Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2009. A lot was happening around the art therapy table that day. Mattie had many friends with him such as his buddy Jocelyn, and his same aged friend Maya, but also visiting the clinic was his assistant head of school, Bob, who we affectionately referred to as the magic man. Bob spent the year that Mattie was in the hospital teaching him all sorts of magic tricks. Mattie gravitated to magic and to Bob. In this photo Mattie was about to perform a special trick with a ring. This trick was one of the hardest I think Mattie learned, and the cute story behind this trick was that Bob used this device when he presented his own wife her engagement ring. Mattie always found that story very entertaining. As you can see, Maya and this other child sitting at the table had their eyes glued to the purple box on the table where the ring was going to be hidden!
Quote of the day: I think we all know our outer lives are only as good as our inner lives. ~ Pico Ayer
Peter and I spent the day doing a great deal of final edits to our Foundation's new website. Our hope is to be able to launch it very soon. We created our original website for the Foundation almost six years ago, and because the site is impossible to use, I do not know how to maintain it and keep it current. Therefore the site is antiquated and in many ways seems almost counter productive to having a site.
Our new website will give supporters and people who are unfamiliar with our work a chance to truly understand who we are and what we are about. It will also be easier to get access to information and archival information about us. Of course that is our hope, when it is launched, I am sure we will get feedback from our users. In the midst of working throughout the day, we heard a large crash in Mattie's room. For 13 years, this beautiful mother duck and duckling Avon plate has been hanging on the wall. It commemorated in a way Mattie's birth and our connection with one another. Before Mattie was born, we had a duck themed baby shower, Mattie had duck themed blankets and clothes as a baby, and he really grew up loving ducks. He would always point out a mother duck and her ducklings to me. Because ducks meant so much to Mattie, they became rather symbolic to me. When this plate broke today, it was very disheartening and seemed almost a symbol of our shattered lives without Mattie, especially at this time year when Mattie's diagnosis day fast approaches. Needless to say I kept all of the pieces from this plate, because my goal is to glue it back together again.
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