Mother Love

I Moved House again.

This weekend my husband and I moved out of the huge boarding house in Guelph, which we have been living in with Reid and his significant other for the past 18 months while he finished high school. Reid is 20. I have spent the past 20 years with him. I could not figure out which was worse, leaving Reid, or leaving Sweetie. Reid has gone to school during the day, while Sweetie has been at home with Aslana and me. We have had many walks as dogs and person. Sweetie is a big dog with her head at just the right height to pat her as you walk with her. A few years have whipped by since my brother phoned and asked Reid if he would like a puppy. Sweetie was a tiny puppy when she first ignored her siblings and mother to choose Reid. Four weeks later we went back to my brother's house to bring Sweetie home. This move is tinged with depression, sadness that my time with Reid is over.

Very Special Relationship with the HOH Kid

In 1986, Reid's teacher of the Deaf told me that I would have a very special relationship with my hard-of-hearing child whom I was teaching to talk using the oral and then later auditory verbal method. The relationship is driven by mother-child love, tested by the need to constantly protect a child with handicaps from the medical system, the education system, your friends, his friends, your family, your husband's family.

Possibly He'll Marry an Audiologist

I truly never thought my role as his "special mom" would end. Long ago another mother of a hearing-impaired child mentioned in a parent support group, what we used to call "stitch and bitch sessions" that she hoped her son would marry an audiologist. She felt only an audiologist knew enough right off to have her son comfortable and functioning in the hearing world. She felt her son would need as adequate help as an adult as he had needed as a child. The mom saw a passing of the duty from herself to her daughter-in-law for the rest of his life, especially after she were dead.

Marrying an audiologist would also have automatic continuance to the auditory/ verbal method rule that the child must be provided with the best hearing aids possible.

Of course as mom's with special needs kids, to be thinking that marriage is a distant possibility was around 5.45 AM when we had been in the bathtub all night reading education law because we had not slept because it was IEP time. Around 6 AM we realized that we had missed another whole of sleep and promptly fell asleep until the water temperature dropped.

The Child's Name is Reid

I felt it was important not to let anyone limit the child's future by cutting costs or efforts in the present. Unfortunately the path which Reid and I were on was strewn with cost cutting, whining, and discrimination. I burnt much energy dealing with crisis's which did not have to be there. Why was my son called "Stone-Head" at school? Why didn't the teacher understand it was not cute, it was mean and horrible? From birth to grade 6, anyone could call my child anything they liked from the deaf baby to the deaf-mute, auditorially challenged, hearing-impaired, hard of hearing to REEtard to Stone-Head. In grade 6 we got a vice-principal at school who had a hard of hearing child himself. He had been handed my book by his audiologist as a great treasure of information. He made a new rule at school. Reid was to be called Reid. Anyone who called him anything else got a detention. Now I bow to the Vice Principal in thanks. He made a huge difference to the amount of crisis's Reid and I had to live through.

Late Bloomer

Socially Reid was a late bloomer. Of course he was the baby of the family, and I had already cried through the oldest child leaving home, and hated the transition to a smaller and smaller family as each child left. He went from curling, camping, Scouting hanging out with his good friends to meeting a girl, falling in love, running up $300 in long distance to her house (Have you ever noticed that teenagers never have any relationships which are a local call?) Then she moved in to our house, and our family. One day, I handed her a package of hearing aid batteries and said "You are around him more than I am, so you get the hearing aid batteries in your purse." They celebrated their second anniversary last week.

Table of Memories

My dining room table is a House of Brougham Trestle table made in pine in 1978. It is huge, 8 feet long before the extensions. It has been mangled in the creation of many cub cars and trucks. The cheese slicer works well to take layers of the finish, and wood off. All my toddlers hung over the trestle and enjoyed it as a playground, and now my grandchildren are. Did I mention it has human and dog teeth marks? Many puppies have lost a few teeth.

My new kitchen is too small for the table. I now have the most elegant computer desk in my "guest" room/office. I can see my kiddies hanging on the trestle. I can try to match dog teeth marks to the dog who did it. I can put my feet up on the trestle, where they have always been, and be at home even though I am typing, rather than eating and arguing.

Young Woman when Paul McCartney sang

Tonight I was a young woman again listening to Paul McCartney during the Super Bowl. When that music was written, I did not have any idea about special needs kids, beyond a deaf friend at the cottage. I was young and ready to dance. Now I am middle-aged and ready to dance with grandchildren. But I loved rising to the challenges of all my children, Still I would go to the ends of the earth for each of them. They are still utterly loved.

-PAM Candlish

6 February 2005

hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS "What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"