Category Archives: parenting

A Future Within Us

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I lay on the hard, unmade bed that I hadn’t really been able to sleep in the night before, and closed my eyes, trying to drown out the medley of Dublin city traffic below me: the deep hum of the Dublin buses, the screeching of random sirens, the faint echo of heavy footfall. Noises that were once so familiar to me ten years ago, as I lay on my overly-narrow single bed in Botany Bay in Trinity College. It should’ve felt like home, and yet, never have I felt so out of place.

I shouldn’t have been lying in bed at half three in the afternoon on such a momentous day as the 23rd September, 2017, a day that I worked so hard towards for the guts of a year. I had left my colleagues behind in the  Mansion House to celebrate the lives of those who had established the Independent Living Movement. An event that I had put everything I had into, turning down paying jobs and little tidbits of work during the summer in the process. I wanted to give all my energy to this event.

Two hours beforehand, I’d tackled one of the things on my bucket list: I performed a piece of drama that I’d co-written in front of two hundred people. As I climbed the stage, I thought I could feel a brick beneath my posterior, I was so nervous. I felt overwhelmed with emotion as I played ‘Rachel’ out on stage, a disabled mother struggling to escape the negative labels placed upon her by an indifferent society. The only way I can describe the experience is ’emotional nakedness’. The tears – and the anger – were evidently mine, not Rachel’s. I couldn’t have dreamed of the positive feedback, and yet afterwards, I wasn’t elated – I was physically sick.

Afterwards, I told myself that it was stress. I panicked because I was filled with fear that I’d pushed it a little too far this time, that once again I had seriously overestimated my physical stamina and taken on too much. But it wasn’t that at all. And it’s only this morning when I feel semi-normal again that I realise when I’ve felt that particular sensation before – the feeling of darkness, heaviness in the pit of my stomach – and it was when my mother died.

Or more specifically, the moment of realisation that she wouldn’t be around for me any more and, as a fully-fledged adult (I was twenty-five when she died) I would now have to shoulder a lot more responsibility for my own life.

It’s easier to be a sheep than a shepherd, easier to follow than to lead. Many of us have followed for years. When Martin Naughton died last year, it felt like the bedrock of the disability activism world was slowly starting to wear away. You could always count on the seven activists that ‘By Us With Us’ honoured on Saturday to lead the way. to spearhead the protests, the fight. Who can we look up to now?

And then it occurred to me that although an intimate knowledge of past successes in disability activism are crucial, we need to trust ourselves and have real belief in our own ability to pave the way to the future. By the way, this nugget of wisdom is coming from someone who has absolutely zero self-confidence and who is still learning to assert her right to use her own voice, the result of years of internalised oppression and being underestimated by those around her.

It’s taken me three days to recover from the emotional rollercoaster that was Saturday (even though I missed most of it) and to get my head around the fact that although the pressure is off in many ways, there is still lots of work waiting in the future. And we – not anyone else – will have to be the ones to put ourselves forward. One of the things that I did manage to gather on Saturday is that there is a general consensus that society is now going backwards, and that the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People With Disabilities will not guarantee us our liberties.

That  will depend on us. On every single one of us.

School lessons

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So, Alison is back to school on Wednesday. I know not every parent will agree with me but I for one cannot work out where that summer went.

Kids have a tendency to surprise you, though. Just this morning Alison had expressed trepidation about going into Senior Infants. ‘The work will be too hard,’ she moaned at me while I scoffed at her. Ten minutes later she had orally completed the first twelve pages of her new Phonics workbook. With Alison, I’d be more concerned about her getting bored than struggling. If she were to get bored, she’d lose interest and thus would begin the descent of a slippery slope into delinquency and mischievousness.

I suppose I’m still aghast at how much she’s learned in the last year.  Her reading skills are better than mine were at her age (it pains me to admit this), and she spent the summer doing Tullamore library’s Summer Reading Challenge. (This is where kids are challenged to read ten books over the summer. She read forty, easily). She’s retained most of her Irish and has been randomly coming out with statements such as ‘Six plus five is eleven’.

So she’s doing well which is a relief, because I had concerns about her starting at just four and a half. But of course academia, mathematical prowess and literary genius is not the be-all-and-end all either.

As the daughter of a wobbly mummy, Alison has learned that it’s good to ask questions about disability, and boy does she!! ‘How come you could walk before without a walker, but not now?’ ‘Why do you use  a wheelchair when you can walk?’ ‘How come these footpaths are not ramped? That’s very dangerous.’ I’m raising a mini activist. Together we are becoming a force to be reckoned with.

In addition, Alison has learned to deal with having a sort of celebrity mummy. If she thinks people are asking too many questions, she’ll change the subject with a kind of ‘who cares about that auld has-been in the wheelchair’ attitude. It’s so normal to her that she can’t work out what all the fuss is about. I used to worry that my disability would drive away some of her friends, but actually I’ve established a rapport with them all and subsequently lost my wondrous tinge.

I’d also consider her to be kind. I’ve tried to teach her empathy, sort of ‘how would you feel if’ scenarios. She can identify if people are being unkind to each other and she tries to include people. Sure, she’s not perfect, and if she’s part of a clique she’ll get caught up in it. But she also knows when she’s in the wrong – she’ll look at me with her big blue eyes that say, ‘sorry mum, please don’t give out, I love you!’

And what have I learned? I’ve learned that there’s more to being a mum than the ability to run around after your child. I’ve learned that I am in fact not an alien and am just the same as other mums. This year, I’ve made the nicest mum friends whom I love chatting to and I no longer have any qualms about asking them to help me out with lifts to birthday parties. I’ve learned how to let go and share my hilarious parenting fails with them instead of constantly being worried that they will judge me as a parent or report me to social services!

I’ve learned to enjoy motherhood – I mean, really enjoy it. I’ve learned to love myself, and take care of myself. Whereas before I felt like a fraud, I now know that Alison and I mean the world to each other.

And isn’t that the most important lesson of all?

 

 

Flying Low

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Readers, this summer my husband, the little ‘in and I decided to ‘staycate’ in Ireland. We spent a lovely week in Galway and then the two of us went north for a wedding towards the end of July. It’s been a nice summer, but now my husband wants to go abroad later in the year. And while I’d love to, part of me couldn’t be bothered with the rigmarole. Believe it or not, it has nothing to do with flying with our  five year old daughter – she’s more sensible than the two of us combined – but rather the worry about bringing the wheelchair with us.

Don’t bring the wheelchair, we’ve been told before. Rent one instead. Well that’s all well and good, but the truth is I like my wheelchair. I’m used to it, I personally don’t think it’s overly bulky or heavy (125kg),and it means in the airport I can take my time, if I check in early. Admittedly, however, I’ve only brought it once, when we went to Salou in 2015.

This was with Ryanair.

I am not exaggerating when I say I rang their customer service a thousand times to give the specifications of the wheelchair – the weight, make, dimensions and the fact that it had a dry-cell battery. Oh, and the fact that the back folded down. And it was, after all the phone-calls and emails, a hassle-free experience.

I have an Invacare Kite. The same wheelchair as my friend Dani McGovern.

Dani was in my house last Wednesday. She’d called over with her husband John and son Logan and we chatted about how excited she was about little Logan’s first time on the plane (they were going to Birmingham for the weekend with her sister, her brother and their kids). They’d only been away as a couple in Lanzarote  a few months before so they had no reason to believe there’d be any issues this time either.

But when I read Dani’s sister Sharon’s Facebook status yesterday afternoon, I immediately felt sick. The story, which Dani shared with the Irish Independent today, was that there was no issue with Dani’s flight over to Manchester, but on the way home she was asked for the voltage of her battery which she was unsure of (Neither of us have been asked this before. You’re normally asked if it’s a dry or wet cell battery. Wet cell = no flysies. Ours is dry cell). She was given the option of flying without the wheelchair (Dani can’t walk, unless she’s harbouring a secret I don’t know about) or getting off the plane.

Can you imagine being told that your legs were going to be amputated or somehow decommissioned? I’m talking shite now, aren’t I? That’s how much sense flying without Dani’s wheelchair made. So really she had no option but to disembark the flight, leaving her husband and her young son (who, like any two year old, went beserk without his mammy in his eyeline) and wait for the next flight, an hour later, where by some miraculous intervention her chair suddenly wasn’t a ticking time bomb and she could fly! Makes sense, doesn’t it? (Just like my handwriting).

