there’s this one story that laura ingalls wilder tells of one summer during her childhood, when the corn crop was fantastic — and then all of a sudden a great cloud of crows comes in to eat up the corn.
ma and laura and her sisters run out to the field to beat at the crows and scare them off, but the crows are everywhere. in the book, illustrator garth williams depicts a terrified little sister carrie being pecked by one of the birds.
i wonder if that’s where hitchcock got the idea?
by the time pa gets home, much of the crop is destroyed. he loads up his shotgun and takes down huge bunches of birds at a time, but finally even he admits defeat — there are simply too many crows.
ma says, “there is no loss without some gain,” and she tells the girls to gather up the birds and pluck them for dinner. she cites the nursery rhyme about four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, and though none of them had ever heard of anyone actually eating blackbirds, let alone crows, ma figures she’ll give it a shot – so she makes a “blackbird pie.”
the pie is absolutely delicious.
– – –
i cried a lot today.
i wish i had ma’s blackbird pie recipe.
i don’t know if i can bring jonah to that library toddler group anymore. today i barely made it to the parking lot afterward without bursting into tears. it’s just so hard to watch kids his age, and even kids months younger than he, as they touch their nose & ears & toes along with the songs….as they say “mommy, catch!” when they throw a ball, as they stack blocks and pretend they’re planes and clap along to music. Jonah doesn’t do any of that.
we got an official report in the mail yesterday – the result of the evaluation. jonah is in the 1% for cognitive ability, and only slightly higher for fine motor skills.
is he autistic? retarded? the next frank zappa?
here’s the really weird part. i always adored retarded/slow characters in books and movies. Lenny in ‘of mice and men’; raymond babbitt in ‘rainman’; bill sackter, played by mickey rooney in that out-of-print made-for-tv movie i paid $30 for on e-bay…
i told God many times (years before i was married or pregnant) that it would be okay if God wanted to give me a disabled child. (I also made sure God understood I had no problem with a gay kid either.)
i always thought i’d be a good mother to a disabled kid; that i would not de-value the child because of some lack of intellect or ability, that I would be patient and loving and nurturing…
now that it might be really happening i can only laugh at my earlier naivete.
as if i can tell God anything at all about what i will or won’t handle, what i can and can’t deal with.
as if anyone understands anything until they experience it firsthand.
as if anyone could ever judge anyone else for just about anything at all.
Thank you for telling God you’d be happy with a gay kid…you’d be a great parent to a gay kid, too… Love you!
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