Dispatches from inside monster-occupied territory

"Love mommy and daddy"
Originally uploaded by Citizen Rob.

One of the things we'd sort of come to accept about Schuyler's condition was that the effects of polymicrogyria on her fine motor skills meant that handwriting for her was always going to be difficult, if not impossible. For a long time, her writing was awkward to the point of being unreadable, which was less of a problem once she started to do well on the Big Box of Words. It was generally accepted that Schuyler will almost certainly never be able to speak and probably not be able to write, either, but with the BBBoW, that was fine. It was one more aspect of PMG that she might not be able to knock down, but with the right tools, she could just walk around it instead.

One of Schuyler's defining characteristics, however, is her stubborn refusal to give up on something. That's not going to be a surprise to anyone who's been reading about her for even just a little while. When something defeats her, you can see it in her eyes, beneath her cheerful shrug of acceptance. Outwardly, she seems to say "Okay, whatever, no big deal." Watch carefully, however, and you'll see that last lingering glance. "I'll be back to kick your ass later." And she always does.

In the past month or two, her handwriting has suddenly improved dramatically. She loves to spell, and she loves to write. (As an author, you have no idea how happy that makes me, even if she ends up writing a book one day saying how full of crap I was.) When she woke me up this morning, the first thing she did was start writing notes. The first was this one, "Love mommy and daddy". The second was a note demanding cereal for breakfast.

It's clumsy, sure, and when she runs out of space, she continues mid-word on the next line. But damn it, she's writing, and we can read it, and that's just one more thing we were told she'd probably never do.

It may not look like much to you, but to us, it's like professional calligraphy.