What wasn’t detailed in the article was that this isn’t the first time Dani’s been messed around when flying. We went to Mallorca in 2007, Dani, John Paul and I, and we’d brought Dani’s manual chair for me because taxis over there don’t take electric wheelchairs of the size Dani’s was at the time so we thought we’d have her small one for taxis (and for me if I got tired). Good thing too, because when we landed, the cabin crew arrived with the manual chair but there was no sign of the electric one! Panic is not the word, lads – it was like we’d lost a limb. Eventually it reappeared on the carousel – how it got there I haven’t a clue. In the meantime. our accessible taxi had threatened to leave without Dani, in a foreign country where we knew no-one.

Dani never went to the media about that, and she was within her right to. But if she had not gone this time around she would’ve inadvertently been saying that this treatment is ok, that it was somehow her fault. But it isn’t, and was not.

In short. Dani is more than ‘a girl in a wheelchair’. She’s a college graduate, a woman who’s been living independently since she was nineteen, a woman who’s worked hard to prove herself in every way, and in spite of some negative running commentary is a fantastic wife, loving mother, loyal friend and passionate advocate. She certainly didn’t deserve that treatment.

And in telling her story, she is reminding us that none of us do.

Unproductive Days

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Lads, for the last half an hour I’ve been sitting looking blankly into the laptop screen silently willing the urge to write to wash over me. And these are the first few words that I’ve managed. So, instead of marking today down as an unproductive one, I’ve decided to be sneaky and write this blog and mark it as work. Genius or what?

I ‘came into work’ at 9.30pm this evening with the intention of researching an article. That hasn’t happened so I’ll have to do it tomorrow.

When I started writing a novel two years ago, I told myself I’d be finished the first draft within six months. Ha. Hahahahaha. I should’ve been a comedian! New aim is to have it done by this Christmas. Oh, and possibly a play too. And a few more newspaper/magazine articles. And play a part in a major event organised by disability activist group, By Us With Us in September.

What do you mean, these are totally ridiculous, unattainable goals? Well, I’ll show you…

I didn’t manage to write much today. But I did manage to bath my child, bring her to the hairdressers and to a birthday party, complete with card and present.

No, I’ve written sod all. But I did manage to clean and hoover the house.

It’s hard to explain, but when I don’t manage to write, I don’t feel like myself. In fact, I’m grumpier, harder to live with, and sometimes this borders on self-hatred. When I see everything I expect myself to do written down on paper/on the screen I can see how ridiculous it is.

I’ve been pushing myself a little harder lately, conscious that the summer holidays will eat into my writing time. I know I won’t be blogging as much, and that my working week will be at least halved.  I might get one or two days a week to work, and the rest of my time will be my daughter’s. And rightly so.

If you had told me ten years ago when I started and abandoned the novel I’m working on now that I’d be a writer with a handsome husband who supported me and a beautiful daughter who loved to read, I would’ve called you mad.

If you have told me that I’d be totally obsessed with the Independent Living Movement, I would’ve scoffed. I hate committees and commitment and yet both seem to be dominating my life at the moment.

I’m coming up to the third anniversary of the July night that I was determined to end everything, once and for all. If you had told me then that I would come out the other end and start to recover, even like myself a little, I wouldn’t have believed you.

And I think of that Sarah back in 2014, who was struggling to stay together for five minutes at a time, and how thrilled she’d be to have a novel on the go, some freelance work, a little blog and a real opportunity to help people. And not in an arrogant way, I think of how far I’ve come from three years ago, just by taking one day at a time.

Suddenly, not being able to focus and write a few words doesn’t seem like a big deal, because I know there’s  always tomorrow.

And it’s great to be able to believe that.

Delicate Scent of Summer Dusk

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I really shouldn’t be blogging tonight. I’m lucky enough to have a bit of work to do, work that I might actually get paid for. But I can’t concentrate.

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m ‘overdoing it’ as my two friends and husband protest that I am, or whether it’s this lovely weather distracting me and giving me an intense dislike for my desk at the moment. It’s been gorgeous these last few days, and my mantra is to make the most of life before it disappears through your fingers as fast as dry grains of sand. So I’ve been in the park, going for walks and trying to clear my head. And then I sit at my desk, and nothing happens.

Just half an hour ago, I took a break from my desk to bring out the bins, and as I stood there absorbing the fresh air and fanning away the midges, the smell of the warm air brought back memories: memories of having barbecues growing up that lasted until it got dark; memories of walking to the shop with a single pound coin in my pocket to buy sweets for all four of us; memories of having cycling competitions with my two younger sisters (in my younger, fitter days) around our estate, only coming back in when the other kids were called home too.

