At Last..

A little over a year ago I started this blog with an intention of posting something at least every week. It’s been languishing since then without any daily input from me…not even a single post. There are a number of excuses for this: inertia, other stuff happening in life, the daily routine…but mainly I think it is because I did not know where to make a dramatic start. Should I ‘start form the very beginning’? Would that end up reading like a textbook on Down’s syndrome? Do I make this anecdotal? The list goes on.

Damini, at her favourite pastime.

Finally my older daughter Vijayta, who is very comfortable with blogging and writing, said ‘just get off your butt and go with what ever you have written without agonizing too much about it’. She dusted off the introduction I had written and here it is…

This blog is about being Damini’s mother. What makes our relationship a little unique is that Damini has Down’s syndrome. She is currently 15 years old but her appearance is that of a 9 to 10 year old.

You will rarely find her in anything other jeans and t- shirt. While the cut and colour of the jeans are negotiable, she specifically prefers T-shirts that are black and display loud, indecipherable graphics on the front. 

Her most prized possessions are i-pod and headphones, her bicycle and a sheet of paper with the names of some people in her life written in her messy scrawl. As this piece of paper becomes ragged, a fresh one replaces it. The names that appear on this list, I am beginning to understand, are people whom she considers her friends. It started out with four names:

Das – he takes her to all her class and is her biking and hockey buddy.

Tapa – our gardener.

Yashoda - our housekeeper.  

Rosemarie – her facilitator of 7 years.

Subsequent versions have come to include Sapin, Rosemarie’s son as well as names of characters from her favourite movies. How she decides which names to include on the list are a mystery to me, as all executive decisions are exclusively by her.

I am yet to feature in this list. I guess I am just mom.