The Fruits of Inclusion

"Is that your daughter?" asked the girl in the swing next to Joy's. She and her friend, about Rose's age both, had been looking over at Joy, trying to figure out what was up.

"Yes, she is," I said from my seat on a nearby low wall, where I was watching Joy lean from the swing and revel in the gravel and shredded tires, all full of happy-noise.

"She's pretty!" was the next offering.

"Thank you," I responded, with some surprise. "Her name is Joy."

"Hi, Joy!"

I'd hoped Joy might reply, since she's done well with greetings recently, but she was too wrapped up in the delights of gravel.

"What is she saying?"

"Right now, I think she's saying how much she likes what she's doing..."

"Does she say any words?"

"Sometimes, but sometimes not."

Then the other girl spoke up, somewhat hesitantly.

"Does she have a... disorder?"

Deep breath. "Yes, she does have disabilities. Do you have any friends with disabilities in your class at school?"

Both girls nodded vigorously. "Yes, we do. But we treat them just like normal."

And the next bit of conversation was just like normal -- and then they said, "Bye, Joy" and ran off.

And as they left, Joy said "buh-bye" with a little wave.

It Hurts Me Too

When things go wrong,
go wrong with you
it hurts me too.
-- Tampa Red, and many other blues artists since

For many years, Joy's been slow to show us if she's feeling pain. I wrote about it at the end of 2008 in terms of high pain-tolerance. She used to pick up a whole handful of splinters without batting an eye, and back in '08 would let me dig them back out with minimal reaction. (By the time of the "handful of splinters" post in 2010, she was starting to object to such operations somewhat, though still not reacting obviously when the splinters went in.)

Things are changing on the pain-reactions front, though. Now when Joy gets a splinter, she grabs for me to show me right away. She cries more readily at pain, does a much better job of indicating where the "owie" is, and wants an adult to rub it / kiss it / make it better.

There's been a change in how Joy reacts to Rose's pain, as well.

Time was, Rose would burst out into tears, and Joy would have "inappropriate" reactions that would be difficult to process with everyone involved. Joy might try to swat Rose, or burst out laughing, neither of which were reactions that felt particularly supportive to her sister!

But earlier this week, we had three occasions in short succession on which Rose began to weep, and Joy responded by crying real tears as well.

Rachel Cohen-Rottenburg has been doing some wonderful work about empathy, founding the site Autism and Empathy and fighting the good fight against those who maintain that a lack of empathy is inherently a part of autism. I haven't been able to give the site the attention it deserves, nor the level of thoughtful comment, but I've been following along as I can. And I had to think of Rachel's work in context of what I'm seeing in these interactions between Rose and Joy.

"It hurts me too."

The sad occasion this week which caused Rose to weep so frequently was the passing of our bunny Ellie. Ellie has been our final remaining house-bunny since the death of her partner Phoebert a year ago January. Ellie was only a year or two younger than Phoebert, definitely an elderly bunny, and we had decided against getting her a new companion because we were ready to try a pet-free home. (Claiming back the space, the time spent on weekly box-and-enclosure cleaning, the food-and-litter expenses, etc.)

We actually thought we were going to lose Ellie 6 weeks ago, when she stopped eating her bunny-chow... but she was still willing to eat greens, and so we went with a hospice-style approach where we gave her all the greens she liked as long as it made her happy in her final days... and she perked back up! But she was definitely in decline, and things went so fast this past Sunday it became clear that this was really it. So Ellie and I made one final trip to the vet on Monday.

Rose & Joy both got to pet Ellie's remains. We had a burial in the back yard.

I'm less worried this time around about what Joy does or doesn't understand. She probably "gets" quite a lot more than we're tempted to think she does. I've been more concerned about Rose, who has been reading The Giver by Lois Lowry in school -- it's a dystopian novel about a would-be perfect society, in which one of the mechanisms for keeping things perfect is "releasing" imperfect infants and the infirm elderly by means of lethal injection. I was steeling myself for the conversation that connected Ellie's final injection to The Giver, and maybe even to Joy?! But I don't think the connection was made... which is something of a relief. Rose is growing up fast, but maybe it doesn't need to be that fast.

JoyDad and I have had rabbits in our home since 1994. Ellie's departure is the end of an era.

Good-bye, Ellie-bun. We miss you.

Ellie
2000(?)-2011