I really hope that one day, Ali will enjoy this freedom, but right now I don’t think she’ll ever be as free as we were. The dangers that were there when we were kids are still there now, and coupled with social media (I get the irony, believe me), you really can’t tell who is watching your kids and what images they have of them. Ali is only five and I’ve already taught her my address and phone number in case we ever get separated for whatever reason. We’ve done stranger danger, although how much of it she really understands I don’t know, and I worry irrationally all the time. This is normal, right?

I remember after the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, I didn’t sleep for about two weeks. I got paranoid about every little noise in the night, about being in crowded spaces, about helicopters and planes overhead. And I’m not sure why it worried me so much, because I remember going to Coalisland (In Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland) every weekend with my parents as a child and being stopped by soldiers at the border. Both of my parents worried about their Southern Reg car – it was dangerous at the time and it certainly made you stand out as an outsider and in the wrong area, a prime target for petrol bombs. As kids we were terrified, but mum and dad seemed to take it in their stride. They were used to it, it didn’t faze them. And if it did, they never let it show.

What  were they supposed to do, never go north? Or move back up and never go south? They did neither. We continue to travel back and forth to see our family, and will always do so, even if Brexit does mean tighter borders between the UK and Ireland (and after the attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester this week, it’s looking like a possibility).

Our world is not safe, yet it has been reported that never before in history has it been safer to be alive. Polio, the plague and other diseases are almost entirely eradicated. Vaccinations against deadly diseases such as measles and malaria are widely available. Life expectancy is now into the seventies at least. And we will be spending the rest of our lives worrying about terrorism, bogeymen, rapists and the likes.

Listen, I’m not suggesting for one second that we should let our guard down and ignore what’s going on in the world. Nor am I saying ‘oh well, the world is an evil place, sure what can we do?’ Of course we must be seen to be strong in the face of barbarity. But our children deserve to live free of fear, because they are going to spend enough time worrying about things. Our children deserve to live, and to try and carve out a legacy to leave behind them for their own kids. They deserve the freedom to make their own mistakes and the freedom to recover from them.

They should be free to ride their bikes into the sunset, embracing the sweet smelling fragrance of a summer dusk.

RIP to those who were killed in Manchester 22.5.17, and condolences to your families.

Memories of Mum

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As the most loyal of my followers know by now, May 7th marks two completely separate events: my little sister’s birthday and my mum’s (now eighth) anniversary. Of course they’re not separate at all; every year until the end of time (or of our family’s time anyway) we will think of the joy that Laura Ann Maye brought into our lives while weeping for our beloved mother who we miss more than words can describe.

Laura is twenty-eight this year, but it’s hard for me to think of her as older than eighteen, getting two birthday cakes at her birthday dinner and screaming as her hair caught fire from the candles. She’s in Helsinki now, working as a Postdoctorate Research Fellow at Aalto University (I double-checked this on Facebook), and yet I still think of her as my ‘little’ sister even though in many ways, she’s more of a grown-up than I’ll ever be.

Every year, memories come flooding back to me, and as I’ve already extensively spoken about my grieving process, I thought I would instead share some of them with you to show you what an amazing, quirky, and often downright inappropriate lady my mother was.

  • ‘Girls! Oh my God girls, get up quick, it’s 8.15! You’ll be late for school!’ I jolt awake, not even thinking about how dark it is and turn on the sitting room light to discover that it’s not 8.15, it’s 3.45am and mum has looked at the clock backwards.
  • Interesting fact – mum handmade all of our communion dresses as she disapproved of the ‘poofy’ look. Everyone thought mum had bought mine in Laura Ashley. Mum also handmade a lot of her own clothes – jackets, dresses, skirts, waistcoats.
  • Mum was the worst at accumulating shite (no other word for it), collecting keyrings, little notebooks, Harrod’s beanie babies, candles, little pebbles. That was fun after she died, trying to decide which collection meant more to her! Not.
  • Mum was an artist. In her early days she did a lot of portraits, then she went through a phase of drawing violins, then front doors surrounded by pretty flowers. She made her own Christmas cards. She even painted designs on the little doorknobs on the kitchen presses. She loved bright, bold, primary colours. She did an interior design night class in Portabello College. If she had pursued this line of work. she’d be famous now. Beyond a doubt.
  • I have a ridiculously sweet tooth, something I inherit from my mother. It was her that introduced us to sticky toffee pavlova and knickerbocker glories. Honestly, I don’t know how we’re all stick thin either. Think that my siblings and I should donate our bodies to medical science.
  • I wouldn’t classify my mum as a scary person, but by God – the day she found out I’d told Sr Concepta in fifth class that my computer at home was broken and I had to write everything down (which was a lie, I just hated the computer) she called into the school, marched up to my class and said ‘Sarah Maye, get your ass out here right now!’ She ate me. Till the day she died she never lived it down.
  • We did get to spend some quality time together though, like all the times we went for various appointments, first in the CRC and then in Musgrave Park in Belfast. I remember walking up and down corridors and halls with these bobbly things all over my thin little legs and mum telling me I was modelling these special diamonds. I also remember falling in love with the doctor in Belfast (I was ten) and mum telling him all about it. Morto.
  • I also remember coming home from a respite holiday in Roscommon when I was eighteen and walking in the front door. The first thing my mother said was ‘What the hell is that thing around your neck? (It was a new chain, from JP) Who is he?’ After explaining to her that I’d met a boy and we were now an item, she smirked, took up the A4 pad that was on the coffee table and started explaining the birds and the bees, with explanatory diagrams. Lads, I’m not joking – she knew what she was doing because it was the best contraceptive ever. A year later and JP and I were still nervous of leaving the ‘holding hands’ stage. All I could picture was that bloody diagram.
  • I’ll never forget the day that Laura came home for the first time, and mum saying I couldn’t hold her until I fastened my dungarees on my own. The fact that I remember this should illustrate how real the struggle was. She placed her in my arms and I remember thinking how tiny she was and more to the point, how unexciting she was. For a while all she did was snooze in her Moses basket and lie there waiting to be fed and changed (lazy git). I couldn’t wait for her to grow up and play with me. And to be fair she, Stephen and Alex were the best siblings ever.

    But Laura and I are close too. I’ve been privileged to watch her through school and attend both her college graduations. Laura, I’ve no doubt that mum is immensely proud of you and what you’ve achieved. And it’s so unfortunate that your birthday is also her anniversary, but you know what? She wouldn’t want you to be miserable on your special day.

So have a lovely day and don’t feel one bit guilty about it, because the 7th May may have taken Mum from us, but it also brought you, and we are all so lucky and grateful that it did xx

1-7 May: Maternal Mental Health Week

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I was just scrolling through Facebook this evening, you know, doing some important web-based research, when I saw a post saying that it was Maternal Mental Health Week this week (May 1-7). According to talkingmums.com, up to one in five women experience mental health issues either during pregnancy or in the year following birth. Yet, out of these women, only 7% of them are typically referred for specialist help.

How many of you, like me, have suffered from PND, yet never admitted it to a doctor or health professional? How many of you out there are still suffering?

I’ll never forget the moment I knew for sure I was suffering from PND. Alison was only three months old and we had just discovered (or rather, the Public health nurse finally believed me) that she had a cow’s milk allergy. We had Ali put on special formula. She started gaining weight and became the happiest baby ever, sleeping through the night and everything.

I should’ve been happy, but I wasn’t. Relieved, yes. Happy? No.

All I wanted to do is disappear. I was just waiting for the right time.

I had this vision of having PND as standing over your baby’s cot with a pillow in your hand or wanting to throw your baby down a flight of stairs. While I appreciate that some women feel like that (and this doesn’t make you a bad person – you’re unwell and need help), I didn’t. I felt that my daughter was the most perfect person in the world and that she must have done something truly horrible in life to end up with a mother like me.

I didn’t know that PND meant looking in the mirror and being repulsed by the pathetic specimen staring back.

I didn’t realise that ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away. I ended up in the doctor with chest pains, shoulder pains, stomach aches and yet the doctor couldn’t find physiological reasons for any of them. She prescribed painkillers which didn’t seem to help. I always denied feeling down or depressed. Big smile on my face. Sure what would I have to be depressed about?

By May 2014, I could barely get out of bed. I wasn’t eating properly. I was crying all the time; it was all  I seemed to want to do. In order to get from one end of the day to the other, I had to measure my time in hourly units. Then half-hourly, and towards the end, minute by minute. If I can hold myself together for ten more minutes I’ll be grand, I would think to myself. But of course, I wasn’t grand – far from it.

