Wherefore Art Thou Spring?

My birthday usually ushers in the springtime. This year, it ushered in yet another snow storm. The picture above is what our little cabin in New Hampshire looked like when we arrived for a weekend visit Saturday, (MARCH 22!) There was so much snow that we spent almost 2 hours shoveling to get into the house. My adventuresome self wanted to just dig a tunnel through the snow, and crawl out the other side, but hubby thought it might be difficult to drag the suitcases through. Besides, he reasoned, it is good EXERCISE to shovel. (Yeah, right, like I’d go along with him on that one…)
Not since years ago when “I was a wee lass who had to crawl through four feet of snow for a mile in order to get to school” have I seen this much snow. It seems as though Global Warming passed us by this winter. I worry about the wild animals; with the snow so deep, how can they walk anywhere, let alone find something to eat? I can only hope that they have all joined their bear colleagues and started the new tradition of hibernating.
Of course, the weather will soon warm and the snow will melt, (hopefully not flooding the place.) Until then, I will reluctantly wait, looking like this:

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To read more about my interesting, amazing childhood, please read my book. Here is a link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-apple-tree/id538572206?mt=11

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane

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I had “THE” Talk with My Teenage Daughter

If you have been following my blog for a long time, you may know of my daughter, Marie’s, early trauma and severe abuse. When she came to live with us at the age of 7, she insisted that she was a boy, not a girl. She wore boy clothes and had a boy’s haircut. She even begged the pediatrician to sew a penis on her! Bless him for not being shocked, but for telling her that decision would have to wait until she was an adult.

Because she is deaf, she didn’t hear when I’ve called her my daughter and when I’ve used the pronoun “she”. It also didn’t seem to faze her that her name was a girl’s name. After the abuse she lived through, my goal as a mom has been to make her feel as comfortable with herself as possible. If having a crew cut and wearing boys’ underwear suited her, so be it.

Marie insisted she was male right up until she got her first period. At that point she conceded to me that she WAS really a girl, (no denying that fact,) but that she wanted to appear to be a boy so that no man would “hurt her”. This was understandably a clever accommodation on her part!

Enter Marie the teenager…and “THE” talk about sex… She brought the subject up as we were watching a teen movie on television where the heroine and hero kissed. Marie did most of the talking, (in American Sign Language of course,) asking me who was better for her to “like”, boys or girls. She said she has had childhood boyfriends and girlfriends, but that she didn’t know which she should “like” for a real mate whom she would someday marry. She looked at me with questioning, soulful eyes as I put on a brave face, pretending to be wise. The answer was simple, of course. I told her that she would end up finding a mate with whom she would feel comfortable having sex. SEX????? She signed, aghast. She wasn’t talking about SEX…..in fact, she was NEVER going to have sex….she just wanted to know whom she should marry! And just like that she dismissed my answer with a wave of her hand and went back to watching the movie….

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To read more about our life as a family, please read my book. Here is a link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-apple-tree/id538572206?mt=11

The Apple Tree: Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane