I Have a New, Regular Blogging Gig--On Psychology Today Magazine's website!!

Hey there, Readers!

How ARE you?  Mad at me? I know, I've been a crappy blogger-friend.

But hey, you know. Pain. Depression. Pining for Benjy. Listening to Saskia sing, angel that she is.

WRITING. JOY. YEAH!!!

OK, here's the 411.

Ben is amazing. So proud, we are. So handsome, he is. And brave. And healthy!

We'll have him the entire last week of August, and Readers? I CANNOT WAIT.

Saskia is soon to start her arts high school, as a junior. We are all hugely excited. Looking forward to a year filled with performances of all kinds!

Lars is...Lars! Gotta love him. No, not you! ME. And I sure do.

And here's the biggest news of all:

I'VE BEEN OFFERED A REGULAR BLOG ON THE WEBSITE OF PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. That's the magazine you read in waiting rooms. And hopefully lots of other places, as it's a very good one. What an honor!

What to Expect When You Get the Unexpected.

I am so excited about this--you can't imagine. The general subject matter will be similar to that of the Nickel...but less informal, fewer (read: 0) Hellacious Hound posts, and a bit less humor at Lars's expense.
(I know, bummer...you won't be reading entire posts about holey clothes.  Although I could always satisfy your holey clothes cravings back here at the Nickel. ;)

You can also expect film and book reviews on occasion, over at the new blog, and more multimedia engagement in general.

Anyway, please, please join me at my new blogging home! I'm committing to blogging there every MWF, so get ready! (And keep your fingers crossed for me--that's a lot of writing!)

Can't wait to catch up with you here! xox

My Healing Projects

Happy spring, Readers! And not a moment too soon. :)

I thought I would give you a family update and then hint at some plans I am gestating -- either brilliant or nutso plans, TBD -- to guide me toward greater wellness.

As advertised, here is the update: Life is better. I am not continually struggling against the death-grip of anxiety, trauma, exhaustion, illness, and fear. I say "not continually" because life throws crap at you now and then. Of course. But I (along with Ben, and Lars, and Saskia) have discovered some of those quiet interludes in which healing can begin.

We have figured out what we need to recover, and where we can get it.

For Ben, it is a school in the country. Horses. Sheep. Chickens. Sports of every stripe. Community. Friends. Space from the people who love him most, fought like hell for him, and found (somehow) the strength and wisdom to understand that sometimes love and fight are simply not enough.

You would not believe him if you saw him right now -- even if you only know him from this blog. I miss him like crazy, and I am so proud of him I cry when I tell people about him, or talk to his teacher or house parents. I cry when I see him laugh -- YES! He does that now! -- and when he opens his arms wide to me and says, "Mom, can I hug you? I love you so much."

(I am crying right this very minute, in spite of the fact that at my feet lies the pinnacle of fluffy cuteness, with an exposed belly and an inviting look on his face. The Fluff Therapist in IN.)

For Saskia it is a private arts school where she can devote herself to her singing as well as academics, where there are others as devoted to their arts as she is to hers. And (I hope) sufficient time spent on the butterscotch couch with her old lady, watching Bad TV.

For Lars, it is the becalming of his own, previously unacknowledged anxiety, and a desperately needed respite from the trauma and illness that was grinding the four of us into dust.

For me? Oh, where to begin... Well, I am learning to take care of myself. To pace myself every single day so that my chronic pain and fatigue do not lurch into overdrive. I am learning that it's OK to rest, to NOT be a doer every moment of the day. To not be the first person in the room with a book contract or a kick-ass blog, or a wide fan base. (Fan base???)

I am trying to kick the Mombot out of this house. Out of me. And believe it or not, I am seeing some success.

All that learning and Mombot ass-kicking I'm doing suggests something very, very important: that the chaos, the maelstrom, the shit-storm that had occupied my brain 24/7 for the past 12 years, has finally moved on. Not 100% -- I am WAY too anxious and restless for that. But one of the perks of not trying to figure out, EVERY WAKING MOMENT, how you will keep people alive and not let important things slip through the cracks and remember the names and dosages of a thousand-and-one psych meds, and find a way to do your paid work right so you won't lose the job you desperately want to leave but can't -- one of the perks of that is that you can focus on other stuff, like getting healthy.

So that's what I'm doing -- just like my darling boy does in his school and his home away from home.

And that leads me to my healing projects. I'm only offering a hint right now.

