I did what I had to do.

The things we do for our families . . . It’s been 8 years and I am still recovering.

I crossed the line this time. I stepped out of the light and into the dark and became one of them. You have to know I didn’t seek this out, it just sort of happened. It’s only temporary and it most certainly does not change my opinion of them. Besides, I’m not exactly doing what they do.

I suppose this makes me a sort of hypocrite. Well, so be it. It pays ten dollars an hour and Christmas will be here soon enough. Sometimes you just have to do things you never thought you would do to provide for your family. I realize I am justifying right now, but it is justified justification. Shit’s expensive and there are four of them expecting something under the tree.

I should tell you what it is I’m doing so your mind doesn’t completely wander away with thoughts of all things illicit and odd. I can’t believe I’m going to admit to this . . . Okay, here it goes.

Hello. My name is Crystal and I am a telemarketer, of sorts. I’m not like the others. I can stop anytime I want. I can.

I never intended for this to happen. I saw an innocent ad that shouted out to me, ‘Campaign phone staff needed immediately – Compensation $10.00 hourly.’ A strange feeling came over me and I was compelled to pick up the phone and dial the number.

Now anyone who knows me, knows picking up the phone to call someone is totally out of character for me. In the past two days I’ve made more phone calls than I have in the past thirty-six years, and that’s saying something seeing as how I’m only almost twenty-nine-ish-something.

For four hours a day I dial, talk and hang up. Dial, talk and hang up. “Hi, my name is Crystal and I’m volunteering today for blah, blah, blah and we’re calling voters . . . yada, yada, yadda. So can we count on your YES vote on Proposition OH I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS!”

My ‘target’ list, I must say I find it peculiar they call the innocent people on the other end of the line targets. Anyway, my target list is comprised of every registered voter over the age of sixty who live peacefully within the boundaries drawn by the county lines. I am given a gigantic stack of pages with their names, numbers and ages printed neatly in teeny little letters to ensure my eyes as well as my neck and my arms ache – Hey, you’d be surprised how tiring it can be making call after call after call after call after . . . Sorry.

I have mixed emotions throughout the day. I feel bad calling people whom I know I am disturbing and yet I actually do believe the issue we are seeking support for is important. I can’t say a day in the life of . . . of . . . a phone solici – no, a Communications Specialist, isn’t sheer tedium and boredom, but I can say there are brief interludes throughout the day that keep you from throwing the phone against the wall and running far, far away.

I’ve spoken to sweet old ladies, and not so sweet old ladies. I’ve conversed with adorably rambunctious old men and some not so adorable grumpy old men. I know the medical history of approximately twenty percent of the senior citizens in my community and I now know it is especially hard to get to the phone when you are eighty years old and have bunions.

Only three more days.

Crystal R. Cook

Keep Scrolling.

Jul28

It saddens me, and pisses me off to be quite honest, when people are hesitant to post things online for fear of offending someone or being called a hypocrite or judgmental or racist or whatever else they may be called because they happen to be human, because they have the audacity to think for themselves.

I’ve got news for everyone, someone is always going to be offended. People need to get over themselves.

I don’t think people understand what offended means.

We exist in a society filled with those hell-bent on exerting their rights to say, do, think, and act as they please without interference, but it’s not enough for many of them. They seem to want everyone else to agree with their views, to applaud their actions and if they do not, they cry discrimination of some kind.

You don’t have to fill your personal pages with Bible verses to express your faith, but you should not be afraid to if you choose to do so. If someone does not share my faith, fine. If they do not agree with my political opinions, I’ve no problem with that. I do have a problem however, when they decide I am infringing upon their rights by simply having and sharing those thoughts that may happen to differ from theirs.

I don’t think people understand what rights are anymore.

There are those who want all dissenting opinions, beliefs, ideals, and values not in line with theirs removed, expunged from existence. They fight to destroy them while crying foul if their own sensibilities are called into question.

Every time I open my Facebook page or click on a blog I chance being confronted by something I don’t agree with, with something I find in bad taste or bad humor, I chance finding offense with something someone else thinks or believes.

I can keep scrolling or I can get my panties in a bunch . . . Scrolling requires less effort and time.

I don’t always find what my Facebook friends find funny. I follow blogs and visit websites and see things I may not always agree with so I keep scrolling.

Every now and then I’ll add my two cents in, when it is something I truly feel the need to say, I do it without accusing them of trampling over my feelings or aiding in the destruction of society because I don’t agree. Sometimes a good back and forth can be a good thing. Too bad no one seems to understand the art of debate anymore.

Respect is a two-way street. I know my cyber family does not subscribe to my every belief or my opinions, they don’t have to. They keep scrolling. I respect them for it.

Keep scrolling . . .

This stinks.

