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There is No Colour : Learning to Un-Learn

 

There Is No Perception of Colour in an Autistic Person’s World

 

Throughout his life, my autistic son who is brilliant has been perceived as being less so. The people that matter in his life, know the truth about him and I have never wasted any time trying to prove his worth to anyone not intelligent enough or anyone who is too self absorbed or frivolous to understand. Over the years of rejoicing through the great times and wading through the murky, thick mud of the heartbreaking times, I have come to know that the truth about both my children is beautiful.  In a time of chaos brewed by racism, terrorism and hatred I feel their father and I have managed to put a sliver of hope for better on this planet.

Two days ago sitting in a cloud of misery borne out of merely watching a half hour newscast, I heard Adam in the other room in full *echolalia going on happily about something that was happening in the Big Bang Theory which is the latest show he likes to binge watch.  His *scripting had something to do with the character Raj and I thought I would do a little test.  I called him into the living room and asked him what was going on in the episode he was watching and he proceeded to tell me how funny it was and that it was because Raj was saying silly things.  Feigning ignorance, I asked him which character was Raj.  He turned to go get his tablet in his room so that he could show me when I stopped him and asked him to describe Raj. What you have to understand is that Adam hates being pushed into descriptive language but it is something we are working on and I wanted to see what he would say.  He twisted his mouth, scrunched his nose and then he said,

“He is the tall one,”  to which I responded,

“So Leonard is …”

“Leonard is short. Raj is a guy,” he offered.

“A guy like Leonard and Sheldon and Howard?”

“Yes. Howard is short,” he replied.

“But I still can’t place Raj. Which one is he?” I pressed on.

Adam proceeded to say adjectives like tall, skinny, silly, funny, jokey…he never said that Raj was brown. Not that he does not know his colours –  I remember vividly when he was 5 and he was  learning colours he certainly realized that mummy was brown but that was it. It was an observation when he was 5 and to this day, Adam has never used colour to describe anyone because he has never associated a person with their colour – ever. I have however had to un-teach some of the derogatory words he has heard in school over the years. Words that sometimes were directed towards him when misinformed or rather poorly-informed kids saw that I was his mother. He would say the words completely out of context and I would have to spend weeks purging them from his vocabulary by teaching him in the most basic of terms that some words are just so very bad.  I hope I never have to un-teach him words such as those again but I shan’t be naive because this world is getting worse.

People who don’t know Adam or those who know him and have labelled him, will never see beneath the surface the way those who know him do.  He may have to struggle through some days sometimes because of his autism, he may have to do things differently to get by and he may have some days when having to adjust things to suit him or to keep him successful is a real pain in the ass for whomever has to make the adjustments but one thing is certain –  Adam sees people.  He sees their soul, he sees their personality and he sees their beauty because even with perfect vision my son cannot see their colour. There is a purity about him that I attribute to his autism that I wish every human had.  He knows what pretty is but he never calls anything ugly although he understand’s the meaning of the word. He does not place any emphasis on riches but he certainly understands that he has to help someone who may be poor. He is paid in self satisfaction, happiness and pride for every job he does and he works harder than most from beginning to end.  Hmm…autistic with a work ethic. Chew on that for a while.

I shake my head and laugh so many times when I think of the resolute therapists who incessantly repeated the importance of integrating Adam into the world by working on reducing or stopping his “inappropriate” behaviors and quirky actions so that in essence he could be more like other people in society.  I think it should be the other way around because I have seen what my boy sees.  I have laid beside him in that little playroom as I waited on him to meet me halfway; doing what he did, stretching out our hands to the light streaming through that tiny basement window, watching the little specs of dust dance between our fingers. I remember feeling a glorious release when we would roll down the hill at the playground near our house when he and his brother were little.  I remember the giggles and the all out raucous laughter, the smell of the grass and the feel of the dirt on my body. I’d forgotten the abandon of childhood and I am eternally grateful to my children for re-introducing me back then to just how much fun and how freeing life can be. I remember laying on our backs in that playroom staring at the ceiling, humming and becoming so relaxed that my body sank into the carpet as I was lulled to sleep by my little boy’s sweet voice.  We met each other halfway in that playroom – he, discovering the wonders of the world as I presented it to him; me, recognizing just how over stimulating and bombarding the world actually was. In that playroom where I taught my son everything he knows, I learned from him how to let the noise go, how to hear what was within me and how to tap into moments of peace.  Adam knows how to get back to his soul.  Even when it is most difficult for him he knows how to tap into that place of goodness, knows how to let go of all that has him tangled and twisted up emotionally in order to restore himself and dwell in a place of peace and love. Shouldn’t we all figure out how to do that? Think about how much less pain we all could cause if we are able to release anger and horrible, hateful or violent thoughts from our minds and hearts and return to a place of peace and love and restore ourselves and each other. Yeah, right…integrate my son into society as it is, my ass.  We should be so lucky to be more like him.

