And The Paper Creeped out the Bottom of the Door

A very large, very tall, very old 15 passenger van with a wheelchair lift with over 138,000 miles on it is my vehicle. Not my ideal choice, but “it is what it is” as all of our money is allocated elsewhere. (All those cute little kiddos with disabilities grow up to be cute little adults with disabilities who, unfortunately, find it impossible to be able to work. Not that that makes them any less wonderful, enjoyable or successful, it just puts a little extra strain on our family budget.)

In the van on Wednesday, I was enjoying a beautiful, crisp autumn day, with a slight wind moving the branches around for the trees to show off their few remaining colorful leaves just waiting to join their friends on the ground. Contentment filled the van as I hummed while I drove. I didn’t quite do the lovely singing I usually do because I was on a mission for work. (While driving to make home visits is not usually included in my job description, on this day I was helping out a colleague.) Because I am awful with directions, “mapquested” directions lay on the floor next to the driver’s seat.
As the van whisked along on the interstate highway, I noticed that the directions had moved towards the door. Keeping one eye on the road and one eye on the directions, I watched with panic as the papers moved closer to the door…down one of the steps…down the next step…and finally on the third step. It happened in the blink of my eye (the one that was watching the papers!) As I was in heavy traffic, it took a while to maneuver to the side of the road to stop, and the papers inched towards the bottom of the door. (The door gasket had long ago aged out and fallen away, leaving a space at least an inch wide at the bottom.) Panic set in as a piece of paper entered the crack and ever so slowly inched out…it was like seeing my life flash before my eyes, quarter inch by quarter inch, as the paper made its way free out of the opening. It was so surreal it reminded me of a cartoon…person chasing paper in the wind and the paper is always one step ahead, teasingly just a little bit out of reach! I would have laughed, but inside I was sick to my stomach. My directions were gone! The client I was going to be meeting would be sitting, forlorn, at her home, waiting patiently for the me that would never be able to find her house.
But WAIT! There was another paper there, clinging to the bottom step. Maybe I could salvage the final steps of the street directions. By this time, the van was safely stopped by the side of the road and I flung myself out of the driver’s seat onto the floor of the van to look down the stairwell. On my knees looking down, almost crying with happiness, I grabbed that one precious piece of paper…it included the final steps to get to the client’s home. I would be able to find her! I would make that visit! I was soooooo happy!

While in the scheme of things, losing mapquested directions would not be the end of the world, in retrospect it symbolizes the constant struggles one has when raising children with disabilities. There are often solutions to their problems, but they are flighty and hard to come by. Sometimes they flip through our fingers through no fault of our own and we are left in a slight panic, (sometimes a huge panic…) Fortunately for me, I have always found that last page to my mapquested directions, just enough to make life work out. Just enough to relieve my panic and restore the happiness in my heart. Such is the ups and downs in life…

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Heat Wave? What Heat Wave?

Like most of the nation, we have been experiencing a heat wave; temperatures in the 90s and 100s for more than a week.  This could have wrecked havoc in the recreational program for children with disabilities I have been coordinating, as the lovely van of previous posts is our mode of transportation.  Said van does not have air conditioning, or, should I say, any little amount of cool air that would have come out of the sickly air conditioner is quickly usurped by vast, oppressive hot air lingering in the air and not felt beyond the driver.

So, I like to play a little game called “Heat Wave?  What Heat Wave”.  Firstly, before I leave work for the evening, I freeze water bags half full.  (At the Dollar Store I purchase cute, brightly colored little bags which one fills with water. With its carabiner hook, they easily attach to a child’s belt loop.) In the morning, using my intuitive powers of observation, I do not park it in a SHADY spot because at the time of the day we will be leaving, that spot will be sunny.  I calculate where the sun will be and which spots WILL be shady, and I park there.  This enables our little group to later enter a van that has not been cooking in the sun.  I pass out the water bags filled to the top, and attach them to each of the kiddos.  (It is easy for them to find if it is attached!)  Then, as the van commences transportation, which, by necessity, includes entering the sunny zone of the freeways,the anti-heat games begin…

