The Everyday

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Prompted once again by Tara Cain’s photo gallery here’s one for my marvellous boy!

The OH gave him a box of lego technics for Christmas the year before last. I dreaded the tiny pieces being lost everywhere.  Who in their right mind gives anything so complicated to a ‘special needs’  boy who just chews everything? I was sure it would be an expensive mistake.

How wrong was I?

Everyday, hour after hour, for next couple of months, he diligently followed through 3 separate 30 pages instruction booklets and built some kind of mobile crane! Then as soon as it was done, he’d take it all apart just to start all over again

We’ve been giving him lots of lego technics construction sets ever since. I marvel at the dexterity and concentration I didn’t know he had.  Discovering the challenge of lego technics has changed his everyday (and I really haven’t been sponsored to say this). For the first time he has an age-appropriate toy and all his building, instruction following skills he’s developed are all self-taught.

He’s nearly 16, he still can’t make conversation, but he has shown us what he is truly capable of.  I’ve learnt never to underestimate the everyday.  Other people’s ordinary everyday is frequently a disabled person’s extraordinary.

Prodigal Rabbit’s return

This is Rabbit.

Rabbit once hung over the side of my son’s crib and kept and eye on him while he slept.

Yesterday I found him sitting on the gate post of our old house. He’s been missing for, I think, around 5 years!

Our neighbour has just cut out an old hedge and discovered him within the branches. It’s lucky he escaped going up in smoke on a bonfire. He was green and brown all over. Moss and plant matter had taken root in him. I scrubbed him thoroughly and put him in the washing machine. Last night he was back in my son’s bed.

Rabbit is now more than 15 years old. I’ve always kept a look out for him every time we trimmed the hedge. I’d expected he was lost in the garden somewhere, but as the years went by had lost hope of finding him in one piece if we ever found him again.

‘Rabbit’ was my son’s first clear word. He was much-loved and acknowledged as my son’s best friend, but where Mungo (bless him) – my mute child with no diagnosis for his handicap – has always been very good and well-behaved, Rabbit has always been exceedingly naughty! They were chalk and cheese.

In his younger years Rabbit got into scrapes and was full of mischief. I found him loveable and tiresome in equal measure.  However, Rabbit was at Mungo side throughout every hospital stay he had. He’d remain, clutched in Mungo’s arms as he went under anaesthetic and was back, lying quietly beside my son when he came round again. When Rabbit started getting lively and up to his old tricks it was a sure sign that Mungo was recovered and ready to be discharged to go home gain.