Connecting With "Thank You"

It started with the prelude-hymn on the Sunday-before-Thanksgiving.

You've got a place at the welcome table,
You've got a place at the welcome table some of these days,
Alleluia!

Joy was sitting between me and her respite provider, fingers in her ears as the singing went on around her, but content enough to eat some pretzels and stay with us in the service a little while.

Then came the call to worship, a responsive reading:

The world is filled with the glory of God, and we say,
Thank you!
The hills and valleys are filled with colour, and we say,
Thank you!
The vines and trees are filled with fruit, and we say,
Thank you!
Our tables are overflowing with food, and we say,
Thank you!
Our life is filled with love of family and friends, and we say,
Thank you!
We fill this house of God with our voices, saying,
Thank you!
May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, as we enter into this service of thanksgiving and praise.
-- written by Carol Penner 

A light came into Joy's face as she heard me and the congregation chime in with the first "Thank you!" and she responded too, with an audible "geh guh!" into the breath between the congregation's part and the leader's part.  These were words she knew, and a sequence she could relate to!  I quickly brought the bulletin down to her eye-level, and spoke the next "Thank you!" with an extra smile and emphasis for her, and she spoke up again too.  By the end of the litany, I was holding her hand and touching the "Thank you!" with her each time it came up -- those pre-reading practices from school have broad application, it seems.

Such smiles and speaking up from Joy!  She'd never before connected with anything in a worship service quite so enthusiastically.  And in the glow of that connection, she was able to stay with us longer into the service than she usually makes it: through the next hymn ("Come, Ye Thankful People Come") and the lighting of the peace lamp and the Children's Time, which was also all about Thank You.

When we got to the Joys and Concerns time in the service, close to the end and long after Joy had bailed, I felt moved to speak up about what had happened during the call to worship.  I pointed out to my brothers and sisters gathered together there, that even though I didn't know whether Joy had been saying "thank you" or "you're welcome!" as she piped up during the call to worship, she had connected with "Thank You!" and that was enough -- and deeply moving to me.  And I thanked the congregation for making a welcoming space for Joy's participation to happen, on her terms.

We had a place at the welcome table, indeed.

I was further moved last night to find the following Thanksgiving Day Facebook status-update from the worship leader who had planned the service:

Lesson this week. All you have to be able to connect with is "thank you". That is enough. That is everything.

We've had so many thanksgivings in the past couple of weeks, they've kind of been tumbling over one another.  I could write about at least three new Joy-milestones we hit just yesterday in our Thanksgiving day-trip and family gathering!  The connecting-with-thank-you moment at church had receded in my mind amidst the other exciting happenings.

I thank my friend for bringing our own lesson back for me, in such well-chosen and meaningful words.

I share that lesson with you, dear readers, surrounded in its original Joy-context, so that it can be yours now too.

Thank you.

Thanksgivings

I know several people who are posting daily "thanksgivings" throughout November, either on Facebook or on their blogs.  I didn't take up that challenge, mostly because committing myself to one more daily obligation, no matter how soul-nourishing, would have been -- well, committing myself to one more daily obligation.

But I do believe I could have blogged a Joy-Thanksgiving pretty much every day of the month.  It has been an incredible November!

Here a just a few of the Joy-Thanksgiving events of November.  Milestones, not just inchstones!

Joy's participation in her school music class annual program was more robust than it's ever been.  Her music teacher burned a CD of the songs in the program to send home, and we loaded them up on Joy's iPad so she could listen to them at will.  This year's show was in honor of Veterans' Day, so we had patriotic music mixed in with Joy's usual Baby Einstein soundtrack.  Her favorites among the program were This Land is Your Land (mama approves, even if they didn't include the populist-protest verses!) and a little marching ditty called I am Proud to be an American (not the Lee Greenwood "God Bless the USA" song, thank goodness.)  On concert day, Joy's class was stationed at one end of the risers, so Joy could stand or sit with her staff members next to her class.  She marched in place a little bit in the right place, and waved a little flag, and made it through the whole show.  Proud, proud mama!

Some days later, when GrampaK came over for lunch one Saturday, I was telling him all about the concert and Joy's participation.  Joy was on the couch with her iPad -- and as I told Grampa about the songs on the iPad, all of a sudden the iPad started singing I am Proud to be an American.  Which means that Joy not only followed our conversation and acted upon it, but she also must have gone deliberately to the music-program song list rather than playing Baby Einstein.  Oh.  My.