One of them looks like this:

And the other? Kind of like this:

Stay tuned for more on the healing projects...as they grow clearer to me I will share the details of them with you.

And now, Readers, I am so exhausted from writing this post I will have to take a little siesta on the butterscotch couch.

Good night. ;)

All Kinds of Wonderful

I'll bet the title of this post surprised you. You are not used to wonderful here at The Striped Nickel, are you?

Well, if you've been dropping by for a while, perhaps you are, but perhaps you've forgotten. Or think I have forgotten.

I haven't.

Here is some of the wonderful going on around here as we speak:

A. Benjy, Benjy, and more Benjy. He is doing so well, and his school is so amazing, I have to pinch myself a few times a day to make sure it's not all a dream. Readers, he is LEARNING, and not exclusively on his own. He has FRIENDS. He is MUCKING OUT HORSE STALLS AND FEEDING SHEEP.

Sorry, I didn't mean to yell at you. Not at all. I just cannot believe it and shouting allows me to hear it better. It's true, all true.

I love that boy so damn much it hurts. Seeing him hurts in a joyful way, and not seeing him hurts in a missing-you sort of way -- but not-seeing allows healing all around, so it's good. So. Very. Good.

B. Saskia is wonderful. WONDERFUL. Did I mention wonderful? Not sure what Lars and I did to deserve our girl besides contribute some genes of a very mixed nature -- when you have a spare eight hours or so I'll tell you all about our...uh, colorful families -- and teach her the things we strongly believe to be true. Which means she has a deep sense of the urgency of socio-economic justice for all. And she loves books and animals and people and ~OPERA~ and actually has the voice to SING it.

Also, she finds the dog-speak I use when I talk to Noo Noo hilarious. We laugh uproariously at the dinner table when I ask the Hound if he is ready for his Pill-Pocket with a yiddle Pred-nisone inside.

I appreciate that, because really? I think it's probably just weird.

Then again, we celebrate the weird in this household. Pied-beauties, eccentricities, things and people on the far-reaches of "normal."

Oh, and Saskia has brought music back into my life after a long, dry spell -- my own Sahara of the Bozarts, to borrow a witticism from some 20th-century southern writer but I don't remember which one -- and for that I am so grateful. Music was everything to me -- music and books, that is -- until life became so hard I couldn't fit them in anymore. There just was no room.

But every day now, there is more space in me. Every day I get to hear bits and pieces of arias and art songs floating through this house.  Sometimes I get to have them whole. And boy, does that make me happy.

Have you had enough, Readers? I hope not, because there is even more wonderful afoot here. There's Lars, of course. Everyone needs someone to make fun of, and Lars is always willing to oblige.

Somehow he has always managed to love me, even when I could not love the life I was living, or myself. He loved me through those forty pounds Risperdal packed on me, and through the long, sick period last winter and spring, when they fell off. He takes me as I am, the Gestalt, the whole package, imperfect as that may be.

Lars is good people.

Today I had the privilege of thinking about, and talking about, some of the issues that matter most to me, with some very thoughtful people. That there are real things binding all of us humans together, and that much work is yet to be done so that every person is treated with equal dignity and offered opportunities to be happy and to thrive.

It sounds so simple, but somehow it's not.

BUT: I am lucky to live in a place and at a time in which these conversations are possible. How utterly cool. How hopeful. How wonderful.

And finally, there is this:

A. E. Housman (1859–1936).  A Shropshire Lad.  1896.

LIV. With rue my heart is laden

WITH rue my heart is laden   For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipt maiden   And many a lightfoot lad.   By brooks too broad for leaping         5   The lightfoot boys are laid; The rose-lipt girls are sleeping   In fields where roses fade.

A tiny poem, a profound thought. My Dad gave it to me as a gift when I was maybe ten or twelve. He did not write it, of course, but he wrapped it in tones of love and offered it to me so we could cry together. To this day, I hear those eight short lines in his voice. I thought of it last night because Saskia was talking about the generation of English poets writing around the time of the Great War. This was written earlier, but it trembles with that same unbearable sense of loss you find in Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owen.

Readers, I have been thinking about "With Rue My Heart is Laden" since last night. It is so sad, yet so utterly beautiful.  Nearly perfect, I think. I hope you like it, whether for the first time or the hundredth. It's the final bit of wonderful I have to share with you until next time.

I hope next time comes soon!

