I learned something big (not quite new because it has be with me for many, many years) about myself recently. In a round about way I learned it from Sanguine. You know, when she was born Paul and I were so happy that she was here. In some deep, in the soul, kind of way we felt that we had been waiting, preparing for her.

For me, in my own progressive, faithful, peaceful and righteous way I thought Sanguine was to help me deepen these characteristics to a more meaningful understanding and then to help me overflow with them to the people around me. Boy-oh-boy, that notion was big of me. I am surprised that I didn’t break my arm as I was trying to pat myself on the back. No! What I learned about me was ugly, quietly hidden, but none the less ugly.

Sanguine, my teacher, had a helper for this lesson. The teacher aide’s name was Amelia. Amelia is an 18 year old senior high school student. This young lady was a key note speaker at a conference that I attended several weeks ago. Her message was many little messages woven together like the great spider weaves a web. It was intricate, smooth, silky, strong, and sticky to the point of discomfort… for me.

Amelia’s presentation was one of those that made you laugh and cry. It made you want to know her. It made you want to pick her brain. And it made me want to cry some more because she called me out. She made me acknowledge and now confront my lie and or secret that I was semi, not really, but slightly aware of, but hid it under all those layers of blah, blah, blah – progressiveness, faithfulness, peacefulness and righteousness.

The sticky part of Amelia’s web… I mean message, was that people without disabilities live in a small world with a big wall around them and in that wall are doors. People with disabilities live just outside that wall and their world is big. The people with disabilities knock on those doors in the big wall hoping that someone will let them in. And nobody really ever opens the doors; either because they don’t hear, they don’t want to hear, or they are afraid to hear the knocking. Amelia asked for our ears to start listening for the knocking and to let the people with disabilities come in and stay and include them in all that goes on all the time. Don’t send them back beyond the big wall.

This is where Amelia might as well have pointed her finger at me and said, you are guilty. I am guilty as many of us are. I know that I have opened the door on occasion but I have never closed it behind anyone. Just as graciously as I have invited someone into my small world I know I have just as graciously escorted them right back to that door and helped them right back ever so gently to their big lonely world. I will never commit that again. My ears have become sensitive to the knocking. I will open the door and lock it behind them. They will be in my small, abled world whether they like it or not!

Amelia is all that I said she was in my writings. She is also aspiring to be a public speaker and to be an advocate for folks with disabilities. She is starting college in the Fall of 2008. She has been the keynote speaker for the United Way and the Special Olympics. She has been awarded the Special Olympic athlete of the year 2007-2008. Amelia has Down Syndrome.

You have to check out this video of Amelia Abel. Video.

Wow, I have some thanking to do. So, you might as well just sit down and take a load off. And if you are in Ithaca or Missoula grab a cold drink while you are at it.

As most of you know we departed Ithaca on June 21, 2007. Our send off was fun, light hearted, and supportive. Our well wishers included, Ellen, Kathleen, Chris, Linnie, Charles, Lisa, and Charlie and all the littles that belong to them. There was a lot of hugging, kissing and laughing (especially about the way our car was packed, or maybe it was more along lines of the way our kids and dog were packed). There was just enough room for shallow breathing. I cried just a bit when I hugged each of my girlfriends. But when I hugged Kathleen with a tear in my eye and a quiver to my voice she stopped me quickly and said “there is no reason to cry, this is happy and you are on a big adventure, we all wish we could go with you.” Thank you for that, Kathleen! Paul and I do live our lives, in search of our dreams. We try to live with fun, adventure, and a reason to celebrate every day.

For Kathleen, my neighbor and friend, to have said what she said that day, made me, and continues to make me feel loved and more than anything else, understood. All of our friends who stood there on the tree lawn that afternoon and waved to us as we drove away know who we are and if they fully don’t understand everything we do, I know they try. This is a big deal for me because when I look back at my life I realize that not many people have truly understood me.

While I hopefully still have your attention I do need to thank all of you. However, I really need to thank you for your generous time, food and great company.

The O’Connor/Anderson Family; I thank you for girl night, 3 or 4 dinners at your place with my big brood (the a/c and kiddie pool were the added touches) and your laundry facility.

The Wieselquist/Hamilton Family; I thank you for girl night, two days of packing the moving truck, pizza, home baked cookies, and magna doodles for the kids.

The Sanfilippo/Izzo Family; I thank you for keeping me juiced up with Gimme “Kaffe Klatches”, baby sitting, packing the moving truck and the van, dinners, making the kids tote bags filled with activity books, and the espresso chocolate.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU form the bottom of my heart!!!!!

And by the way, what is up with all the double last names? Give this mother of four a freakin’ break…That is a lot of writing for a not so fast typist. I think you should re-evaluate the last name thing! That’s just me thinking out loud ;o)

Anyway… Over-and-Out, Adkins/Deutsch

At one time, which already feels like a mini life time ago. I was a head up, shoulders back, chest out, stroller pushing Career woman. I use to walk or ride my 20 year old Sears Roebuck, three speed, (pulling my bigs which were my littles then). I would stop at the magazine shop, pick up my Utne Reader, get myself a latte, stop at Adventure Cycling Association (where Paul worked) and get my fill of America’s cross section, and get my hair cut (every three weeks). This would all happen even before I turned the keys to my office. And the first matter of business upon entering my beautiful, quiet, healing space was to put on the radio. And I would exhale with relief to hear that National Public Radio was still being transmitted over the waves.

