Sean Kelly, Steve's son, is almost a year old, now. He can't walk, yet, unless he holds on to something, but he's been highly mobile on four legs for a while. He can't talk, either, but knows some sign language and can make himself understood by signing, pointing, and grunting. He's always been a quiet baby, anyway. He is a happy, observant, engaging child, with a somewhat unfortunate habit of breaking things to see how they work.
He'll get something apart, look up at a nearby adult, and squeal with delight in his own accomplishment, and it is impossible to be angry with him.
Sarah Kelly is living on campus most of the time, now, though her meds aren't really stable, yet. Some weeks she seems frankly "crazy," other weeks she seems just tired or depressed. For a while she was entirely normal except she was shaking all the time. She can't work--she can't even be much of a mother to Sean, yet--but she hopes to be able to in the future, and is doing what she calls "pre-working," doing research on what law and policy applies to mental health, building relationships with people involved in the "Mad Pride" movement, which I'd never heard of before, but clearly she intends to become a leader of it.
Steve had never heard of Mad Pride, either, but now he is becoming well-informed--just another axis of injustice for him to feel angry and overwhelmed about.
He and I have a rule--no talking about politics or law when we're outside exploring. No talking, in fact, about anything other than what we're observing around us. I'm training him to notice. I'm training him to pay attention. I'm teaching him enough natural history that what he observes becomes meaningful to him. And he's mentioned that now he looks forward to our walks together as a kind of break. Sometimes some problem that was bothering him before we went out resolves itself when we come back--it just doesn't seem so intractable anymore. He's said sometimes he'll be working off campus and something will start to feel like too much, so he'll go outside for a bit.
He's making progress. I feel like I'm able to help.
Which is a nice change, since I feel pretty helpless, otherwise. Eddie is still off-campus and will be for a few more weeks--we offered to make him a place to stay on the first floor of the Mansion, so he could avoid the stairs, but he declined. The yearling who was hospitalized last week has formally withdrawn from school. For Allen to have to find a bed in a psychiatric hospital for someone twice in one year--I haven't talked to him about it, yet, but it must be hard.
It snowed again last night, but then shifted over to sleet and ice before freezing again. The world is an odd, hard, spider-web gray, and winter is starting to seem very long.
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