a moon, worn as if it had been a shell

From Stephen Kuusisto's blog Planet of the Blind:

I don’t hold with the Atlantic Monthly’s recent article that proposes we are lonelier because of facebook. I think that people with disabilities will attest, overwhelmingly, that connections are now possible for those of us who have a hard time getting around. The vocabulary of life itself.  

Czeslaw Milosz wrote: “Where does humility come from? From sitting down and putting little signs on paper with the hope of expressing something.” Life itself. 

I'll venture to say that this holds true for those of us connecting through blogs, particularly those of us doing the extreme parenting. When Sophie was diagnosed in the spring of 1995, I didn't even have a computer. I had a friend in nursing school who would get me copies of medical articles from the library, available only to those in school. I made phone calls to people who knew people who knew other people. I found out about the ketogenic diet in People Magazine. I called doctors in Canada and left messages on answering machines. I also cried alone, screamed in a huddle on the bathroom floor, the water pounding down and drowning my screams while the baby screamed in her crib. My little signs on paper stayed on the paper, and how much better, how really sustaining it has been to have you. And you. And you.