Grateful

A week ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a relay race. Prior to raceday, I knew none of the runners and had met them through a message board. They were looking for runners to fill up their team. Having wanted to run Ragnar sometime, I jumped in even though I had a 50k scheduled for a week after. I volunteered for the longest legs knowing it wouldn't be very difficult to run 22 miles over a couple days. I had run 50 a couple times in 8 hours. Then a team member dropped a few days before the race. I volunteered to run extra legs and ended up running 36 miles. It was loads of fun. Anyway, what I didn't know about this team is that most of them (all but three of us) were either ASL interpreters or users. What a wonderful experience it was to get to know these people with huge hearts despite what some would consider a limitation. Having worked a little with Conlan on a few signs, how I wished I had learned more. After a couple days of being surrounded by constant hand motions, I feel that I started to pick up on the gist of what they were saying. I hope that in the coming year I can learn more sign language and teach more to Conlan so that I can really get to know my fellow runners.

Conlan is great at signing for "more". Other words such as "please", "thank you", "want", "finished", "potty", etc take prompting from us. At times it feels he does "more" for everything and doesn't quite understand the difference and meaning attached to the signs or to words in general. But he has shown lots of progress, just in the last few months. The other day he wanted to go outside. He let me know this with a lot of whining and by bringing me to the door and pointing to the lock. (Since I moved in to my current place, he has never gone out the door by himself. He can open it just fine, even unlock the deadbolt. But he has learned limits and stays inside unless he is with us.) So I told him that if he wanted to go outside, he would first have to find his shoes, put them on, and come back to the door. Then we'd go outside. To my surprise, he did just that; he found his shoes, put them on, and came back to the door! It's amazing what he'll do if he's motivated. We went outside and just walked around the complex for a good half hour.

At the annual IEP meeting, one of his goals that we discussed was to be able to accomplish two tasks given at the same time. Examples include "throw away your paper and come back to your seat", "take off your harness and hang up your backpack", etc. He struggles with multiple tasks. So I took delight when he found his shoes, put them on, and came back to the door.

As I was running with a teammate, we discussed Conlan and his difficulty to communicate. He's struggled with the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and with sign language. She then related to me an even more worrisome ailment that some children are born with. Could you imagine not being able to feel pain?  Some children are born with what's called congenital insensitivity to pain.  They can't feel pain and so can't communicate their injuries to parents. The next time Conlan is whining or crying, I'll smile to myself and be grateful he can communicate his pain.

Anyway, Ragnar was a great experience. I'll treasure it always, especially the part about Conlan throwing his shoes into the harbor at the finish line!