![\"ECS12Candles\"](\"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ECS12Candles.jpg\" "\\"ECS12Candles\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nDiagnosis<\/strong> \u2014 Sharon Olds<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is my daughter blowing out her birthday candles last year. Today she enters her teen years (!), chronologically leaving childhood behind; yet in reality she is straddling two worlds. In her are blended right now the growing thoughtful awareness and surprising wry humor of a young woman, and the openheartedness and generous, candid spontaneityRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[55,48,39,17,19,3],"class_list":["post-5147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sketchbook","tag-birthday","tag-ecs","tag-food","tag-penink","tag-poem","tag-watercolor"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5153,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5147\/revisions\/5153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eachdayisacelebration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy the time I was six months old, she knew something
\nwas wrong with me. I got looks on my face
\nshe had not seen on any child
\nin the family, or the extended family,
\nor the neighborhood. My mother took me in
\nto the pediatrician with the kind hands,
\na doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
\nHub Long. My mom did not tell him
\nwhat she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
\nIt was just these strange looks on my face\u2014
\nhe held me, and conversed with me,
\nchatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
\nsaid, She\u2019s doing it now! Look!
\nShe\u2019s doing it now! and the doctor said,
\nWhat your daughter has
\nis called a sense
\nof humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
\nback to the house where that sense would be tested
\nand found to be incurable.<\/p>\n<\/a>Eileen<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n