Then there's this e-mail message to share from one of Joy's school staff the week after the music program, which sent me over the moon for the rest of the workday:

Just have to share my goosebumps delight from the first ten minutes of [Joy] and my day.  Tons of language in context.  No cue prompts.  We sailed thru our multiple tasks and I can't stop smiling.  Wish u had been here to share

That day, something came home that made me smile even wider:  Joy's first homework.  Oh, we've had schoolwork tasks come home before, but they were always framed in terms of showing us what Joy's working on in school, rather than actually being called HOMEWORK.  I was surprised how deeply this affected me -- all it entailed was a square 4x4 grid, on which Joy was to place smaller paper squares, using the terms "take" and "put."  But the importance of it was driven home a week later, when I was asked by another kiddo on the schoolyard, "Does Joy ever have homework?" and I was honestly able to say, "Yes.  Yes, she does."

In the wake of all that, you might guess how much smiling went on during Joy's parent-teacher conference mid-month!  I was surprised to see Joy's team so well represented, having only been sure that the teacher and case-manager would be there, but her student-teacher/SEA and her speech therapist and her occupational therapist were all there too.  So much good news to share, together with ideas for how to tweak things even better!

The best piece of news from that conference, as far as I was concerned, was the piece of construction-paper artwork above Joy's locker.  It turned out that they'd had a class project making construction-paper clouds with rainbow bands dangling below, where each cloud had the student's name and each rainbow band carried an adjective describing the students.  Most students came up with their own, but since that's not Joy's scene just yet, the teacher invited the students to help come up with a rainbow of adjectives for Joy.  She said they were just tumbling over one another with suggestions, and the themes were all directly from the kids.  Here's what they came up with:


Sensitive
Outdoorsy
Technical (they refined this one from "computer-y" in admiration for her iPad mad-skillz!)
Swift
Beautiful
Musical


Even after just a couple of months, my daughter's classmates know her really well, don't they?  Because that rainbow there is an awesome representation.

The LEND trainee who came along to observe the conference was deeply impressed, and we had a fine conversation afterward about the importance of inclusion even when a student isn't in the classroom.  (There's a whole 'nother blogpost in there, my friends!)

But wait, there's more.

This past week, Joy was invited to not just one but TWO birthday parties, together with her sister.  On back-to-back days, yet!  The first party was for a neighbor and the venue was a bounce-house facility.  How perfect is that?  Joy bounced and bounced, and repeatedly tossed a bouncy-basketball up through a basketball net (from the bottom up, rather than making a basket, but who's counting?)  Then after an hour and a half of bouncing and sliding, the kids all herded into a room with tables for cake and ice-cream and present-opening.  And Joy sat down between two kids she didn't know, with Rose a little way down on the other side of the table.  Once we got her served with goodies and lemonade, I went over to the edge of the room and sat on the benches with the other parents.  And stayed there, while Joy competently ate by herself and drank her drink and hung out uncomplainingly!

While I sat, a gregarious dad with a German accent served me cake, and then asked me if that blonde girl in the green shirt was my daughter.  "Yes," I said, preparing for the usual autism-solidarity conversation: is she on the spectrum, I have a close relative who is, etc.  "She looks so much like my niece!" was what I heard instead.  "I did a double-take, she could almost be her twin!"  JUST LIKE ANY OTHER KID.  No disability-related content to the conversation AT ALL.  I can hardly remember the last time I had a conversation with a stranger about my daughter that went that way.

And then we had another party the next night, for a classmate of Joy's, who also has an older sister who's a friend of Rose.  This one was at a gymnastics-sort of facility, with crash pads and climbing ropes and play structures and swingsets and free arcade games like air hockey and basketball.

Joy shot hoops with glee, over and over.  Look at her go!

Among the guests were classmates both past and present, who are happy to interact with Joy but also to give her the space she needs.  Then crowning delight came when we learned that the birthday girl's mom had assembled a special goody-bag just for Joy, full of stimmy-delights instead of the pencils and Blow-Pops that interest her so little.

Daily Thankgivings are hardly enough.  We are grateful beyond words to see our daughters grow and mature and move forward.

May your own celebrations of gratitude be plentiful and delightful!

Come, Ye Thankful People

Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.

Happy Thanksgiving from the JoyFamily - hold your loved ones close!

Thankful

So much to be thankful for, this Thanksgiving weekend!

• For good health and good weather, that enabled us to take our planned crazy Thankgiving road trip to Chicagoland and on to Indiana.
  
  
• For smooth traffic and open-road tolling, reducing the drive-time immensely -- we have plenty of past years' memories of waiting in long idling lines for our turn to throw coins into tollboth baskets.
  
  
• For Rose's help with the pie-baking on Thursday morning, as we step through our crazy routine -- there's that insanity bit again! -- of trying to bake two kinds of pies plus pack on the morning of Thanksgiving Day itself. The pecan pie (complete with caramel candy and rum) was about the best ever.
  