Want to share your own wonderful in the comments? That would make my day!

You Think I'm Dead, Don't You?

Well I'm not. I'm here, Readers. Sitting by Lars on the butterscotch couch. The Hellacious Hound is snoozing nearby, on the red rug, and Saskia is upstairs pretending to do homework but almost certainly doing other, more interesting things. (Trying on outfits that will not be warm enough when she leaves for school at 7:40 tomorrow morning, for example, or watching something like Parks and Recreation on Hulu, or maybe engaging in acts of Facebookery.)

The fact that I do not know and do not care overmuch tells you something about me right now.

It tells you I am tired.

I did talk to my boy tonight, after a three-day phone call hiatus that was not my choice but which we all survived just fine. My mother reminds me on a regular basis that no news is good news. And usually she is right.

He sounds a bit low these days but he is not in crisis -- yet. Maybe this will the first autumn in four years without a breakdown. Funnily enough, we'd forgotten that this is hospital season, that short days and long darknesses are incompatible with happiness -- in our boy, at least. It's because he has come closer than ever to happiness since I stopped being CEO of his life, that we'd forgotten about hospital season.

But here it is, and all we can do is cross fingers and act all German by pressing thumbs and shouting toi-toi-toi!, and hope he will be OK.

In other news, my short story "Hello, Kitty" will be published at some point (soon, I hope, but you never know) in the online journal YARN (Young Adult Review Network). I did not realize I'd written a YA story. I have never really written for children or adolescents. But my good friend and writing group buddy, Diana Renn, publishes for the young adult market and she told me that I had, in fact, done so.

And I said, "cool."

My other good friend and writing group buddy, Eileen Donovan-Kranz, has a wonderful story out on YARN right now, and if you read it you won't regret it.

Also, I registered Saskia tonight for the 2014 Classical Singer Competition. This is a biggie. She will compete in the first round of the high school division at Boston Conservatory (there are regional first-round venues across the country), and if she makes the semi-finals or beyond she will compete in San Antonio, TX in May. Her teacher thinks she will make it to semi-finals (probably not finals as she is on the younger side and singing art songs rather than arias -- and if you don't know the difference you are in very good company;). So we are excited but also terrified by the implications for our traumatized checking account.

(To be honest, I'm a bit annoyed by the fact that two out of the three composers whose work Saskia will be performing are people I'd never heard of. This challenges my inflated opinion of my own classical music intelligence. Oh well.)

And that, Readers, is that. Glad you didn't give up on me. :)

What I'm Up To

Greetings, faithful Readers!

I hope your (waning) collective summers have looked like this:

And this:

Mine has not been QUITE so blissful. But I do love the light, the cherry tomatoes ripe for the picking in our garden, and the lack of stressful HOMEWORK. I also like the later wake-up. Oh, yeah.

Here at Chez Delaunay we are dealing with several issues on the junior varsity level. Severe tics and growing anxiety on the one hand, and painful joints (one more piece of the lupus puzzle) on the other.

One cool turn of events: in spite of aching knees and elbows, Saskia kicked butt at her freshman volleyball tryouts and made the team despite stiff competition. I just hope the rheumatologist doesn't tell her tomorrow morning, at her appointment, that she can't play. That is one scene I do not want to witness.

Anyway, when not driving children all around greater Boston, here's what I've been (or will be) up to:

• Submitting stories to journals
• Writing an essay about one of my life's great regrets (it happened thirty-six years ago and involved me receiving precisely what I had yearned -- and pleaded -- for since young childhood. Ironic? Yes!)
• Applying for  Radcliffe Fellowship which, if I am extremely lucky and get one, will fund a year's worth of memoir writing (and then some)
• Conceptualizing the memoir I will be writing about raising a child who wants to die
• Preparing to apply to Yaddo and other artist's colonies for next summer (another endeavor that will require great luck, which seems to be in short supply around here)
• Writing a column pitch to an online literary journal, about -- you guessed it -- parenting a child with mental illness
• Figuring out whether we can get Saskia on Mass health like her brother. I think if the lupus Rx becomes definitive we can -- which can't happen too soon as these medical expenses are BANKRUPTING us
• More stuff I can't remember off the top of my head
• Sitting just quietly and smelling the flowers, like my favorite bull, Ferdinand (great story!!)

Thank goodness for unemployment!

When It Rains It Pours!

I always loved that Morton Salt logo: when it rains it pours. What a great pun!

