I seem to be getting here less and less. Writing has been reduced to "status lines" on facebook, a veritable part-haiku of experience, encapsulated. Abe was away for almost a fortnight, so those part haikus were even more abbreviated than usual. If only I knew the name of more poetry forms: a hai? a ku? When one would like to have time for a stanza or a sonnet, while on some days nothing less than an Epic would do. While Childe Roland is in the tower etc, and young Morgaine is in her Wheeled Chariot. Although I refuse to completely surrender to the notion that the pram - or the mobility device - in the hall is the complete enemy of art.
Although the small stirring from Clancy that I hear from the other room right now may well abbreviate all this to much less than a rhyming couplet. Ah, no, he's wiggled himself back into a sweaty snooze.
But apart from overly pushing the poetry metaphor, have been thinking a lot about language and vividness and language and identity over the last week or so. Immediately, that's because I got off the phone to Auntie Dulce, 80 years old and recently had a "funny turn", that may or may not have been a stroke. It turns out it was a form of "vertigo". She told me that she coped with the MRI by breaking down the sounds into different things: that was a galloping horse, that was something else. And then, as so often, we got onto work, the working classes, apprenticeships, opportunities, The Government, and why the Australian Apprenticeship System (yes, she often speaks in a Capitalised Way) is terrific and needs expansion. A boy she knew - well, really, she knew his mother; and he wasn't so much a boy as in his 50s - went to work in the US, where the problem was people who'd been trained as "left handed screwdriver operators" and that was ll they could do, so if they lost their jobs they were in strife.
Oops, Clancy definitely awake.
Back to the disability-communication-course and its debates as soon as I can. Maybe. Hopefully today.
Two hours later, and not at all far away: Back. There are of course many other things I should be doing.
Language, communication, identity and all that - that's what I've been thinking about, a lot, over the last few weeks. Last week I once again headed off to the "It Takes Two To Talk" course I'm doing, all for children who aren't yet verbal; all children with disabilities; wide variety of disabilities; five parents (oh yes, what do you know, all mothers), in one room with two speech pathologists. One of the speechies is quite qa good facilitator and presenter; the other isn't so great at it (and the bitchy comment: a rather high and squeaky upward inflexion on a speech pathologist . . .does that show a certain lack of reflexivity?). We had to identify the communication style and stage of our child, and while I've spent quite a long time seeing Morgaine as a child who's sociable, and who communicates with the world with her eyes, her smiles, her soft gentle gestures, her way of moving her feet against the floor with pleasure . . . having an actual measureable schema showed me that she really is in the earliest stage of language development, what they call an "Explorer". (Then there's the "Communicator"; the "single word user"; and those who are building sentences.)
So that, of course, was a tad confronting - but there is stuff to build on.
But just to keep the "I'm lucky" narrative going, at least I"m interspersing this course with the art therapy/ CBT/ mindfulness course I'm doing as well. (This is not the course, but I found a link that explores connections between mindfulness and CBT - looking for a good overview that plays more as an "honest broker" but haven't managed that yet.
Because near the end of last week's language course, we were given activities to do, things to build on, using gestures, body language, "turn taking", blah de blah. Then at the end of it, the suggestion was that we break down our own language and simplify it, so that rather than saying "Put the shoe on", it becomes an exagerated pantomime of "Shoe!! On!!"
Meanwhile, the woman to my left was beginning to simmer. Thin and very striking, all pale skin and cheekbones, intense dark eyes, and an agitation born of having a child with a mysterious condition. And then she erupted. I have a real problem with that, she said, and launched into an impassioned critique of dumbing down the language, why we're underestimating the intelligence and potential of our children, that she objects to language being used like this, and what are we doing to our children by allowing them to be put into a box like this. And her voice cracked, as she pleaded with us to know if anyone else felt like this. Two of the other women laughed slightly nervously. I had to tell her I knew exactly what she meant, at the same time as I could see why - instrumentally - some of these techniques might be useful. Because this hope, this potential, this wanting your child to understand you and to know what's going on, to hold onto the idea that they might know a lot more than they can express, is so important.
It also, I think, ties into some slightly romantic, but equally heartfelt and true, beliefs about the power of art, words, literature, creativity and expression to change the world. And it's no accident that this woman is a high school English teacher. And those of us with a stake in language and identity tend to not only be confronted by this, but have to express it; while at the same time we live in a wordy world, where you hav to ask for, demand, advocate, request, verabalise, write, state who you are and why you need to be understood taken seriously LISTENED TO in so many ways.
There are the grammars of opportunity as well as of engagement. The language of toys and games of opening and shutting and reaching for and understanding and knowing about cause and effect.
And our children may or may not be getting that.
But this woman had no real space available to express that. I'd spent the previous day with other women with parents with a whole range of often heartbreaking disabilities, but in this terribly positive well organised space we were able to deal with the emotional side of our concerns; and with my friends - Myff, especially - and my man Abe, I can try to carve out an intellectual space for coming to grips with this. But she had nowhere to look except at a child who could make some sounds; who could copy her by banging on his tray table; who could hold matching pairs of plastic animals and move them around the house. And rather poignantly, I realised how thrilled I'd be if Morgaine could or would consistently imitate me even by banging on the tray of her special chair.
And then the language course ended, with no resolution or real way of addressing the identity question. It's predicated on the knowledge that language matters; but doesn't know what to do with how confronting that may be for those of with children Who May Never Speak. And will we interpret them back to the world, forever? Will we get it right, or do wishful thinking? Become those people who write entire books for their children via a sideways glance that is understood to mean, "And of course the architecture of this room is impeding my sense of self", which others answer with a pitiful sideways glance towards the parents that is understood to mean, "Oh she's kidding herself entirely". The course also ended, for that week at least, rather abruptly. I hurl myself out the door with Clancy cooing in my arms (where he's been flirting with various therapy aids while we talk about his sister); and I have to drive for almost an hour back to pick up M from childcare. No chance to debrief; stuck for many minutes behind a bus advertising the Therapy Place that's been working with disability for 75 years; listening to Elvis Costello and trying determinedly not to get in a flap and trusting that I'll get there in time.
Whereas the Art Therapy has a moment of transition between the Disability World and the Rest. We talk about our art work; we do a meditation thing. Last week, we had to represent ourselves, metaphorically. Lordy lordy that was hard. I wanted something that showed colour and movement, although it occurred to me that I often seem calm on the outside. Others were needing to represent something much more fraught and distressing, and as I hear their stories am struck again and again by how wound up some of them are. But no, I don't think it's an exercise in extravagent Schadenfreude, although it's certainly a more realistic version of compassion. I don't realy know what you're going through, but I have a different sense of what it might be. So I keep thinking about the woman who, in one exercise, had a figure (herself) off to the side all scribbly energy and wool coming undone, being forced apart by all these demands and figures and crowded strokes of colour. A lot of murky grey on the page.
All I could come up for myself was a dancer - who I then expanded, so that she was juggling, and on a tightrope.
Perhaps, given that I'm supposed to be working on all the non-verbal cues that Morgaine gives me, I should have drawn in her lovely blue eyes looking up at me, her soft soft arms with their languid movements and energy raising slightly towards me. Sitting in her mobility device, thoughtfully chewing on the chest strap.