  
• For AuntieS and her labors of love in preparing her home for company, and preparing the rest of the feast, and sticking with it even through a lot of little "oopses" in the process. It was all delicious, and we'd never have guessed at the trials and tribulations!
  
  
• For AuntieS again and her thoughtful purchase of little Thanksgiving gift-lets for the girls. For Joy, she chose a non-traditional present of two little bundles of curly-ribbons from the gift-wrap aisle. Perfect, perfect, perfect! For Rose, a Barrel of Monkeys, with which she played as if it were a brand-new invention.
  
  
• For Joy's delight in tossing the curly ribbons back and forth in a "my-turn, your-turn" game with AuntieS's mother-in-law -- with whom Joy has never actually played before.
  
  
• For my amazing 101-year-old grandmother, whom we helped to move into assisted living quarters last Thanksgiving. Not that she felt quite ready for the move at age 100, mind you. Her new apartment is bright and comfortable, and she's among the least "assisted" of the residents there. She took us on a tour of the building, she played cards and dominoes with Rose, she and I compared reading lists, she took us out to dinner!
  
  
• For the family of Joy's playdate pal J-Cat, who loaned us a portable DVD player for the trip, making Baby Einstein possible at Great-Grandma's and in the car.
  
  
• For the swimming pool at the hotel, so the girls could work off some of their energy while JoyDad (who did ALL the driving) and Great-Grandma could take an afternoon break.
  
  
• For zero "acts of ow" between Joy and Rose for the entire trip cooped up in the car -- right up until a hair-pull when we had arrived back home in our own driveway and I wasn't getting Joy out of the car quickly enough to suit.
  
  
• For Joy's success in putting a few carefully-chosen ornaments onto our little artificial Christmas tree, and for Rose's delight in decorating the rest of it.
  
  
• For seventeen years of marriage between JoyMama and JoyDad, as of yesterday. Here's to the next seventeen!

Artifact from Another Era, Take 2

I mentioned a few posts ago that we had visited my mother's mother, my magnificent 100 year old grandmother, at Thanksgiving. It was an end-of-an-era kind of occasion, in that we helped with the packing to move from the retirement apartment, where she'd lived with my late grandfather for more than half my life, into a smaller assisted-living apartment.

Of course, when you make a move like that, there's lots of downsizing to be done. We helped with that too, sorting things to give away, things to discard, things to keep. In addition to the books and family photos that I knew were going to be coming home with us, we also provided a home for various keepsakes, usable kitchenware (we've already made jello from her cupboard in her casserole dish!) and other odds and ends.

Grandma has always been good at saving pretty paper things to use in making Valentines and decorations. We brought home several packets of long-saved paper doilies for art-projects at our place.

It wasn't until we got home that I got a peek at the back of one of those doily-packets. These weren't just ANY old paper doilies, let me tell you. No, these were Roylies. And they have astonishing super powers...


Here's the text, if you don't want to burn out your eyes looking too closely at the image on the screen:

Nothing wins a man more than feminine fastidiousness! Famous movie actors, writers, artists, bankers and bon vivants have oft said when interviewed that good grooming in a woman is far more important than good looks. And the pampered male is quite as particular about fastidiousness in his lady's habits as in her habit!

Next time your best beau (or your husband's boss, for that matter) comes to dinner, let lovely Roylies enhance your feminine graces. Slip a dainty Roylie under the cocktail glass or tomato bisque. Frame that layer cake you baked specially for the occasion in a large round Roylie. It will look twice as beautiful!

The most inaccessible bachelor in town is bound to melt under the appealing influence of feminine daintiness done in the Roylie manner. Roylies are such a help in so many ways, there's no reason why they shouldn't help you get your man!

Hey JoyDad? Sorry I didn't have the Roylies thing going on when we met. But you married me anyway. Next time your boss comes to dinner, though, and I've got my eye to climb the social ladder, I'll see how well these work... oh, right, she's female. Never mind.

Happy Thanksgivi-versary!

Today is a two-fer of a special day.

Not only is it Thanksgiving (turkey and stuffing and pie, oh my!), it's also the 15th anniversary of the date that JoyDad and I tied the knot, way back in 1993.

Thanksgiving itself landed on November 25th that year. We held the rehearsal and dinner on Friday the 26th, then the wedding on Saturday the 27th, a wintry Chicago day with just a few snowflakes.

It's been quite the ride ever since!

Fifteen years, and so many blessings, too many to name. But we are particularly thankful for Joy, and Rose, and for one another.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and especially to JoyDad, whom I love so VERY much!

Now it's off to bake those pies...