And I often use that hackneyed phrase to describe life here at Chez Delaunay. Because bad things come in threes (or five, or tens, as the case may be). And just when I think I will have to get in my car alone and run away to Big Sur and sit just quietly, like Ferdinand the Bull (remember him?), and gaze at the flowers, or the sea, one of my kids does some beautiful thing that takes my breath away, or my husband tells me he loves me in just the right way, and I think, OK, I'll stay here.

Plus, remember: some Rockin' hermit crabs reside here, as does a Hellacious but quite superlative Hound.

 So I CAN'T go to Big Sur. Not yet.

Anyway, the metaphorical rain storm is my excuse for not blogging recently.

Stuff like: Benjy unable to get to his summer program because of depression/anxiety/general non-functionality, and then, Bam! almost out of the blue, developing severe facial tics that make him look like he's having a seizure.

Saskia catching her monthly respiratory illness, developing a tenacious sinusitis that defies --defies! -- all antibiotic intervention  for five weeks and then foments a severe migraine, which emerges during our first vacation in many years. (I spent seven hours with Saskia in an ER on the Jersey Shore. This is something I can recommend to anyone interested in -- uh -- unusual human specimens.) Saskia felt and looked so damn sick I actually thought she was going to collapse on her walk from the parking garage to Children's Hospital on our visit to neurology -- 10th specialist in the past 1.5 years, I believe? -- the day we got back to Boston.

Six weeks of foot pain for me, and my foot blossoms into a huge thing that my brother R-- thinks looks like a loaf of bread and could suggest a blood clot. Panic ensues and I spend hours having x-rays and ultrasounds to rule out a fracture and a clot, respectively. All negative so I'm off next Monday to visit an orthopedist at one of the four area hospitals I frequent on a regular basis.

But readers, I'm not complaining. Because I just finished a book that makes our lives look like a picnic. It also happens to be a beautifully written, poignant, and, finally, hopeful memoir of parenting a child with mental illness (sound familiar?).

The Boy Who Loved Tornadoes is about Chase, whose illness is quite different from Ben's. Chase has severe, severe psychosis, and his mom, Randi Davenport, is single during the worst of his illness. I do not know how she does it, advocating and caring for Chase and his typical sister, Haley.

But actually, I do.

When people say to me, "I don't know how you do it," I reply,  "You would do it, too. You just do what you have to, because the alternative is simply unacceptable." People have amazing stores of strength and courage, actually. Some folks can stand up to a gunman, to terrorists. Think of those brave people who saved lives, though not their own, by standing up to the 9/11 terrorists over that field in Pennsylvania. I could never, ever have done that, but I have my own strength. Randi Davenport has hers. The 9/11 heroes had theirs. Soldiers, and doctors, and social workers have theirs. Our strengths are of different sorts, but people really are capable of great things, as much as the current social and political discourse seems to belie it.

Last night I took Benjy to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, and as we walked into the theater he said, "Hey, can we sit apart from each other, in different rows?" And I said, "Really? Because I would quite enjoy laughing with you." And he said, "OK." And when it got really funny, he laid his head on my shoulder and laughed and laughed. After a while he just kept it there, making contact with me in a way I totally loved. And the darkness all around us was its own blessing: it hid his facial grimaces, his rolling eyes and jerking head, and spared him social stress and embarrassment for a whole two hours.

If that weren't enough, Saskia has been positively huggy these days. She keeps waylaying me and holding me tight. She's letting me know that, even if she's fourteen, she needs me and loves me.

What did I do to deserve all this? The good and the bad, I mean. I don't know, and I'm trying not to question it. I think I'm just going to go have a loooong shower.

Good news is, I'm back, and I'll try not to stay away so long next time, even if it's pouring.

Cool Beans, Saskia!

So, you might have figured out by now that I love opera. I know, just more evidence of my nerdiness. But boy, there is nothing like being immersed in Mozart or Offenbach or Handel for three hours...the music, the drama, the artistry, the costumes and sets.

When I was pregnant with Saskia I listened exclusively to classical music CDs -- instrumental music and opera -- at home and in the car, and I listened A LOT. (These days I listen mostly to NPR in the car -- I don't know why the change.) Then when she was born, the same -- lots of opera, and lots of Mendelssohn and and Bruch, as I recall. So she got an earful of it.

