kramwartap

A woman that belongs to the same Multiple Sclerosis Facebook support group, that I joined back at the end of June, asked all of us if we'd send her youngest daughter, who's turning seven on October 21st, a birthday card and tell her about what it's like having MS. Said girl knows that her mother is different from other mommies, but her mother wants to show her that a lot of other people have the same condition too.

Now, that is a somewhat unusual thing to want to do on a young child's birthday, and some of the other women in the group gave the mother some crap about it ("You have MS, not her.", "Don't ruin your kid's birthday like that.", etc.), but, I figured that it was a relatively harmless thing to try, and processing that your mother has an incurable illness is probably a difficult thing for a young girl to come to terms with, so, it might help. Anyway, I decided I'd do it and told the mother to ignore the haters questioning her parenting and that I'd send her daughter a card.

I asked the woman what types of things/themes her daughter likes and she told me that she's a girly-girl that loves owls and rescuing animals. I tried to find an owl birthday card in the store, but, didn't have any luck. I found some other bird cards, but they were doves and stuff like that, and more for adults, not children. I also contemplated making a card for her from scratch, but, if, I'm being honest, I don't have a whole lot of interest or enthusiasm for making much of anything these days, so, I split the difference, picked out and bought a ballerina mouse card, and drew a portrait of the girl (using photos from Facebook as reference models), with an owl on her head, in the interior that I hope she'll like.  

Writing a letter to a soon-to-be-seven-years-old girl about what's wrong with me was kind of a hard and awkward thing to do. I tend to be verbose [editor's note: "tend"?], but, as she's still learning how to read, at her mother's request, I had to keep it relatively simple and short for her to understand. On one hand, I didn't use a bunch of big medical terms that she probably wouldn't know, but, on the other, I don't like "talking down" to children either and didn't want to insult her intelligence with "baby speak" (in other words, I didn't want my letter to read like a Dick and Jane book), so, while I limited my word choices, I didn't make it super elementary either. It's hard to remember what my reading level was like at seven, that's for sure! I mean, I know I could read fairly well at that age, but, how well? And, of course, I was very careful not to be negative about having MS or what the future may hold for the health of her mother or myself. Physically, I'm not doing too bad right now, so, it's not like I had anything all that terrible to tell the girl anyway. I just wrote that I give myself shots three times a week, to try to keep myself from getting sick again, or, if I do get sick, so that it (hopefully) won't be as bad, and that sometimes my vision doubles or I get really tired. I don't feel that my letter would upset her in any way. I suppose it was even kind of therapeudic on my end as well.

A little photo comic strip I made of Rainbow Dash's rock painting adventure.  I recently participated in a rock painting contest at Craftster, which is what inspired this. 

This is a painting I did on a rock, of a woman smelling a flower, that I hid somewhere in the City of Negaunee yesterday afternoon, for other people to find, as part of a contest I'm participating in at an online art community I belong to. I also wrote a quote, from the late Carrie Fisher, on it, that reads, "I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."  The piece was done completely with acrylic paint and ink.

This is an ATC (Artist Trading Card) that I made for a woman in Massachusetts, for her "He-Man or She-Ra" theme. Done with ink, acrylic paint, color/graphite/watercolor pencil, & permanent marker on white paper.

This is an ATC (Artist Trading Card) I made for a woman in Lower Michigan, for her "Dogs" theme.  She has a Jack Russell Terrier for a pet, so, that's why I did a pair of those.  Done with ink, acrylic paint, color/graphite pencil, & permanent marker on white paper.