 

 

Learning to Unlearn

 

It is no secret that to me, my second son Logan, is one of the best people I know. My aunt Meiling would call someone like Logan “too mannish” because he is far too young to be this miniature man of integrity and depth.  He has a sensibility that I have not seen in anyone so young.  His ability to discern bullshit from truth is something I did not have mastered by the time I was a teenager and to quote my husband “Watch for our son because anyone who ends up involved with him will be beyond fortunate because of  the human he is,”

I have tried very hard to raise Logan to not see race, creed or colour.  It was easier with Adam being autistic but by the time Logan got to grade 2 he learned what colour was unfortunately.  Looking back on my own childhood, I would say I was lucky to have grown up in a multicultural, multiracial society and be raised by parents who had friends from all walks of life, all colours and religions but like Logan, when I was 5, even sweet T&T way back then had it’s structure and divisions that were somewhat subtle at times blatant at others.  I remember what living with that was like – bouncing in and out of acceptance, hearing derogatory racial slurs in conversations, in traffic, putting up with disgusting comments from idle limers as my mother and I walked by them. My childhood was a good one but there are things I learned about the world that I was determined to do something about.  I knew there was no way to protect my children from these lesser things but I could teach them to be better and also be better than me and those before them. It may be naive of me but I like to think if I could just put two decent and good humans on the planet, I could make significant change.

So with Logan, I also did a little test.  I was in the living room when his friend came to the door.  He had just come from work on the reserve and he made a crack about delivering watery gas to our door.  The boys bantered back and forth with little jabs about each other’s ethnicity and then went out to grab a couple lemonades from the store.  When he got back, Logan joined us to watch the unfolding of events in Charlottesville and he was, like we were, disappointed in what we were witnessing.  Pausing the broadcast, I told him that I had something I needed him to do for me moving forward in light of all the hate and racism in the world.  I asked him to stop the light jabs among his friends that had racist tendencies.  He assured me they were all best buddies and no one took anything personally but I counteracted his point by pointing to the television.

“It can start with simple jesting and it can evolve into this,” I told him. “We say stuff among our friends and no one is really offended so we accept it and then it gets a little more pronounced and we accept that too and then we have a difference of opinion and someone says something in anger and even though things may cool down and you are still buddies, it was blurted out and there is a dividing line in the friendship.  We cannot accept racism and lighthearted racist ribbing is not to be done anymore. It is not accepted and if you end it, it will end in your circle of friends.  The same way you do not tolerate the use of the word retarded to describe mentally challenged people, you must not participate in or tolerate racist jokes or jabs at all,”

My boy looked me in the eye and told me he understood and he would change it. Two days later when the friends were at the door, I was in the kitchen and one of them greeted the other with another native joke and my boy said,

“So, here’s the thing.  We can’t do that anymore, okay? My mom spoke to me about it and I agree with her.  She wasn’t mad or anything but she’s right. We are friends and we don’t want to get into talking like this so no more racist jabs. We cool?”

I heard the pseudo-manly voices echo in agreement and just like that they went down the street in front of one of their houses and started shooting hoops.  I didn’t tell him I heard them that night and in the car yesterday, Logan told me that he spoke to his buddies and they all agreed not to make anymore dumb jabs about race.  He said they actually agreed they didn’t really know why they were doing it.  They didn’t think it was funny and they didn’t really like it. I know Logan has struggled with the answer to the occasional question “So what are you? “from some idiot after they realize I am his mother.  Today he answers quite simply, “Human….a guy… a person,” and if they persist he suggests they “might want to do some travelling…read a book…get exposed, eh?”