Two of my favorite Saskia stories are these:

1) When Saskia was three or so she used to DEMAND Mozart's (amazing) Don Giovanni EVERY TIME we got into the car. I happily obliged, because listening to Mozart is like reading Shakespeare or Dickens: you can do it over and over and notice something new each time. You keep being surprised and amazed, and somehow it always seems fresh. So, OK -- I indulged her.

One day, though, I had this rogue thought. Maybe, because I'm just a tad tired of Don Giovanni, I will sneak in The Marriage of Figaro. She is three, and she will never know the difference.

So I popped in Figaro, making sure NOT to start with the overture, because I figured she would recognize THAT as non-Don Giovanni. I think I started with "Porgi Amor" at the beginning of Act II.

And you know what? within two or three measures, an indignant Saskia cried, "THAT IS NOT DON GIOVANNI!"

Well. The funny thing is, there is nothing remotely like "Porgi Amor," the Countess's melancholy aria, in Don Giovanni. Because Figaro and DG are quite different, as it turns out. That kid was spot on, and I hastily ejected Figaro and popped in Don Giovanni.

2) Around the same time my parents took us to visit friends, accomplished musicians, in Saratoga Springs. They are the owners of a music performance venue, Alsop Hall, and they are the parents of the distinguished conductor Marin Alsop. Mr. Alsop invited me to take Saskia around the very cool house. On one wall was an enormous picture of Marin, conducting. Saskia stopped and stared at the picture, and I said, "That's Mr. Alsop's daughter. Her name is Marin."

Saskia looked a while longer, and then turned to me and said coolly, "That's a nice name. But I like Figaro better."

Obviously, this kid was born to be an opera singer. When she was in second grade  and could carry a tune about 60% of the time, I convinced her it would be awesomely cool to join Boston Children's Opera (no longer operating, unfortunately). She agreed, and for the next three or so years performed in operas written for and performed by children. The directors of the program were singers, and wrote the operas.

Saskia was pretty darn good.

But then something happened. She became a tween. And she decided opera and all classical music was for the birds. She practically DIED of embarrassment if a friend of hers was in the car and I put on the classical station.

"Mom!!"

Fast forward to thirteen point five. She was singing ALL THE TIME, with this amazing coloratura soprano voice, vibrato and all, and I when I asked her if she'd like voice lessons she screamed "YES!!!"

And now, after a year of voice lessons she sounds almost like a professional classical singer. More amazingly -- hold onto your hats! -- she wants to be an opera singer. She's singing Italian and German arias, and she BLOWS ME AWAY.

A couple of weeks ago, she auditioned for the Pre-College Academy run for serious high school musicians by one the the conservatories in Boston, and she wowed them.

They accepted her and she will start in September. Every Saturday for four or five hours she will go into Boston and study theory and voice. And she, and Lars, and I, are so damn excited.

We're hoping hoping hoping financial aid comes through (if not us, then who??). If not she will have to use her remaining bat mitzvah money to pay for a chunk of it. And as for the next three years, we'll have to cross our fingers and wait and see.

Cool beans, Saskia. We're proud of you!

I Don't Know How She Does It

Did you ever read that book, I Don't Know How She Does It? It's a fun read, all about a working mom competing (in her mind) against the "mothers superior" (read: stay-at-home moms) and feeling like she'll never hold it together. Of course, she does, and with aplomb (and a large measure of stress and disarray).

Well, I felt rather like Kate Reddy, the heroine of that book, when I was working full time and parenting two children, one disabled -- although I'm not sure I did anything with aplomb. I kept us all fed and clothed (more or less -- not counting the holes), and kept Benjy alive. I guess that's saying something.

Now I am not working and I feel, if possible, even more like I can't hold it together. I didn't feel that way at first. But now that Saskia's illness, whatever it is, is waxing, now that we are seeing "ologists" every week, and she continues to feel exhausted and full of malaise, grow new lesions, lose hair, look ghastly white, AND SO ON, I am beginning to think I'm going to lose it.

I would give my left arm -- and I'm left-handed -- to be one of those prosperous, healthy families we seem to be surrounded by. I'd be willing to forgo prosperous. Just make us healthy, please.

So here I am, losing it. Actually, not so much. Instead of losing I am gaining. What consoles me is food, preferably of the carby variety. So I'm eating myself silly. Why oh why couldn't I be one of those gals who STOPS eating under stress? Just lucky, I guess.

