Blind inspiration

Someone inspired me recently. And the inspirer (if that’s a word) had no idea it was happening. To me, this is the best kind of inspiration because you know it’s pure, notsomething done with intentions of any kind.

 

I call it blind inspiration because the story itself can inspire people who’ve never met the so-called inspirer.

 

Many of you know that my daughter, Allie, has juvenile arthritis — juvenile idiopathic arthritis, or JIA, specifically — which is an autoimmune disease. She likes to call it a condition, because she doesn’t like to tell people she has a disease. Can’t blame her there.

 

As the Arthritis Foundation likes to say, JIA is not your grandmother’s arthritis. It causes kids’ joints to swell, like arthritis does in adults, but the cause comes from kids’ own bodies. A child’s natural defenses attack their own joints, thinking they are repelling an intruder. The cause is unknown and there is not currently a cure.

 

But this isn’t about the disease — sorry, condition — but how a fifth grader I know is dealing with it.

 

Remember when you were 10 or 11? I sure do. Fifth grade was a blast and I see several similarities between Allie’s childhood and mine. We were both in the crossing guard (it’s called safety patrol now) and that’s still a position of pride and responsibility in elementary school. My life then consisted of outdoor recess, gym class and lunch — to pack or buy was the most difficult decision of the day.

 

But that’s where the similarities end.

 

I didn’t need to take prescription medication twice a day to protect my body from itself. I didn’t need to worry about how that same medication lowers my immune system and makes me more susceptible to other conditions.

 

And I certainly didn’t have a friend who had JIA — in almost every single joint in her body since she was 18 months old — like Allie’s friend, who I’ll call E.

 

Please don’t get me wrong, my daughter is an inspiration to me every single day. But her friend E is an inspiration forall of us. She takes immune suppression drugs so strong they’re used for chemotherapy. She doesn’t take pills, she gets injections. Yet she still smiles and laughs and plays. She’s still a kid.

 

And she’s a great friend.

Allie knows she can ask E anything and, if she’s facing something new, E has probably already been through it. She helps Allie deal with all of the questions she has running around in her head — Why me? What did I do? And, perhaps most important of all, she helps Allie know that she’s not alone.

 

Allie’s friend E didn’t set out to inspire me or anyone else. She wasn’t trying to become the subject of a blog post somewhere. She’s just being a true friend.

 

Thank you, E.  You’re an inspiration to all of us.

The gift that never came (and how I somehow managed to survive just the same).

My wife and I decided not to exchange Christmas gifts this year. And, while I had no issue saving the money and spending more of it on the kids, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel.

 

It’s not that I wanted something in particular this year. I had no list, nothing in mind. I simply hadn’t gone through Christmas without giving my wife a gift in more than 25 years…and, I admit, I had become rather fond of receiving gifts from her, too.

 

To give credit where credit is due, it was all her idea. She suggested that we really didn’t need much and she was right. While we aren’t wealthy by any means, we are certainly fortunate to have what we need. We just don’t need to get each other anything anymore.

 

We even told our parents we didn’t need much. Of course,they had to get us something. So we asked them to help with some very practical gifts, like helping with the cost of new tires for my nine-year-old car. Much appreciated, by the way.

 

And we did make one concession. We decided to buy a new TV as a ‘family gift’ when the old TV in the basement stopped working and we found one on sale — but that was it. Seriously. Nothing else. Agreed?

 

We both agreed. There was heart-crossing and pinky-swearing and the threat of needle-in-the-eye sticking all over the place. [Not to worry, this isn’t a story about how one of us went all rogue and bought the other something anyway and people came away mad or sad. We both stayed true to our overly-sworn commitments.]

 

But I have to admit, I still had doubts…right up until Christmas day.

 

Not about the gifts themselves, but more about how the morning would feel. We had always done things a certain way and now that way was changing. Would the kids think it was weird (and why would I care about that)? What would we do, just sit there? Would we miss the simple act of opening presents? The surprise factor?

 

Would we miss it?

 

The happily surprising fact is that we didn’t miss a thing. We got to spend a lot more time watching the kids open their presents and play with them, and we also got to spend a little more on each of them because we didn’t spend that money on ourselves. That was nice.

 

As it turns out, the biggest gift I received this Christmas was the gift of being able to see it all over again through the eyes of others. The Christmas spirit was alive and well this year at our house...and it was all because I didn’t get a thing.