The Melanie Files
Shelley J Alongi

 

Instalment 4 of The Melanie Files

Plane Truth

It’s September now and there is plenty to write about Melanie. The latest involves, not Richard, my deaf friend, but the recent accident at the Fullerton airport. I’ve been getting cards together for the two men injured in the crash and so we took pictures of each of the children so we could send cards to them with their pictures and messages. I explained to Melanie that we were going to send her picture to a man who was injured in the plane crash. She just grew silent for a moment and then she said “Were you in it, Shelley?”

Me, in that plane? If only…I just kind of sat there for a minute and said: “No, not this time.”

So what does that tell you? It tells me even a six year old knows I like planes. If she hears the word “plane” she thinks of me? Good!

Later we were talking about one of the man’s injuries and we were saying that maybe we could all meet at one time. Kara, Melanie’s sister, asked if he was the one who brought her doughnuts.

No, no, we said, you don’t’ know him. Melanie has already decided she doesn’t like him. Wait, wait, wait, you have to understand something! Melanie says that about everyone…especially if she does like that person. She didn’t like Richard either when they first met and now she loves him..except she keeps telling me she doesn’t like him. You’ll just have to read further down here to tell you just “how much she likes him!

The Tickle Game

“Old lady!” Melanie shrieks, which is a signal to me to get on the bed and tickle her. A simple “lady” means I have to push her on the bed. So everytime they come to my house it’s all about “The tickle game” on my big bed. Some people have called it an aircraft carrier. The “Tickle game” is pretty much about the only action that occurs there and it can get frantic. Arms and legs flailing, baby doll laughter, and well just fun!

Doughnuts Are the Way to a Girl’s Heart?

If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, then perhaps the way to a girl’s heart isn’t diamonds, after all…at least not when you’re six years old and cute as a bug! Melanie loves doughnuts, you see, and anyone who brings them is on her list forever. So Richard, my deaf friend, was more than happy to oblidge her…when he comes back to her house. When I explained to him that Melanie loved doughnuts he said he could go to Crispy Cream and FedEx her some doughnuts. Now that’s love! J:
Getting Her Way

When a six-year-old can make a man get up and move from one spot to another while watching tv…what does that hold for her future? We were recently at her house watching sci fi. Everyone was curled on the couch. Melanie, though, was in distress. It seemed in the six year old world, that everything was amiss, because I, Shelley, was in “Richard’s spot.” Melanie likes to sit with Richard and so I had committed a grave mistake. What was I to do? I went to Richard and fingerspelled that Melanie wanted him to sit with her. The rest, as they say, is history. The man who can be so unyielding when it comes to an advocacy project, got up and sat next to a six year old! It was Melanie after all! By the way, my latest complaint is that if Richard and I go to her house…it’s all about him, forget me!

**Installment Three of the Melanie files
Scroll down to the double astrisk (**) to read the older part of this document

He Must Think We’re Crazy!
Saturday April 17 was a break for more than one person except Olga who spent a lot of time cooking that day! Her act was together, though in her newly remodeled kitchen. My friend Richard had met the kids a week ago and wanted to spend some time this weekend with them since he had a break in his schedule. He runs a small agency for the deaf (he’s deaf), and sometimes they conduct fund raisers on Saturdays. There was no such activity this Saturday. So I asked if I could come along since graduate studies can really wait and he agreed so we left around 10:45 and showed up there with sodas and ice-cream and the laptop by which we communicate when we’re not signing, and, of course, Melanie was there to meet us! I think between Melanie and Kara I should probably be in the emergency room right now with several broken bones and missing body parts, but I managed to get home in one piece, even if I couldn’t figure out Richard’s finger spelling when we parted…we’ll just blame it on Melanie! “I’m plum tuckered out, the kids wore me out or amused me I can’t figure out which” I told Richard when I was planning to pack up the baby (laptop) and go. Ah what fun! Food, sci fi, lying on the floor…and Melanie spitting on me or jumping on me. It was a constant battle to see if she would spit on me or if I could turn her frantic attempts away at the last moment. I was positioned in the recliner with 47 pounds of five-year-old on top of me, so I would physically turn her so that her face was away from me, which meant serious manhandling and a lot of laughter.