Jul25

I want to thank, and by thank I mean throttle, the geniuses behind the science that says second-hand flatulence is good for our health.

The men, it had to be men, behind this insidious study of smell should be flogged. I have no information regarding the validity of these claims or how accurate the reporting of them was, but the damage has been done.

When they invent charcoal bed sheets I’ll be first in line. I need softly spun cotton with odor absorbent fibers woven into a smooth, 600 thread count layer of protection so I can sleep without fear of awaking in the night to a fog of funk.

Was this brilliant breakthrough really something we needed to know? Will it be of benefit to mankind? Well, I suppose it already is, but what about womankind?

I am a fragile flower with a sensitive sniffer for goodness sake. I am the lone female in a house with four men, this does not bode well for me, it doesn’t smell all that great either.

At this rate, my heart will remain strong and I will be disease free for-fricking-ever. My mental well-being however, was already in question before this news . . . broke

Thank you science folk, thank you very, effing, much.

I’ve never cared for roller coasters.

Jul24

I wrote what will follow this when my son was fifteen, it is a snapshot of a particular day in our lives – he is now twenty-two years old. There was a time I feared we would not make it this far together, I feared I might not be enough. There were days I was certain I wasn’t. I took each moment as it came, holding on to hope for the next and praying for the strength I so desperately needed.

It was suggested he be placed in a residential treatment home after his third in-patient hospitalization at the children’s psychiatric hospital. My heart broke at the thought. My heart has felt the shattering of despair many times over the years.

He was my second child, as perfect as his brother. I knew very early on that like his big brother, he was going to need some extra care. He began early intervention services at two for developmental delays. He began speech therapy at three because he was not learning to speak. He was provided with occupational and physical therapy to help his body assimilate to his surroundings, to try to help his sensory functions work with him rather than against him.

At three he was enrolled in a special needs preschool. At five he finally began to speak. In kindergarten they diagnosed him with ADHD and OCD, and he was very much both of those things, but there was more, something yet to be named.

By second grade he could no longer deal with the constant changes and expectations of a mainstream classroom and was moved to a special day class for what they called the emotionally disturbed kids, it was right across the hall from the regular special ed classroom.

This was the year of his first hospitalization. He was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Autism by sixth grade, the same year he finally stopped soiling his pants. The medications they gave him helped . . . some. Middle school regressed him, it turned his world inside out, that was the year of his second hospitalization, the next year brought a third.

Done with doing it their way, I fought until he was placed in a special needs high school, the same one his older brother already attended, there he flourished educationally, but Bipolar is an insidious parasite we had to battle each and every day. We still do.

I look back on those years and remember how dark they often were, I remember wondering if we would ever come up for air. He has worked hard, he is an unbelievable young man. He no longer cycles as manically and as rapidly as he did in his youth, but he still has his many ups and downs. His life is not easy, navigating through the world with autism can be tricky enough without your own mind turning on you periodically in the process.

He amazes me. There is so much to his story, details I wish I could forget but know I mustn’t. I have to record them, hard as I know it will be. I want to share our journey so people will see the hope and the determination that can change a life when there are those who say it cannot be done.

There is always, always . . . hope.

This morning, before the sun began to shine he told me I ruined his life, and then he said he loved me.

When I thought he had calmed I said good morning to him, he said I purposely say things just to make him feel crazy, and then he said he loved me.

After he’d eaten his breakfast he told me it was my fault he is the way he is, and then he said he loved me.

He told me he’d rather be anywhere than here, and then he said he loved me.

This morning, before my day had a chance to begin he told me he never should have been born, and then he said he loved me.

This afternoon he threw a fork at his brother and then helped him clean his room. He screamed and he yelled. He cursed and he sobbed. He raged and he rested. He threw his shoes at me and then he asked for ice cream.

He had a fit of laughter followed by a slamming door. He said he was going to ride his bike off a broken ramp down the road, it’s dangerous I say, he replies, I can do it, I won’t get hurt, nothing can hurt me. I prayed for angels to keep close watch as he walked out the door.

Tonight he hugged me, and then he said he loved me. He said his prayers and he closed his eyes. As I walked from the room he said, “Mommy, today was a good day wasn’t it? I smiled through my tears and said “Yes. Yes it was little man.”

I never know what tomorrow will bring. Some days I don’t know what the next minute will bring. My fifteen year old son is bipolar. He cycles rapidly, the roller coaster that is his life never ends, it slows every now and again, but never does it stop. I hold his hand as we ride up and down and back again. Sometimes I want off. I want to plant both feet back on the ground but I can’t let him ride alone, I won’t let him ride alone.

He has mood swings and he rages. He is happy and he is tormented. He sees things and hears things that aren’t real. When he is happy he jokes and laughs and tells me he loves me half a dozen times each hour and I feel like I am walking on air, but I don’t know if that same boy will walk through the door after school. Will he hate me? Will he hide somewhere and stick safety pins into his fingers? Will he throw things at us or will he be able to smile still? I don’t know. I never know.

