There are many things I like about Ukrainian culture. One thing I absolutely loved while our family lived there for four years were my children’s birthdays. In Ukraine, guests not only bring a gift for the child on her birthday, they also bring one for her mother. We’re talking flowers, chocolate, maybe a pair of earrings. This is genius! Can I get an AMEN, moms? It makes total sense. The mother is the one who
The misconstrued assumption that she has no language I’m a writer. A reader. A word person. And my five-year-old daughter, fourth in the line of sisters, has no words. At times her inability to speak brings tears to my eyes. Somehow, without my full approval, part of me has decided that because she cannot yet speak, she has no language. Evangeline came to our family from an orphanage in Ukraine when she was two years
(Here’s one of my favorite posts about my kids from my old blog) When Polly was born and we learned of her diagnosis of Down syndrome, I grieved the child I expected. I didn’t know much about Down syndrome. My mind quickly flipped to un-flattering images of a child sitting alone at recess, or a mother in her golden years walking slowly through the aisles of Wal-Mart so that her adult daughter, still a child,
A lot of people talk about their moods with the metaphor, “my glass is half-full.” Well, because of my struggle with depression, most days my glass is at best half-empty. When it gets really bad, my glass is all broken up. There’s no water in sight. And sometimes, well-meaning friends try to help me. They come at me with glue and duct tape and spackle. It the person is a Christian, she might say