There is so much going on now in the world. Our time is as filled with turmoil as it is with bliss – sometimes it is so overrun with turmoil that we have to do all we can to find bliss so that we can hang on to a shred of decency and sanity.  I am in the middle of my life and one day it will draw to an end but my children’s lives are just beginning and I can see that so many young people are trying hard to hold on what is real, to what is pure and what is true. It is an uphill battle and I understand why so many of our youth have difficulty coping with life as it is. They have so much more to deal with than we did and everyday they try to separate what is good about living in their time of technology from what is heinous and all I can do in my middle age is try and stay abreast of it all and not criticize them or compare their time to mine but truly support them however I can.

If there is one thing marriage and parenting have taught me is the importance of communication. In all my years of raising my boys I have never talked and listened more than I do now.  Every week there is something I learn that was not a part of my vocabulary.  Forget learning French, German, Cantonese, Spanish or what have you, I have had to master “youth speak” in ways I never imagined and as un-cool as I know I am, my husband and I are the first stop when my boys’ world come crashing down around them.  Their father and I won’t be there for them every time it happens and one day we will not be here at all and I hope their coping skills continue to be strong.  It’s like my husband says, “Parenting is 50/50. We can only hope that they hold on to that fifty percent of what we instilled in them the question mark is what they do with the other fifty and we can only hope they have the strength of character to navigate it in the right direction,”

In Logan’s lifetime he is going to learn and experience many things.  Some will be great and some will not and he will have to choose between doing the right thing or the easy thing, the right thing or the popular thing and the right thing or the wrong thing. He will soar and he will crash and he will soar again and his life will roller coster on just like any other life. My hope for his generation is that they can learn from the mistakes of past generations as well as their own and that they can release or un-learn some of the things we may have carelessly and mindlessly taught them. I hope they are better than we are and better than their grandparents.  I hope they put humanity first and that they operate from a place of love. I hope their generation sees an end to terror and most of all I hope they un-learn racism and bigotry and learn acceptance.  Who knows, maybe…just maybe theirs is the generation to turn the world around and propel us upward from the downward spiral we seem to be on.

 

*Echolalia is the repetition of words or phrases with sometimes no meaning or function attached to them. … Sometimes this behavior is termed “scripting” because the words and phrases the person is repeating comes from tv or movie scripts.

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From Home Straight to Heaven, Making No Stops in Between.

*(This piece was written yesterday, September 9th, and just as I was about to post it, I had an emergency with my younger son.  He is okay and now that I am home and all is said and done, I thought I would post this, as the whole time I was sitting with my own child, my mind was also on someone else’s.)

I had so many plans for this morning, yet I find myself sitting here in my living room, my house quiet, my heart broken and a million questions and thoughts in my head.  I suppose I am fortunate to be able to write freely.  Words swim in my head all day long, ideas, memories, phrases, dialogue.  I have been like this all my life, so to me, it’s as normal as the dizziness and the neck aches that accompany the endless movement of words in my mind some days.  I am sitting here, tears flowing down my face and I can’t stop them because of the news I read on Facebook – that maddening forum that updates me on everyone and everything way too often, interrupting my day like chronic hiccups, yet I cannot leave it. I have had to pare down my friends to the people in my life who I need to stay in touch with – my friends who live in cities where I once did, my dear sisters from my high school Alma Mater, St. Joseph’s Convent, my cousins, my Trinidadian friends, some people from Syracuse University and Ryerson and a smattering of people in the community where I live.

Today I read that the son of one of my SJC sisters passed away.   I have known this woman since we were children in Maria Regina Grade School on Abercromby Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad.  She had always been this artistic, tall, beautiful creature with a huge smile and bubbly personality.  I don’t remember Leisel upset in school.  Ever. She was fun! She was life! … One of those unforgettable people and it was wonderful to be able to reconnect with her after all these years.

Time did what it does and we all grew up, some of us moving to different places, some of us staying in Trinidad, all of us going our separate ways, yet thanks to a 30 year reunion and two remarkable women who stop at nothing (Carla and Debbie) we were all connected by Facebook in a matter of months. Though we all could not attend, many of us did and the connection on Facebook strengthened the bond between those present and those present in spirit.  We were in each other’s lives again at an age when we were all fully women – no longer high school girls but women with lives that had history and stories of good times, hard times, times of real struggle, failure and success.  We were mothers, aunts, some were grandmothers, career women, friends, wives, ex-wives,care givers and no matter where we were, or what we did with our lives, we all had a common approach to handling the journey that is life.  We turned out to be an army of the strongest women I will ever know, whom, I feel I can count on always and as maddening as Facebook is for me at times, it has allowed my true friends…my sisters, to be just a click away.