“Richard is watching us” she said once, so we gave him a show and I don’t know what he thought of it but I’m sure he’s starting to wonder about the sanity level of this wild girl who insists on helping him out with communication skills and letter writing, sometimes. “Okay” Olga said later, “you’re fired!” That was a reference to my comment that I want to be one of his administrative assistants! Thanks, Melanie, now you’ve done it! But it was **so** much fun, and harmless, and just amusing and so Melanie! J:

Dragging me up the stairs, jumping from the bed onto me, carrying her in the back yard on my shoulders, and then the culmination…Melanie feeding Shelley eggs! It was our second meal of the day after excellent enchiladas (oh they were yummy), and Melanie decided instead of feeding herself she had to feed me. If we had only had a video camera it would have been one of those moments you could enter into a contest! Richard, sitting across from us, looked at us like “okay” and mom was in the kitchen. Melanie was having fun and I was experiencing the adult form of high-chair reality, except I didn’t make that big of a mess! So Melanie had her first experience with feeding someone else, except I wasn’t resisting, but the visual, as they say, was overwhelming! Or as I like to say, the visual was stunning!

One of the ways we communicate with Richard since I am blind is through a laptop with an external keyboard plugged into it so we can use two keyboards. Melanie has decided she likes Richard now after initially being frightened away by his silence. They’re friends now and they’ve been engaging in thumb wrestling and so it’s safe to say he has been adopted. As I was sitting on the floor typing something, Melanie decided she wanted to help me, so we designed a system (which I seem to be adept at doing these days) whereby she would type the letters on the left-hand side of the keyboard and I would type the letters on the right-hand side. Sometimes I’d let her type out whole words, especially when she wanted to say “I like you” to him. I think that would have made an excellent video shot, too, but the egg experience, oh boy, that was a good one! I wish I had been more hungry, but we had eaten strawberry short cake and ice-cream, and well, …where was the camera? At home or at the store!

It’s hard to explain the whole day because it was mostly about Melanie wanting to use me as a horse, or a spring board, or a landing pad, or target practice, and so I had to do a thorough check when the day was over to see that no important body parts were missing! Oh and wait, before you go calling me a victim and demanding I fight for my rights, let me just say that I was complicit in the whole scheme!

I’m surprised I’m not sore today. I’m actually relaxed and ready to make pancakes! But as I flew down the stairs for the last time I made a show of checking for all parts and found them all intact.

We kept interrupting the sci fi experience by walking in front of the TV but we didn’t get any complaints since our forays into the video paradise were brief. I asked Richard at one point if the frolicking upstairs caused vibrations. He said yes. In other words we were basically out of hand!

I have discovered, on further investigation, in regard to my body that my right arm is sore, but that doesn’t count because it was injured three years ago). But the big thing is that I can’t talk. Somehow after all the vocal play, the screaming, the funny sounds and well just talking I’m a little hoarse today, but none the worse for wear. The thing that remains to be said about Melanie and Saturday is that I’m convinced Richard thinks we’re crazy and just won’t say it.

 He wouldn’t be entirely mistaken! Two weeks ago they all traipsed over here and stayed a few days. Saturday we had an NFB meeting and I asked Richard if he wanted to come and see us. He got on the computer in here to talk to someone and that meant that the girls traipsed in and threw me on the bed. It was half an hour of the same thing all over again.

“So do you think we’re crazy?” I asked Richard.

“I’m not sure how to answer that one,” he commented.

Ah c’mon be honest you can say we’re nuts! We all say the same thing anyway!

**Funny Things Melanie Says
December, 2003

Today I talked to Melanie on the phone. She has this idea in her head that my friend Lori is driving her to my house on Saturday and she’s going to spend the night and spend three days at my house. She has her nightgown in her bag and she’s all ready to come here. But I’m going to her house for Christmas so I don’t know why she thinks she’s coming here, except that she is coming to my house on Saturday. Melanie is the kind of girl who can play for hours by herself making up conversations in different voices. She can amuse herself; I think she’s on her way to being creative; maybe a writer or an artist, we’ll see which ones work out well.