* Playing the “Hot Potato” game…(HOT potato…get it?) students pass around this musical icon.  The original goal is the person who is holding the “hot potato” when the music stops is “out” of the game.  In our game, the person who  is holding the “hot potato” when the music stops gets sprayed with water from a spray bottle!  Now, instead of quickly forcing the item onto the next person so as not to be out, the students take their time passing it, hoping to “win” a spray.  (The seat configuration of the van, in a rectangle, facing each other, is very conducive to this particular rendition of the game.)  This not only cools everyone off, but is also a fun game to play, with lots of laughing and joyful sounds!

* Dancing to the beat of the music, played loudly.  For those who know me and my pension for dancing in the van, this is just an extension of this specialty. The children all bounce and bop, clap and cheer along to their favorite music.  (I, of course, as the driver, save my van dancing for in private, instead choosing to pay attention to driving this precious cargo.)  This creative, exercise inducing activity keeps the kiddos happy and entertained.  After a few songs, as the sweat drenches down their little brows, they take a drink of that ice cold water, and ask for more music, and to TURN IT UP LOUDER!

* Good ole fashion water gun play.  Yes, I let them use water guns; small ones that don’t shoot a heavy stream of water.  I keep about 20 filled ones on board, so that when one gun is empty, it can be passed down for another one. (Lest you think the water must get all over the van, need I remind you that it is 100 degrees and any water turns into steam…)

The finale of the trip is arriving at our air conditioned destination, be it the pool, the library, the movies or the mall. Just the sight of the destination is enough to make everyone forget the heat, and to file off the van with great expectations of what is to come.  Of course, after I drop them off, I still have to look for a parking spot in the place where there WILL BE no sun…let’s see…how long will we be there?

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Link to my book

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

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

Link to the Readers Digest review of my book:  http://www.rd.com/recommends/what-to-read-after-a-hurricane/

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“It Smells Like Flowers and Sunshine”

Working this summer running an educational/recreational program for kiddos with disabilities, I have been giving my good ole, 12 passenger van with a wheelchair lift a run for its money.  Surprisingly, despite numerous past mechanical difficulties, it has become a war horse for transporting us throughout the state to many wonderful adventures!  Because it is an industrial type van, it supplies the children with a lot of extra bounces, creaking, twists and turns.  (It is good thing they are all snapped down into booster seats and seat belts or by now I would have many little dents in the ceiling from their bouncing heads.)  They laugh and screech and go “weeeeeeeeee” as though they are on a ride at an amusement park. (I dare say, some of the children have never experienced such excitement…)

Over the weeks, I have become somewhat lax in van cleanliness…food wrappers, discarded art projects, broken recreational items (such as water guns and deflated balls,) and, EWWWWWW, old clothing left by the children, litter the floor.  I KNOW it is not proper, but, somehow, I am so busy with the program arrangements, supervising the children and driving them back and forth from their homes that at the end of my 12 hour day, that I am too pooped to do anything but sit in my lounge chair at home and watch Judge Judy.  I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances…purchased a couple of cute, little, purple, sweet smelling air fresheners for the van.

The day after this ingenious addition, the children filed on one by one for a trip to the aquarium.  Many of them commented on the smell, including one little girl who is blind who remarked “Do you have flowers in the van?  It smells beautiful, like flowers and sunshine!”  Thus proving to me that those Febreeze commercials where people are put into smelly, messy enclosures really DO smell only the Febreeze!

I Get All of My Exercise in the Driver’s Seat of My Van

My daughter, Marie, is in a residential school, out-of-state.  I drive the hour and a half to see her at least once a week, sometimes twice.  If you have read my book, you know that I HATE to ride.  (I spent my childhood zig zagging across the country.) Driving is no better, and I need to focus or I will fall asleep.