I thought I’d be done sobbing by now, but I can’t stop, it seems.  In my head right now, I see us sitting in class in Form 1M, with a ceiling fan struggling to oscillate to keep us from melting in the Caribbean heat.  I can see Leisel next to Lucette facing the giant patio style sort of French doors that allowed them to look onto the school of our male counterparts at CIC (St. Mary’s).  I can see Lorna and if memory serves me correctly, I think Karlene was in my class too. In my mind I see us in the white blouses and strange sea blue, greenish ( I think gabardine) skirts we wore in our first year, before the material changed, white belts, our “washikongs” powdery with Whitening and white turned down socks.  Young girls dressed with so much white, perhaps to maintain some purity of spirit and mind as we teetered on the brink of becoming young women.  Who knew that in one class 4 of us would mother children who were special.  Knowing what I know of people’s lives, who knew one girl in our year would not live long into adulthood, or that others would have to fight terrible illnesses, deal with difficult marriages, deal with judgement from loved ones, would lose a spouse and another girl just a year ahead would lose her adult daughter in the most tragic of ways.  Where was that crystal ball?

Life is a strange, perplexing, meandering river.  As we float from bend to bend, we sometimes bounce off the rocks and miss out on some things.  Other times we bank safely on the sand and achieve greatness and everybody, everybody hits the rapids and capsize once in a while, getting something that they have to deal with for a long, hard time.   In life, there is no answer to the question Why me?  No answer to Why us? …Why my child? … Why my sister(s)/ brother(s)? … Why my husband? … Why my parents? … Why my friend?  When you get the hand you are dealt you have to get out of bed, rub your eyes, take a breath, get to your feet and start the day and the next and everyday from there on end because even if you didn’t sign up for it, the life you have is the one you got, every damn day and you just have to make the best of it and make it work.  Every single one of us who went to our school, (and I am sure women attending other schools in T&T will feel the same about their camaraderie) …all of us posses the mettle to stand up and deal with our lives and move forward. While a situation might really rock us, none of my SJC sisters ever crumble. No matter what our faith or beliefs are we are strong and when we are not not, we acknowledge the moments when we are weak, we accept them and we find strength in others and in our God, knowing “this too shall pass,”.

I am perplexed by life all the time and particularly today.  As a mother of a child with special needs, I wonder what it must feel like for my friend now that her boy is gone.  Today she must be very busy as there is a lot to do when a person passes away. It will be punctuated by tears and sadness, but what is she going to do a few days from now after he is laid to rest.  There is a routine with special kids. Mind you, her journey with her son was so much more involved than I could ever imagine.  I cannot fathom the things she had to do to care for her boy while raising her other children.  I can only imagine she needed more than 24 hours in her day and that there was never enough help and not enough dates when her and her husband could just go out and have a coffee and were there ever enough moments when she could just sit and be still for a decent amount of time?  The routine she once had is gone and a whole lot of stuff that she had to deal with will gradually not need her attention, and while it will provide some relief to her, and her husband and allow more time for them and their children, it will be a huge void after years of doing all that they did for him.  I wonder what will she do now? How does one go from doing so much to not doing it anymore?  But, she is one of us and she will know what to do.  There is one consolation I will mention here but I must warn you, reader, I am not being insensitive.  I am speaking as a mother who has a child that will always need me albeit not physically or emotionally all the time, but he will need me to make decisions for him, major decisions for his whole life, beyond my grave.  I feel that if there is any consolation in the loss of her son, my friend can always know that he passed surrounded by parents who were there the day he came into this world. He was ushered into the world by love; he left it in love.  My son is a physical phenomenon.  It is part of his autism, actually.  He will out live us and it will not surprise me if he outlives his younger brother and younger cousins.  I will not be there to usher him out of the world and if there is no family to do so, I can only hope we set up our Will effectively enough that at least a compassionate stranger will be there for him at that time.  We live in a world that has shown me time an again that good struggles to trump evil.  Kindness is not as abundant as it used to be and there is little time for anything, especially for those of us who need just a bit more time.  When my thoughts go to that day,  I occasionally wish that my husband or I could be with him, because no one will ever know him or love him the way we do.  No one will know the right things to say to him, or how he likes his arms squeezed or remind him how to breathe deeply so he can deal with pain.  No one will know the right song to lean in and sing quietly into his ear, that will ease his anxiety.  If life goes the way it should, I will not know who will be there. I can only hope it’s a relative … someone who loves him or at least cares a little.

