Lucas Camilo

We use this blog for a lot of things: health status updates, reflections on parenting, bragging about Lucas, sharing what we’re learning about disability… But sometimes we just need to write down everything that’s happened so it doesn’t get lost.  So the themes of this post are (a) look how much we can do, and (b) look how much we can do despite, and sometimes because of, disability!

August is the month to visit us in Seattle.  Our dear, dear friend Sha Grogan-Brown (aka Tio Sha) came to town mid-August, just in time for a hair cut.  Lucas doesn’t usually share his silliest side with anyone except close family, but for Sha he made an exception.  It started the first night Sha was here, when we got out the scissors.  Lucas was a pretty good sport about the haircut, but since Sha had a large wheelchair headrest to contend with, the haircut took a little while.  So Sha started talking up the cutting sounds — “snippy snip” and “trimmy trim.”  Lucas happens to love silly words, and he lit up.  Pretty soon he was embellishing.  “Snippy snip snip snip… trimmy trim trim!”  When he takes any silly word game up a notch he beams with pride.  But each time Sha met him with more silliness, and Lucas would crack up with his huge silent belly laugh.  The snippy snips turned into a whole language that lasted throughout Sha’s visit.

Sha timed his trip to be here for Lucas’s birthday, and it was awesome to have him here as uncle/friend/party-helper since this was our first attempt at a real kids birthday party.  We rented the very accessible and spacious community center near our house and invited kids from school, from music class, from the neighborhood, from our anti-racist parents group, and from our wider circle of disability families, as well as our family.  We were nervous about the party — Lucas often doesn’t love a crowd, plus many of the people coming wouldn’t know anyone else at the party.  But it was a magical success.

The two key ingredients were bunnies and Ben, our musician friend.  Someone in Seattle came up with the brilliant plan of renting out her bunnies for kids birthday parties, and they were as magic as it sounds.  For a while the party consisted of the mayhem you would expect of a 5-year-old’s birthday party: children running (or wheeling) around everywhere with balloons, markers, and smeared cream cheese.  And then the bunny lady arrived.  She said nothing, just pulled out a blanket and opened up her large tub of bunnies.  Suddenly all the attention shifted to her corner of the room.  Kids quietly sat down on the blanket, and she handed them swaddled bunnies with carrots and cilantro.   I had talked to her beforehand to be sure it wasn’t a requirement that kids sit on the floor, and she was ready to hand bunnies off to the kids who stayed in wheelchairs.  It was mesmerizing.

Lucas loved it.  He held 3 week old baby bunnies, lop bunnies, and a mystery bunny named Señor Wobbly who traveled in a basket because he seemed to have low muscle tone, too.  Lucas’s friend Chris convinced the bunny lady that his lap was safe, so she set the bunny down and he peeled out in his powerchair to deliver a bunny to another kid on the other side of the room.

Near the end of the party our friend Ben generously agreed to play a few songs.  He had learned “Here Comes the Sun” that week (Lucas’s favorite Beattles song), and Lucas sang right along.  He also played some Bob Marley and Violent Femmes songs that were new to Lucas, but he loved those too.  In fact, in the days after the party, Lucas talked more about Ben’s music than even the bunnies (this is a kid who 95% of the time shows more interest in animals than humans.)

And two hours after it started, it was over.  And family and friends helped us undo the mess, and Lucas went home to revel in the excitement.  We both felt so glad to have so many people we’ve gotten to know in the last 2 years come out to celebrate Lucas.  And so relieved that Lucas liked it, too.

More photos from the party are below, along with a video of Lucas and his buddy Chris in their wheelchairs, holding hands and watching the music: