This Mom: Speaking of Singing

I love blogging. I love having a tiny piece of personal expression real estate. I love the connection I've made with those of you who stop by from time to time and share your thoughts and stories. Every comment is a little party for me. Every single one is meaningful. I've made real friends, been directed to beautiful blogs, had lively email exchanges from out of the blue with all sorts of wonderful people, people I've 'met' for the first time when I open their mail, people who are out there walking in their own tall grass from time to time.

This morning I got an email from one such person, a musician named Jamie Manning who's put together the CD, What Remains: Song about parents raising children with autism. Jamie and his wife are raising a son with autism, a son about Fluffy's age. One of his goals in getting this music out there is to raise money to "help families get better insurance, more effective laws, and higher standards of care" for their children.

We're lucky. Our school system, for now, pays for our RDI consultant and our weekly OT sessions. We have a bit of savings that pays for our current homeschooling curriculum and supplies, supplements, enzymes, vitamins, babysitting help and our past forays into RDI workshops, Neurofeedback, Floortime, and my initial week at the Son-Rise Institute. For now, I don't have to go out there into the workforce and rustle up some extra cash at night or on the weekends like many of the other moms I know. We have insurance that covers, essentially NONE of what we've done over the last couple of years. The premiums and out of pocket are through the roof; they raise them every other month with the same grasp on reality as Fluffy when we play grocery store and he charges me ten dollars for a single egg. But, okay. We have some insurance; if any of us need to be housed in intensive care being fed through a tube in our neck after being crushed by a fallen I-Beam, we're set, unless of course, the I-Beam clause has been voted out at the last meeting of pencil necks.

But I digress. Go listen to some songs. I especially love You Are Welcome Here. Have a listen.

I hope there will be many window lights that beckon to Fluffy in his lifetime, beckon with their warmth and welcome, but the ones in our home, our spirit home, will glow until the end of time.

November 2008