The world of special needs is so involved and heart wrenching, so crazy and frustrating and draining yet so rewarding and filled with love. Reading my friend’s post today is the stuff that shakes my faith. On days like today, I do not understand why people say God does not give you what you can’t handle. On days like today, I don’t understand what I am supposed to do on this journey or why special children comes to some people and not others, or why after years of difficulty, pain and hard work fueled by love and determination, my friend’s son could not get better?  Why could their family not have a fairy tale ending?  I read of miraculous outcomes all the time.  Why couldn’t he be cured miraculously?  Well, “that’s life”, right?  I will never know why and I will leave it at that.

My heart aches for my friend, her loss and all the days ahead that will be so strange and difficult.  I know she will feel release and I hope she will feel a sense of calm come over her in time.  We connected occasionally (as much as time allowed) and I know she worked so hard at raising her kids, caring for them and she put her all into her job… she is a force of nature and when I learned a bit about her life, all I have is an abundance of admiration and respect for her.  She does it all and she does it with such grace.  Her beautiful boy is at peace now. No more discomfort.  No pain.  I wish her peace over time to heal her sadness.  I wish her joy in his memory, in his spirit and the spirit of her other two young ones and I wish her and her husband endless love to strengthen their bond for years to come.

Like every child, her son was s a gift and a source of love and a a beautiful opportunity. He went from his home on Earth, straight to Heaven, making no stops in between. He went to rest in peace and joy knowing he was loved throughout his journey and if heaven is what we think it is, he will watch over his family for the rest of their days.

Leisel, it is such a simple statement that does not do justice to the way anyone feels right now, but we are all so sorry for the loss of your son and we are all just a click away.  Blessings to you and your family my darling.  ~Danie

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Can Human Beings Find Balance to Create Peace?

Martin Luther King Day was this week and on the major network talk shows, the actors from the movie Selma spoke about the significance of the film.  They expressed how proud and honoured they were to be a part of something that would remind and teach people about Dr. King and how he affected change in America.  A common reference in the talk show interviews with the actors was the irony and the timely release of the film in light of the deaths of Eric Garner and  Michael Brown.  I wonder what Dr. King would say about America if he was alive today?  What would he say about the world? We walk alongside each other in the streets, we work side by side but the racism, discrimination and hatred is still there lying just under our skin, seeping out of our pores and tainting society because mankind has never been truly accepting of difference.  We pretend to like all things unique but somewhere inside us we don’t.  The majority of us prefer to be the same and really don’t like to draw attention to ourselves.  We can deny it but to this day we still live our lives by archaic guidelines.

In my quest to move forward in 2015 with love, I find myself wondering how human beings can change the current of violence and hatred we are on.  I’m not saying the world is all doom and gloom or overrun with bad people – it isn’t, but we know there are a lot of things we need to permanently change for the better.  We also know that we have many alternatives to unkindness, hatred and violence that we just don’t choose to put into effect.

We live in a time when watching the effect of terror on the world is a regular occurrence.  Our living room has become a window to a world where hatred and violence unfortunately are commonplace. Those of us able to recall September 11, remember sitting in front of the television speechless and tearful as what looked like an accident was in reality the biggest act of terror of our time. We watched live coverage of the towers as they burned, tiny fragments falling from them – tiny fragments that we quickly realized were people jumping to their death as they tried to escape the fire.  9-11 was a day of triumph for an evil few and a great tragedy for the rest of the world.  We were afraid; there was great anguish.  We shed tears of sorrow and despair over lives lost and tears of joy whenever a survivor was rescued.  At certain points throughout that day and the days that followed we felt hopeless, discouraged, angry and disappointed in mankind but we also saw that this act of terror made the majority of us (the good people of this world) better.  We dug deep into ourselves and found our compassion.  We knew how to be kind again and we acted out of love.  On the news we saw one colour as soot and ash covered hands reached out and grabbed others and pulled them them to safety, drew them into secure and comforting hugs and tended to their wounds.  This terrible, unfortunate and evil historic event gave way to the incredible strength and inherent goodness of the human spirit and many remarked that we would be forever changed.