Talking books on tape used to keep my attention for the ride, but taped books are getting harder and harder to find.  Music has become my new listening alternative.  Not just ANY music…noooooooo….only the rock music of my youth; Proud Mary, Sweet Caroline, Born to Run, Papa was a Rolling Stone….   Of course when one hears this music, one’s body can’t help but “dance” to the beat and one’s mouth HAS to sing along, and I am no exception.  The fact that I am in a van somewhat limits my moves, but not altogether.  While driving down the straight highway at 55 miles per hour, (the fastest my 2002 van can manage,)  I can safely swing and wave my arms, (alternately, of course,) bounce, tap and kick my left leg, twist at the waist, and move my shoulders, and do so with great veracity in time to the music.  I have found this new driving routine to be loads of fun helping to both pass the time AND exercise!  Although I am not self-conscious, and the stares from others would not bother me,  I am so busy looking at the road that I don’t see them! Reality comes into play every time a tractor trailer truck drives by because our seats are at the same height.  I am sure that the driver is mortified at the sight of me, as I am no substitute for the sexy young woman for whom he was looking, but what sexy young woman would be driving a huge old old, rusty van like mine anyway?

As the summer approaches,  I will be singing with the windows down because the vans air conditioning met an untimely death last summer.  Most people DO have air conditioning and thankfully (for them) their windows will be closed and the buzz of the air conditioning will drown out any ear shattering notes coming from my van.

If you see me doing my “moves like Mick Jagger” on the highway, I will be too busy driving and exercising to see YOU. However, if you happen to see a somewhat middle aged woman, hair wild and wind blown, climb her way down from the seat of a very old, high van seat, and she has skinny arms, a skinny left leg, tiny waist but a big butt and plump right leg, smile and wave because that would be me….

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Link to my book

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

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

Link to the Readers Digest review of my book:  http://www.rd.com/recommends/what-to-read-after-a-hurricane/

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I Thought That Only Happened in Cartoons…

Aside

When Angel recently graduated from high school, (Thank GOD for that huge accomplishment,) I lent him my mini-van for a car.  When Dinora graduated from high school, we paid 1/2 the price of a car for her so she could use it to go to work and college.  By the time we got to our 4th high school graduate, lending him my car was the best I could do! He has been thrilled with the mini-van, unfazed by the stares from classmates. He can drive and he has a car and that is all that matters!

Fortunately for me, who gave up my mini-van, I was able to obtain a huge 12 passenger wheelchair life van for free.  (long story.) It is so tall that I need a step stool to climb up into it.  And I am not very ladylike in doing so!  But once I get in and start driving, it seems like a regular car to me, as long as I just look forward.  I also just drive it forward, of course, because backing up this monstrosity of a van is a little beyond my capabilities.

This van is a 2002. Huge. Older model with some mechanical difficulties. Last week, it would not start.  It appeared that all of the oil had drained out of the engine. I couldn’t budge it.  A frequent user of AAA, I called for a tow to our family mechanic.  I told them my van needed a tow.  They asked me what kind of van.  “White”, I answered.  “Dodge”.  They asked me what model Dodge, and I told them a van.  (How was I to know that there are many styles of vans? I’m just a little old mother…) “1500?” they asked.  “Sure!” I answered.   I waited the requisite half hour, and along came a cute little tow truck with a lovely driver.  He took one look at the van, which towered over his tow truck, and started to laugh.  “They didn’t tell me it was a 3500 model” he said.  I took the blame for that, pleading ignorance about vans.  He did not look too hopeful that his little tow truck would be able to tow it, but because he did not want me to have to wait any longer, he offered to try.  He was very nice.  He backed up the tow truck and hooked up the van.  As he started to try to lift it, the van did not budge!  Instead, the tow truck moved, and the front of the truck was soon lifted high in the air! It was hilarious!  As the driver slowly lowered his truck, he apologized that he “did not think” he would be able to tow it.  And we both burst into laughter.

I had to wait several more hours for a flatbed tow truck to come to bring the van to the mechanics.  I didn’t  mind the wait.  I giggled the whole time!