January 11, 2004

Well Melanie ended up coming to my house for Christmas. Their kitchen sink is in the midst of a major remodel so they all piled over here and stayed for a week and a half for my New year’s day party. Melanie had one question she always asked me: “Can you play with me?” Melanie wanted me to push her onto my bed. She would call me “old lady.” “Do you want a piece of me, lady? You’re going to pay for it!” Then when she said “old lady” I pushed her on the bed and she would say “I’m busted.” Can you tell that Melanie grows up around boys?

Melanie also thinks she can come to my house at night and stay at her house during the day. Ok that’s interesting logic. I won’t ask a five-year-old how she figures that one out!

Melanie also can get moody. It’s the hardest thing in the world for me to discipline her. I dislike it with a passion akin to my passion for flight! I love flight; I loathe disciplining Melanie with the same intensity, but I do it. It doesn’t take much; Melanie knows when she’s in trouble and I’m always glad when that’s over. She is a very good girl though so her disciplining is rare and gentle. She has been taught from an early age as have her brothers and sister that when “mom” or “Shelley” say something, they mean it. They have all benefited wonderfully from such consistent standards. They’re not perfect, but it does make child management a heck of a lot easier!

Note: It looks like Melanie is coming over in two weeks for two days in early March (2004) so I’m sure I’ll have more stories!
Stay Tuned for Updates from The Melanie Files!

**Part One
Everyone has a favorite baby at least one time in their lives, I suppose. Well, Melanie is my favorite baby, except she’s not a baby anymore. Melanie Elizabeth Peterkin is five years and four months old at this writing. She is definitely cute. Melanie came home from the hospital on July 10, 1998. I still have a picture of her on one of my pianos framed in one of those cheap frames you can buy at any drug/convenience store. I need a more current picture of her. I think I have one, actually now that I think about it. Melanie is known by several names: baby, because she’s the youngest of four children, Monkey, because she likes to climb. She also likes to walk on all fours (she thinks she’s a dog) and she insists that she’s not a monkey! Maybe she’s a dog! Another nickname for her is Melanie Bell which of course has to come from me because everyone I know gets a nickname based on their profession or relationship to me. But mostly she gets called Baby.

I remember when Melanie was born. It was a Wednesday, July 8, four days before my birthday. Melanie came home in a car seat and I think it must have been love at first sight for me, anyway. She was pretty happy to see me, too, that night, I suppose, because her mom let me give her a bottle. Melanie nursed, but for the first few days for some reason we gave her formula, so I got to feed her. I also got to sleep with her because Melanie decided early-on that she didn’t want to stay in her crib. When we were living at the apartments (I lived with them for two months in 1998 because her mom’s husband had a stroke and was in convalescent care and Melanie was due to come at any time), we had a big king-size bed. I shared it with mom and so then Melanie came to join us and so when I was there I would pick her up and sleep with her. I picked her up and played with her and soon she was attached and I couldn’t leave without her knowing it. One night I called a cab home and Melanie was asleep. I left the house and when I got home, her mom called and said that Melanie had gone into each room looking for me, and she was crying, too. I think I’ve only made one other person cry when I left their house, and I’m sure he didn’t cry for very long. But Melanie cried and oh goodness that was just another story. Melanie cried every time I left until she was about five years old. She would get moody ad quiet, sit down and pout with her face curled up in that little pout that said she didn’t want to talk about it and wouldn’t talk about it so don’t even dare ask about anything. Melanie cries when she gets very tired, too. The other week when I stayed at her house I found her taking a box of staples and breaking them in half. I told her no we didn’t play with those not in any harsh way, and she cried and cried and cried. I remember August 9, 2002 very specifically because I was going to go take my first flight in a small plane and the kids had come over to spend the night. About 3:00 that afternoon they went home and Melanie just wouldn’t stop crying. She was standing on her chair at Cocas animatedly saying “Apple pie” and then two hours later she was crying. Now Melanie didn’t say “apple **pie)* she said ”apple” pie. It was always very cute.
It’s hard to know what to say exactly about Melanie because none of it is objective, it’s definitely all subjective.

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Shelley J Alongi
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