Good thing I am too tired lazy to go shopping to replenish our stores; all I had in the house this morning was kale. So I will shortly be consuming some AWESOME homemade kale chips. (I really do mean awesome. Kale chips are yummy AND good for you.)

Next on today's agenda is a meeting with Saskia's teachers, to plead with them that they reduce Saskia's homework. she comes home from six hours of school to face four to six hours of homework on a regular basis. This must violate some child labor law, don't you think?

Anyway, that's my rant for today. I promise to return to the old upbeat programming as soon as possible. So stay tuned!

Poor Saskia

Okay, Peoples, I have officially gone over the crunchy-granola edge. I've decided to make my own shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. This is on top of the homemade household cleaners and laundry detergent I am now using.

A year ago I'd have laughed uproariously if you'd told me this was in my future.

So I had the kids in the car and I announced that we'd soon be using homemade shampoo and stuff.

Saskia screamed.

"What's wrong?" I cried, imagining a stray pin left somehow on the front passenger seat and insinuating itself into her derriere.

She drew herself up and said with a chilly dignity, "My personal hygiene is NOT NEGOTIABLE."

I laughed. Benjy said, "Come on, man. It's just shampoo."

I said, "It's wholesome. Forget the cost savings. You use my shampoo and you won't get cancer. It'll be awesome." I had just heard an episode of On Point about chemicals in household items, which scared the bejesus out of me.

Saskia rolled her eyes and flumped back in her seat. "You suck," she muttered.

"You too," I said, "and you're gonna use my shampoo if it's the last thing you do."

In case you think she's a total teenage b****, she's off tutoring special needs kids as we speak. She's a good egg, just a bit rigid.

She comes by it honestly...Lars is about as rigid as they come. He'll LOVE my homemade personal care items, though; he'll just dilute them with water to squeeze a few extra servings out of them. He's a bigger cheapskate even than I am.

Saskia

** I had some formatting issues with this post -- sorry!**

Sometimes, when Benjy is more dysregulated than usual, I have a hard time helping him. When he is at the apex of despair, or disabled by anxiety, or just off-kilter. Then I have to ask for help. More often than not, Lars is at work, and the person I lean on is Saskia. 

Now, Saskia is far from perfect. She is, after all, a teenage girl -- need I say more? But she is a tremendous support to Benjy, and to me, when we really need her. We are lucky to have her in our lives.

 
I mentioned in an earlier post that I am doing some writing (beyond this blogging) about raising a child who wants to die. Here is what I have to say about Ben and Saksia in my personal essay, "Benjy, Awake": 

Saskia, who shares none of Benjy’s challenges, is a sibling to Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, Claustrophobia, ADHD, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, as well as Autism. (For a while after a blow-out on the Mass Pike she was also a sister to PTSD.). Her normalcy is sometimes the only thing that keeps us from sinking under the weight of this business. How many times has she held us all aloft, firmly above the flood waters? And sometimes I think she must hate the lot of us. I would, if I were a thirteen-year-old girl caught in the maelstrom of this family’s dramas. 

Saskia is never (okay, rarely) too busy to step in and hold Ben, read to him, play video games with him when he is too sad to function and I cannot pull him out of his sorrow. This morning, for example, he was needy. He had a get-together planned with a friend -- a rare occurrence! -- at 1, but it was only 10, and he was feeling empty. I was trying to grade papers, Saskia was watching TV with a friend who had spent the night. Lars was readying himself to go to work even though it's Sunday (it's crunch time at Software Central). And Benjy wanted to play Frisbee.

Lars played with him for fifteen minutes, then left for work. Ben crept back inside and curled up on the couch -- I glanced up and saw him lying there, before returning to my papers. Then I heard something. It was the sound of weeping. Ben was crying. He was hollow inside, and he was lonely, and he was sad.

I closed my laptop. "I'll just put on some clothes," I told him, "and we'll go play Frisbee." I was reluctant to ask Saskia to step in because she was with a friend, and she should be able to just be a 13-year-old girl sometimes, without the added burden of caring for her disabled brother.

But Saskia stepped in anyway. By the time I finished dressing she and her friend were outside with Ben. She was not put out. She was not resentful. She knows there is a kind of magic about her, that she embodies the antidote to Ben's depression. Not always, but often enough.

So that's Saskia. What would we do without her? I plan never to find out. I do worry that she's not having the carefree childhood I would wish for her, but I know that when we need her, she'll be there. <3