me through the vague remembrance of faces and voices from an ancient past I now tell my children about. How I long for them to know those who came before them and enabled their being through the DNA I carry in my bones.

Older, yet not expired, older but not unable, older and perhaps a little bolder.

Six Days, Have you Forgotten How to Fly?

My Kiddos at EPCOT 2011

There are exactly six days until the fullness of this school year marks away the days on my calendar with the inky reminders about games and practices, meetings and projects like Xs, they count them down. Six days and I will be chasing any available white space in order to pencil in quiet family moments. My children are growing up, it’s an undeniable fact.

                We returned from our Walt Disney World vacation nearly a week ago now and we’re still playing catch up. There are meals to plan, papers to sign, lunches to pack, and practices to blacken my coveted white space. I am a child at heart and I can’t help but feel the elevation of childhood memories, the hopes and dreams surfacing in my own heart as I watch my babies grow. I watched as they immersed themselves in the imaginary world create by the magic of Disney. I watched as their eyes light up during the fireworks as they burst over Cinderella’s Castle, or when Mickey Mouse defeated Maleficent in the show, Fantasmic. For those brief moments I pushed away all the details of our daily lives that are now threatening to chip away at the white space.

                For these six days I am choosing to take these moments and with them pause, allowing them to soak into my skin like a wine stain on the living room carpet, and wear them like the invisible kiss hidden in the right hand corner of Wendy’s mother’s mouth, from the Peter Pan story. This year in particular will mark me in a way that the others have not. My eldest daughter begins her senior year with much celebration, and a longing to cling to the last moments of her childhood  before leaping toward adulthood. My sweet middle child is experiencing the changes only a 12 year old girl knows. She’s becoming a woman, but her heart remains childlike, and her eyes filled with wonder. She’s navigating the world of middle school with hesitation and hope. She’s in for an awfully big adventure. My youngest entered his final year of elementary school. It’s the last year of play grounds and a single class room for math and reading, desks instead of lockers and recess every day after lunch. I have to admit, the Kindergarteners are much smaller than mine were, or so it seems.

                As a Mother I couldn’t be more proud of my children, of their successes and the attempts they have made to learn from their failures. I see their efforts to become the people they were created to be by battling who they don’t wish to become through the choices that they make. Each will craft a story I have yet imagined. Though I can’t help having concerns, I am holding tight to the knowledge that there is an author that knows the beginning from the end, whose hand is in the daily workings of their lives, and he will guide them beyond my reach, though my prayers will always go with them tucked inside their pockets like the mama kisses I used to leave on their hands when I would go out. Now they’re the ones going out.

                Six days, and for these six days I will live in the white spaces, the quiet moments before the barrage of practices and games take it from me. I have chosen to be present in these moments, to shut off the blackberry, to keep the laptop closed, the T.V. off and allow the time that I spend with my children etch memories onto my soul, and forever remember that,

“All children, except one, grow up.”

All Peter Pan References are from J.M. Barrie's book,  Peter Pan