Over time, structures were repaired and rebuilt and monuments were erected lest we forget and ever so subtly we returned to the rhythm of modern life – keeping our heads down, working the job, pushing through the stress, minding our own business and balancing everything in our lives just to get to the next thing, the next hour, the next moment, the next day, month and year. But the terror has not stopped and we are truly afraid.  We are hyper-observant when we travel and whatever our colour we sometimes are suspicious of brown faces and non-western religious attire.  We can say that we stand up to terror by not backing down or changing the way we live our lives. We can say we will continue to travel wherever we want, however we want, but deep down we are fearful and mistrusting.   In retaliation to terror some of us have become comfortably critical of the religious rites of others and have no problem ridiculing a person’s faith.  And while it is a person’s democratic right to speak freely and express their opinion, is it wise to provoke violence?

A dear friend, posted a beautiful and insightful quote on her timeline from Deepak Chopra that says,

“Speech can cause humiliation and incite violence or heal.  Freedom of speech can be a path to           enlightenment, or a road to death and destruction.  The enlightened purpose of speech in wisdom         traditions is to create bliss, joy, happiness, peace and healing in the listener.  If you pause before         speaking and ask: Is it necessary? Is it useful? Is it kind? [Then]  you are wisely using the privilege       of freedom of speech”.

All religions are ridiculed one time or another without violent retaliation.  Charlie Hebdo is notorious for their political and religious satire and while what they published was deemed offensive by the terrorists who sought revenge, they did not deserve the attack on their facility in 2011 and no one deserved to lose their lives in the recent attack this month.   No one who is truly religious will act violently in the name of their faith.  No religion urges people to kill in the name of their God.   I watch the news with my hand pressed to my lips far too many times as I see the result of cruel acts of the ruthless on the innocent but what concerns me is that I am not experiencing the shock and grief of 9-11. I watched the news reports on the cowardly and brutal slayings of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa last October.  I watched  the coverage of the  Sydney Cafe Siege in Australia, the Peshawar School attacks in Pakistan and the terror attacks in Paris and I cannot recall a time when I did not see footage of the unending violence in the Middle East or civil war in Africa.  As I wrote this this week, there was breaking news that ISIS had taken two Japanese men hostage and are demanding an exorbitant amount of money for their release to the tune of $200 million dollars.  When will the terror and hatred stop?   I have come to a point in my life where it seems I almost expect to see this horror and more than ever I find myself wondering what good people can do to eradicate evil.  Could our world be saved if we all pursued balance amid the chaos that is terrorism?  Could we perhaps be more mindful of what we say out loud?  As Chopra says, if what we say is not useful or kind should we say it?  Should we offend and provoke and put people’s lives at risk?  And on the flip side, how dare we decide that killing in the name of any God is justified? Since when do mere mortals get to decide that any God promotes violence over peace?

Standing up to terror by going on with our lives and pretending to shun fear is a valid and valiant way to counteract it but it isn’t enough.  Saying and doing whatever we want whenever we want is our democratic right but perhaps we need to think about how far is too far.  People are dying and I am not sure it will end if we don’t find other ways to stop the senseless acts of violence.  Free speech is truly the right of humankind but most of us don’t go up to people and out rightly insult them.  What is the point of teaching our children to be accepting of all people regardless of their culture, race, religion or creed when we can’t set an example for them?

So what do we do? If the majority of us approach others with kindness and love and turn our back on violence and hatred can we count on those who resort to horrific measures to turn their back on evil and work to create a balance among all people and nations so that we can live in peace among each other in spite of our differences?

In conclusion, I cannot come to a conclusion.  This topic has been on my mind for a couple months and I have been working on writing my thoughts on it for a week.  I’m afraid in trying to raise points about embracing peace and putting it into practice, I have discovered that we may not be able to change the world even if the majority of us puts forth our efforts.  Maybe evil carried out by a minority is stronger than all the love and good intentions of many.  Maybe (and I am afraid this statement might be true) we may never find peace and we may never be able to create a balance among mankind because it only takes just a little bit of evil to tip the scale.  But in the small space I occupy on the planet, I will try to move forward everyday with love.  I will teach my children the value of peace, love and kindness and I will continue to hope that some day we humans will figure out that underneath the surface, under our skin we are all the same and we need the same things to survive.