When I took time off work, I considered my treatment options. I know it sounds ridiculous and shallow, but the thought of going on antidepressants filled me with dread. I wasn’t too keen on counselling either as my previous experiences were quite negative. But I knew I had to do something, so I started writing. Writing how I felt. Writing about my flaws. Writing about my talents. Suddenly, I felt liberated. I’m not recommending this course of action over medication or counselling, but writing was my saviour. It’s something I enjoy, am (reasonably) good at and writing my thoughts and feelings down helped me to own them, and then let them go.

Postnatal Depression has changed me into someone different to who I used to be. I am more sensitive now, and I hate myself for it. I’m still conscious of how people perceive me as a mother. In addition, I now have to make a conscious effort to look after my mental health, to recognise the signs of feeling sad or overwhelmed and act on them before they take over. I also have to be careful. I love helping people, but I have a tendency to internalise their problems to the point where they become my own problems. Sometimes I need to step back, say no and this is hard. I hate doing it.  But I have to remind myself that if I don’t mind myself, I can’t help others.

This week is National Maternal Mental Health Week, and while it’s great to have a platform to write about PND and mental health, the issue of maternal health shouldn’t be confined to a mere seven days of the year. We need to open up the conversation to all mothers, make them feel supported and not feel alone. When I published my long preamble about my experience with PND, I was convinced that either no-one would read it or that it would be dismissed as being a tad melodramatic. What I didn’t expect was the hordes of girlfriends, as well as women I’d never met, emailing me their stories and reminding me that I was not alone. Thanks to those women for validating my story and for making me feel that my depression was completely normal.

And if you are reading this, and you are silently suffering from pre- or post-natal depression, you are not alone either. Look after yourself and get the help you need. Trust me – even mothers who appear to be perfect can suffer silently.

You are worth the help. And after the fog lifts, life becomes so much simpler.

You are wonderful. You are beautiful. You are everything to your children, and they deserve you just as much as you deserve them.

But you can’t pour from an empty cup, so look after yourself.

Mother’s Day Hunger

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Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Normally I’d anticipate it coming but this year it just hit me out of the blue. ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’ shrieked Alison on the way out of school on Friday afternoon, waving yet another piece of brilliant artwork. And it is brilliant; you can see the improvements in the detail of the people she draws. They’re no longer stick people, they have trousers and dresses, eyelashes and even bracelets. She’s growing up every day, because of me, or in spite of me – I’m never sure which.

We spent the whole day in town together, and after the two hours in the park decided to pick out something for her two nanas’ graves. We eventually found something vaguely acceptable, but as I surveyed them, something sank in my stomach. It’s not only the feeling of loss that comes with every Mother’s Day when your mum passes away. This was a very real but unreasonable sensation. I’ll try to explain.

Every Saturday if the weather’s good, Ali and I will go for lunch, a kind of mother/daughter bonding activity. It’s become a habit, a ritual, one I used to look forward to (I love cooking  but hate the clean-up after). Now, however, the novelty has worn off and I’ve started making dinner at home more. My cooking is nice, but also there’s nowhere in the world that will ever serve food the way mum used to make it. Sausage stew, roast pork, ‘twice-baked’ spuds filled with ham, onion and cheese, cheesy veg, lasagne (I’m salivating here and it has nothing to do with my Cerebral Palsy). I know it sounds ridiculous but even if I followed recipes the thought of never eating her food as she cooked it hurts. I’m hungry for the nice food.

And as with every Mother’s Day, I’m hungry for her.

I’m hungry for the ridiculous fights we had on countless Mother’s Days when she used to insist  on cooking dinner (probably for the same reasons that I can’t seem to find a nice restaurant these days – she liked her own food) after which she would moan incessantly about how nobody helped her even though she liked doing things her own way and she had previously insisted on cooking alone.

I’m hungry for the ridiculous squeals of appreciation at presents we got in the Pound Shop that she’d probably given us money to buy (wow, just what I need! A stuffed penguin!) and the feeling that no matter what you got her it would never compensate for the job she did as a mother. And her smiles as she opened the cards and cooed over our artwork.

I’m hungry for who she could’ve been, whether that might’ve been a famous interior designer, a ‘hip’ nana or a grumpy curmudgeon and I often wonder what she would have made of JP and I having Ali, and whether she would’ve insisted that she wasn’t an on-call babysitter with one breath and threatened to adopt my daughter with another. I wonder if she would approve of my choice to leave a paid job and enter the murky world of freelancing, or if she’d be embarrassed by my seeming laziness. She certainly wouldn’t approve of the wheelchair, but I also know that she kind of, sort of, trusted my ability to make sensible decisions.