He is such a great kid, so beautifully and perfectly great. He has the sweetest smile and his laughter can melt hearts. I close my eyes each night in prayer and I open them each new morn with hope. I try not to think of what the future will bring, I just want to get him safely to tomorrow. Some days are better than others.

I do what the doctors say; I try what the therapists say to try. I grow weary, I do, but one day I know I will rest, one day I know he will as well. I have hope and I have faith and I have a son I love more than anything else. He is a good boy.

An angel with a broken wing, learning how to fly . . .

Crystal R. Cook

They were the faces of the future

Jul22

My heart is broken tonight. I do not think it is right, moral, constructive, beneficial, or whatever pitiful reasons are spewed by those who plaster the faces of the innocent lost to hateful war on our television screens, our computers, magazines and newspapers. It’s shameful.

People need to know, I get it. We cannot forget the horrors of war. Report to me of the inconceivable acts man can inflict upon man. Tell me of the innocents lost, of the mothers who will never again hold their children . . . I understand the world needs to know of the atrocities being committed.

We need to feel the loss, sadness, anger, or whatever it is we need to feel for whatever reasons we need to feel it. I don’t really know what we need anymore. This world doesn’t seem capable of learning from the mistakes of the past, we condemn them while we continue to repeat and perfect them.

To see the body of a child, ravished by the unspeakable, should be incomprehensible and yet without respect, their images are shoved before our faces. Those were somebody’s children. Not men or women willingly walking into war, aware of the risks, they were somebody’s children.

There is no honor in using their deaths to show how ugly the enemy is, the young on all sides have been murdered. A mother’s grief should never be exploited, her cries and her tears as she falls to her knees in despair have no right to be broadcast for all to see.

All of the back and forth, hashtag prayers for whatever side your political preferences favor are self-serving. Pray for them all. For us all.

Faces of what should have been the future,
children lost to war, tears of terror-stricken mothers,
images of grief-wrought faces twisted in hopeless despair.
They splash across our screens without warning,
burning themselves into our hearts.
Not to avenge, but to incite, no respect for the lost,
no respect for the left behind.
See this child of our country? See his lifeless eyes staring
into your soul? The blood is on their hands, not our own.
They sacrifice the innocent, casualties of war
dying for political rhetoric and vengeful hate.
Senseless. Selfish. Pathetic.
Children become pawns in the bloody battles of cowards hiding
behind babies, sending them to kill with weapons
to heavy for them to bear, burdens that will bury them.
Sickened by the loss, disgusted by those who see
death and destruction as answers to peace.
Peace means victory to an ignorant beast.
Men without honor, people without purpose, countries without pride.
Mine. Yours. Theirs.
Children are dying while men lament the loss of the battle,
disregarding the lives lain waste to their foolishness.
Online are the faces of their victims, precious children
born into and killed by the vile grudges and grievances of man.
They show them, God help us, they show them.
Their little faces photographed and shared without regard
for the sanctity of who they were or what they may have become.
They deserved better in life, they deserve better still than to be used as
propaganda to perpetuate the purposes of those bent on taking more lives. They were faces that should have been the future.

Crystal R. Cook

Don’t forget . . .

Jul22

Sir Wetsalot . . . A rainy day writing.

Jul20

Since children’s stories seems to be my theme for the day, I thought I would share one written with children. My children. My kids are all talented and articulate weavers of words, I read to them while they still nestled in my womb. I’ve always encouraged them to read and write and create.

The following tale was written on a rainy, stay home day when my children were in elementary school. Four bored, runny-nosed house trolls need to be kept busy and entertained so we decided to write a story.

They had so many ideas, we settled on our theme and they ran with it, each adding their own adorable voices to what would become one of our favorite memories. What I thought was going to be a miserable day turned out to be a pretty great one.

Sir Wetsalot and the Knights of the Changing Table

Sir Wetsalot and his knights had many grand adventures protecting the kingdom of Cry-a-lot. Their faithful service never went unoticed by the king or the good people they protected. Their deeds and heroics were recorded so future generations would be reminded of their courage and sacrifice. The tale you are about to embark upon is one of the most famous and remarkable stories ever told of the brave souls we proudly called, The Knights of the Changing table.

Our story begins on a stormy night in the kingdom of Cry-a-lot. The wind howled as the knights gathered at the changing table. The King himself had called them to this secret meeting to discuss his fears that somewhere, someone was plotting to steal his most precious belonging, the golden rattle, Exloud-in-ear. The symbol of peace and harmony for Cry-a-lot was in danger and he feared life as they knew it would come to an end if they did not take measures to stop whatever fiend plotted against them.

