AUTHOR'S STORY
I thank my bicycle accident which
I experienced when riding home from The Evergreen State College
where I was finishing my bachelor's degree in communications.
The accident herniated discs in my back which left me laid up
for 1.5 years. During this time I watched my life fall apart
and my career come to a screeching halt.
It was during this span of time
that my daughter, Gabby (who had been diagnosed at 8 with dyslexia)
had my full attention one night when she became verbally irate
at having to write a two paragraph report for her high school
class.
I observed helplessly from my bed
as she slumped over in my office chair literally crying so hard
as if her self-esteem had suffered its last straw and was flowing
out with her tears. She cried that this task would take her all
night and that she had so much other homework still to accomplish.
This was her first month in a real high school. And she was right....we
had been going through this hell since she started kindergarten
and her reading skills were still below a fifth grade level.
Never had I felt so strongly the
brutality of feeling so hopeless and powerless all at the same
time in my entire life. I was a single mother and my two children
meant everything in the world to me. And there we found ourselves,
that evening in September, 1997, at the lowest point in our lives...all
hope, our very life energy suggesting that we would be successful
at anything...EVER...was drained...gone!
It was in this moment of quiet as
the two of sat and wept... exhausted with the thoughts of ever
having hope to resolve our dilemmas...that Gabby suddenly burst
out with the only possible intelligent solution...
"Mom,why don't you write me
a dictionary that spells the words the way I hear them so that
I can write?" I was stunned, such a sudden change in attitude.
So swift that I, taken aback, could only exuberantly and decidedly
reply, "Okay,I will".
And that's what I did fulltime for
the next year while laid up in my bed watching the rest of the
world go by. A kindred soul thought my endeavor worthy enough
to purchase me Macintosh's first powerbook computer. I kept up
the good work and managed finally to finish this book eleven years
later.
I also wish to thank...of course,
my children who endured our poverty as I typed away. And I probably
wouldn't be alive today (spared from several hopeless moments
during my healing) if it hadn't been for Marshall Alexander Andersen
Hatfield whose loving attitude, support, nursing and nurturing
earned her the largest angel wings that any human could possibly
earn in many lifetimes of good deeds. To my chiropractor, who,
unlike the neurosurgeons who said I would never walk again, put
me back on my feet within 2 months of my first visit. I thank
you all!
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