For anyone who is not aware, I use to be a professional, who owned my own business and had the luxury of raising my two children (Rainy and Torrent) in that office. I was so proud of myself. There I was raising well socialized, educated, polite, sophisticated, worldly children in the midst of helping others reach their ultimate innate human potential. I was a chiropractor, a good one, who adjusted men, women, children, babies, the occasional K-9, and a few of the neighborhood homeless dudes.

Back then I was aware of things, many things; my town, the plight of non-profits, the education battles, the struggles on the Black Foot Reservation, Seattle and Calgary, (they were the two closest big cities around, just 8 hours away) and who is selling the best cloth diapers and covers in a 50 mile radius. I was also in the know politically speaking too. I could converse about many grown-up, professional things. Trust me I was really well informed. I just wish now I could list a few things that I knew then. But I can’t because since then I have nursed a lot (62 months to be exact. The last 20 months nursing twins, so I like to double that current nursing figure. That would bring my nursing grand total, to date, a whopping 82 months!) Like I said, I nursed a lot and I’m still going strong. Nursing and remembering don’t co-exist well with each other.

So, like I just mentioned, here I am now, years later…still nursing, not just one baby at a time but two, Dare and Sanguine. By the way, they will be 20 months on the on the 4th I mean the 6th…you see what I mean. I am not walking to work any more, or reading the Utne Reader, buying the latte or getting my hair cut in some stylish do (We are all well aware of what the hair dos and hair don’ts have looked like the past two years). Instead I am walking to the elementary school, to the park, the library, to the science center, and to the grocery store. The one thing that has remained constant however in my listening to NPR. Every morning at 5:45 I still exhale with relief that National Public Radio is still being funded. When that clock radio clicks on and there is that beautifully clear, calm, radio voice about to tell me of all that has happened since last nights dinner I wait eagerly for the current events. I Even make sure that I am in a comfortable position, with my blankets placed perfectly without rustling. And as I wait patiently for that information to break the silence of the morning all I hear is Dare’s soft, sweet voice calling: mama, mama, mama, mama. Shoot, I missed it. Well, it goes like that all day long. Just as I am about to get the big news, any time of day, all I get is a real life kid either talking incessantly, singing off key, crying as if he has been wounded, laughing like a hyena, or yelling like we are all deaf.

I know it is all OK. As a matter of fact, it is all GREAT! Because now instead of that, sometimes, hard to swallow Dr. title. I have earned or have been bestowed upon some of the most incredibly, meaningful titles that describe my new and dynamic career. Try these on for size… I wear them everyday; Mama, Momica, Mamakins, Dali Mama, and last but not least Dog-ma… Jojo gave me that one. She is the Human Whisperer.

I found out that I was pregnant, for the third time, by peeing on the stick in the second week of February, 2005. It was a crazy time for us. We were relocating from Montana to “somewhere” in the East. At this point though, we were staying with Paul’s parents. It was as comfortable as a set up can get with our family of four sharing Pop’s and Mombo’s home. O.K. back to the pregnancy. I had bad all day sickness that lasted 6-8 weeks. This was very different than the first two pregnancies. My belly also grew faster this time around than the previous two. I felt baby movement sooner; little did I know though that this movement was two babies jockeying for space rather that the intentional baby stretching thing.

At a day or so before or after Torrent’s birthday, February 24, I had a dream. My dream was this: It was a fresh, sunny, warm morning. The sun really filling the back yard. There were four children in my view. Rainy and Torrent were running in slow motion. Torrent ran around the yard zig-zagging with his arms straight out from his sides and crossed my path flapping his arms, laughing and turning his head to look at me. Rainy was in the middle of the yard spinning around and around and calling Torrent’s name. The sounds and voices in that dream were faint, far away, but very clear. Kind of like listening to children on the play ground. In front of me, the path that Torrent had crossed earlier, approximately six feet away there were two young toddler aged children, a boy and girl. Oh, they sat there so nicely in the brightest sun light I had ever witnessed. As if they were almost washed out, overexposed, by the light. These children looked happy as their feet dangled a bit while they sat on the back porch step. They looked at me as if they knew me and I looked at them with comfort but wanting to know them better. It looked as if they were siblings but the sun light that engulfed them was so intense it was hard to tell. I looked closer and saw that they were holding hands. They began to giggle and that’s when I noticed the one “twin”, the girl had Down Syndrome. The vision of these two children lingered in the light and then I woke up slowly and relaxed.

I never told anyone, not even Paul, about this dream that I had during my pregnancy. I was afraid to. There are no excuses or reasons why I kept it to myself… I was just afraid to think about what I had seen. I was afraid to give it energy. I was afraid to let God know that I was thinking about the “what if’s”, maybe he would test me. I was afraid to give the universe my dream, my thoughts about my dream, because it just might give it back to me. Again, I was afraid, afraid of the unknown. I was not ready.

At week 30, I had an ultrasound. My midwife suggested it, to clear up any uncertainty as to where the placenta was attached to the uterus, because I had a c-section years before with Rainy. It was during this ultrasound that we found out that I was carrying twins. At week 41, these babies were born; a boy and a girl. It was the next day that we knew the girl twin, Sanguine Sky, had Down Syndrome. NOW, I was ready! And it was two weeks later that her official DNA test came back saying that Sanguine had DS.

Ooooh yes, my dream… It was then that I told Paul of my beautiful, most powerful dream. The one that I was so afraid to think about, let alone talk out loud about for 40 weeks.

I am happy, beyond words, that my dream came true.