As they thought of what to do, they remembered the day the King pulled Exloud-in-ear from under a mountain of rubbish and stone. Many had tried before him but none of them had the heart of a true king. The moment the golden rattle was freed the kingdom cheered and proclaimed him ruler and king. Their villages prospered and the evils they had come to fear seemed to vanish.

They were not sure of the exact nature of this new threat, the Kinghad heard rumors of a plot to steal Exloud-in-ear but that was about it. He decided to send out his most trustworthy spies to gather information and find out who was behind the dastardly plot.

As the spies packed for what they thought could be a long journey they heard a noise outside, they listened carefully but did not hear anything so they continued packing. They had lollipops and plenty of bottles filled with juice, they had their blankies and teddies and of course their spy gear. As they packed the last items they heard the noise again. This time is was even louder.

They rushed to the door and peeked out into the dark night, they could barely make out something in the distance, it looked like it was coming closer. They reached into their bags and pulled out their bottles, they aimed and squeezed, covering the intruder with orange juice and apple juice. Wet and unhappy, it disappeared into the city.

They immediately ran to the King and told him all about it. They were sure it must have been whoever, or whatever it was that wanted to steal Exloud-in-ear from them. They made plans to set a trap and catch the thief, they got to work right away. They started to grow sleepy though and their eyes began to close. One by one, they all fell fast asleep.

When they awoke, Exloud-in-ear was gone! Everyone began to panic, it took the King a long time to calm his people. He called on Sir Wetsalot to help him. Now Sir Wetsalot was very smart and very brave. The only thing that ever slowed him down was a full diaper. He came up with a new plan and quickly put it into action.

A fake Exloud-in-ear was made and placed on a table in the middle of the kingdom, it’s gold paint twinkled in the sun. The King, Sir Wetsalot, the Knights, the spies and all the people hid and waited. They waited, and waited and waited. Just when the sun was going down they began to hear noises. They watched nervously as something approached.

The table began to shake and the fake rattle fell to the ground. No one dared move closer to see what was happening. They listened to the rattle sounds growing softer and softer until they where gone. Now it had the fake Exloud-in-ear and the real one! Everyone in Cry-a-lot was sad. The King began to cry, he would not speak at all. He just sat there in tears and sucked his thumb.

Sir Wetsalot could not stand to see his king like this and valiantly went after the rattle. It was pretty easy really, there was a trail of cookie crumbs for him to follow. As he bravely skipped along the path he heard the familiar sound of the golden rattle. He very quietly crept toward the sound. He could not believe what he saw.

There sat his little brother, slobbering all over Exloud-in-ear. He was so mad he started screaming . . . “Mommeeeee!” Sir Wetsalot smiled as his mother took the rattle from the baby and returned it once again. After a quick diaper change and a snack he was on his way back to Cry-a-lot.

Everyone cheered and gave him a heroes welcome when he returned! The King took his soggy thumb from his mouth and jumped for joy! Peace and harmony returned to the kingdom and everyone settled down for a nice nap. While they slept, Sir Wetsalot’s mommy added a safety gate to the entrance of Cry-a-lot and turned out the lights.

Crystal, Wilson, Matthew, Angela, & Michael Cook

How to ask Mom a question.

Jul19

Son: I have a question for you, you’re probably going to say no, but . . .

Me: I can’t stand it when you assume what I am going to say by beginning your questions with, “You’re probably going to say no, but – ” I want to say no before you even get to the question.

Son: So basically, you’re saying I am almost guaranteed a no by saying that?

Me: It’s a possibility.

– Later –

Son: Question . . . I’m pretty sure you’ll say yes, so . . .

Life with the Cooks.

He was dying . . .

Jul19

I am often asked if it’s true autistics are incapable of empathy, affection, love, compassion, etc.. I try not to let it get to me, knowing there are so many people out there who believe the myths and the misinformation regarding autism. I try to fight these notions by encouraging and educating those I can.

One of the most powerful tools I have at my disposal is experience.

This morning I spoke to my son, he was feeling sad, he and his grandma had come across a dying bird in the back yard. He posted this status update to his Facebook profile this evening ~

He was dying, my Grandma found him in the backyard, we picked him up and held him as he passed, I stroked his head making sure his final moments were of love and not of fear. We put him in a box with some tissues and some socks so he could spend his final moments in comfort, it was sad we couldn’t save him and we didn’t have him for more than a few minutes but I feel better for having been there for him. I made a difference in its life, albeit in the end of it.

Yes. Autistic people can feel empathy, deeply. They may not always be capable of expressing their feelings, every individual with autism is unique, they have strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else. There are many people not faced with the challenges my son faces who are incapable of the level of empathy my son felt today, holding that little bird. He is a good, good man.

Crystal R. Cook