I’ll never know what she did and didn’t approve of. I only have one regret, and that is how hard I was on her, how much I expected of her. Being a mother is hard work and scary sometimes, and sometimes she had bad days like us all, which she tried to hide from us. When I was small, I thought my mum was invincible, and even when I was told at the age of twenty-five that she had passed away, I said ‘no, sure try waking her again, she’s just a very heavy sleeper(!!!) (She slept through a bomb which demolished some of her house in Cookstown at the age of fourteen).  I, like all of us, took her death hard, and when my own daughter was born three years later, I panicked. How was I going to do this without the support of the woman who had such a major role in who I am today? And yet, I did, sort of. Call me crazy but during that time I had to believe she was close by otherwise I would have crumbled altogether.

Now, my grief is more reserved, but it won’t stop the tears on a day like tomorrow. Yet tomorrow too will come and go, feelings of happiness and sadness intertwined with begrudging acceptance. I think one of Mum’s favourite country and western singers, Kathy Mattea, puts it more eloquently than I ever could:

‘We’ll never know what could have been, but looking back we see
What could have been, and never was, was never meant to be.’

Now there you go mum, your own Mother’s Day blog! No ‘I wish heaven had a phone’ memes for you! xxx

 

 

 

Wheel Independence

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My poor, sad, neglected wheelchair (sad face)

 

 

I have really missed blogging here for the last two weeks (I’m back, yay), but to be honest, I just needed a break. I felt wiped, depleted and I know from hard  experience that when I feel like this it’s better to take a breather rather than having a meltdown and sobbing in my jammies at the side of the canal at 4.30am (ahem, apparently). I have been busy though with activism, and I got my submission in to Date With An Agent (I hope – I never enclosed an SAE to acknowledge my entry but I know my  future award winning novel will totally be selected), so that could account for why I’m that little bit more tired.

Or maybe it’s because for the last month and a half, I’ve been without my electric wheelchair, and the extra physical effort of walking everywhere is taking its toll. And thank God it is finally getting fixed tomorrow, because I am wiped.

My dear mother, who spent the first five years of my life doing physio with me every morning, was dead set against me using a wheelchair. We lived in a two-storey house when most of my disabled friends lived in bungalows. She wasn’t too keen on me having a wheelchair in college, although she understood the reasoning behind it. Growing up in a mainstream world led me to believe that one’s value was largely based on their physical ability to do things and to get around.

When I had Alison, my friend advised me that I wouldn’t want to miss out on doing things with my daughter, and so I got myself an electric wheelchair. Being ambulant I don’t think I’d have any chance getting one off the HSE. And for the first time since becoming a mother, I wasn’t housebound. I could take Alison for walks whenever I wanted, long walks and still have the energy to come home and do some housewifey things, and write my masterpiece. This is why the phrase ‘confined to a wheelchair’ annoys me so much. A wheelchair doesn’t confine, it liberates! Without it, I feel confined, trapped within the limitations of my body.

I firmly believe that when we are given access to tools like wheelchairs, technological aids and Personal Assistance, we are enabled to become the best us we can be. There is great strength in acknowledging that your physical impairments are not the problem, that society needs to address the needs of people with disabilities and be more inclusive. Above all, I believe that people with disabilities need to drive this change themselves.

It came to my attention over the weekend that student Kathleen McNamee, senior editor of the University Times, ‘cripped up’ or explored Trinity College campus in a wheelchair. What’s wrong with this, you might ask. Isn’t it great that people without impairments are trying to see the world through the eyes of a wheelchair user? Well firstly, Kathleen is not a wheelchair user; at the end of her article she wrote: ‘While I will be happy to hand my chair back tomorrow morning, I am also aware that not everyone is afforded this opportunity’. To me this implies that she sees the ‘problem’ as the wheelchair,  not the inaccessible environment. Also, why did she have to ‘crip up’? Why didn’t she look for the experiences of full-time wheelchair users who navigate the campus on a daily basis?

Secondly, I felt that the article was a little unfair on Trinity. When I carried out an access audit in 2004, we identified all of the problem areas and efforts have been made to fix things: the pathway through Front Square, there’s now a lift up to the Pav (the on-campus watering hole) and ramps to the buildings in Front Square. Things are far from perfect, but they’re improving.

