Thinking of Neil on Valentine’s Day and the memories we shared. This article, written in 2011, makes me smile and chuckle. The picture above was taken at my friend Elaine’s 21st birthday party. I got stuck sitting next to Neil, who kept eyeing my legs. I was not impressed. Little did I know what was to come!

The phone rang.

With the folds of my jeans still gathered between my ankles and knees, I flicked on the switch of my motorized wheelchair, placed my palm on the joystick, and whizzed across the bedroom floor. I reached the phone on the third ring.

This writing was originally written for Prejudice: Stories about Hate, Ignorance, Revelation, and Transformation, edited by Daphne Muse and published by Hyperion Books for Children in 1995.

I hated nice weather. My mother would make me sit on the stone stoop of our brown apartment building after the school bus dropped me off, while she gossiped with the neighbors. She said it would do me good to get a little sun—I was so pale and skinny.

The following is an excerpt from my book, THE QUESTION OF DAVID: A Disabled Mother's Journey Through Adoption, Family, and Life, published in 1999 and available on Amazon.com.

 Neil began waking David up in the morning about a year and a half ago. I gladly  relinquished the responsibility, deciding that I had pulled out enough of my hair in the  morning waking up my then third-grader and trying to hustle him out the door by 8:30.