Irish Rail, however, seems to be getting worse. A friend of mine told me recently that on principle she refuses to give any train station 24 hours’ notice of her intention to travel because she sees herself as equal. Today I had to travel by train (I had no wheelchair, just my rollator) and didn’t give notice, so I had no reason to be disgusted when assistance didn’t appear in Tullamore (even though I rang an hour beforehand), leaving me no choice but to fling my rollator and myself off the train. Had I been in my wheelchair I’d probably be writing this from Galway!

So to summarise, I’m looking forward to my wheelchair being repaired in the morning and to getting my independence and energy levels back. My normal life back. I know I should make more of an effort to get fit, and some might think I shouldn’t be so lazy. Feck that. My daughter needs a mummy who has the energy to do things and go places with her, and I need the energy to write, and that’s exactly what my wheelchair offers. It doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you do!

Memories on a Birthday

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Alison’s first birthday. Not pictured: me blubbering like a baby

 

At 11.52am on Thursday 9 February 2017, Alison will be five years old. I can’t believe that my not-so-little girl will be five today. I also cannot believe that I, a total dummy when it comes to kids, have been a mummy for the last five years.

Every year since Alison’s first birthday, I’ve always used the ninth of February to look at the year gone by, to marvel at how Ali has grown and what she’s learned. This year has been a particularly busy year in Ali’s life. She started primary school in September and is currently excelling in Irish and reading. In the evening she sits down the minute she comes home from school, anxious to get her homework done. She then spends the rest of the evening churning out some ever-impressive artwork at her desk, each picture better than the last. It makes me so proud to be her mummy.

In truth, it’s only really in the last two years that I’ve started to believe that I deserve to be her mummy.

When the words ‘disability’ and ‘care’ are thrown into a sentence together, it’s often wrongly assumed that the disabled person is the one being cared for. If you google ‘disabled parenting’ there is very little support or advice out there for disabled parents. On top of that, there is a narrative that disabled parents are inadequate, that their children are more susceptible to abuse and neglect, and that they cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions regarding their children’s welfare. Just this week I had a lady write on my Facebook page that she had no idea that people as disabled as I am were capable of raising children and admired my bravery in sharing my story. (She had seen the documentary I did a few years ago, Somebody to Love). Undoubtedly she meant well but it was a stark reminder of how hard our family has had to work to be accepted as part of the fabric of our community.

I find Alison’s birthday hard for many reasons. Firstly, because the sense of gratitude I feel is overwhelming: there are so many women out there who would love children and yet I, the absolute baby dummy, was blessed with the most beautiful daughter. Secondly, because I don’t really want her to get any older and lose all the wonderful innocence she has now. But mostly because it’s been such a struggle to achieve the relative normality that we enjoy now. And thankfully, she has no comprehension of how this family has struggled.

Every year, I’ve always cried as Alison blows out her birthday candles. This is because at Alison’s first birthday party, she grabbed the flame with her little hand, only crying for a split second with pain. She had faced danger, and overcome it. I had faced doubts and ongoing criticism for the first year of Alison’s life from so-called ‘professionals’, and I was not brave enough to challenge them. Instead, I stayed quiet, pandering to whatever I was told in the belief that if I didn’t, my child would be taken from me. I believed I was useless. I believed that I was a danger to my own child. I believed I was not the mother she deserved.

 

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Alison with her daddy on her third birthday blowing out her candles. Not pictured: me blubbering like a baby.

 

But in spite of myself, the years have flown by and I have managed to get her to five reasonably happy and healthy. I’ve managed to gain credibility as a semi-respectable parent in my hometown and in Alison’s school. And Alison is so intelligent, witty, kind and beautiful that I feel honoured to be her parent. She makes both JP and I proud every day, and for the most part we don’t take for granted the richness she’s brought to our lives. Our world revolves around her, as it should. We just love her so much.

 

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Alison on her fourth birthday – you all right in the corner there mummy?! So embarrassing….

 

I’ve no doubt that Alison will have a lovely birthday, and all that I can hope is that the emotional scars continue to fade. But please don’t judge me if you see me sniffling over her birthday cake again. This girl is the centre of our world, and by God, we’ve fought so hard to keep our little family together. And, without doubt, it’s been a struggle, but so worth it.