OVERCOMING ADVERSITY blog hop to help a champion

http://www.nickwilford.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/overcoming-adversity-blogfest.html

Help Nick Wilford's amazing stepson, Andrew.

If you don't know, Andrew has cerebral palsy and is coming to the end of his time at Stanmore House School in Lanark, a fantastic place that he has attended since joining the nursery class about fifteen years ago.

Nick believes that the input from his teachers, and the technology available at the school, have helped shape him into the talented individual he is today. Unfortunately post-18 things don't look quite so good in Scotland.

 

Andrew was basically told he would be attending Motherwell College (no element of choice),

where he would be doing the "Access-8" course

which more or less amounts to daycare

(fingerpainting and the like),

nothing that was going to push him to develop,

or end up with a career.

 

Nick and Andrew have now settled on Beaumont College in Lancaster,

 

which Andrew has visited and offers amazing facilities like Eye Gaze technology,

 

which would enable Andrew to use his eyes to select from different phrases and communicate much more effectively.

He is interested in following a film editing course.

 

So I would like you to write something in that vein:

overcoming adversity for something you believe in.

It can either be a flash fiction piece,

or an episode from your real life.

Poetry is fine too.

The Rules:

* Sign up on the linky list on Nick's blog

* Please keep your entry to 500 words

* Please post on either Monday 4th or Tuesday 5th February

* I'd better say, keep it family-friendly! I'm sure it will be anyway.

Err... that's it! Once it's all over, Nick will compile all the entries into the anthology

which will be released as soon as possible, with all proceeds going towards Andrew's fund.

I really hope you'll be able to join me, and please spread the word by whatever means you choose.

The more the merrier!

 The ant is Andrew's mascot and will also feature on the book's cover.

As always for constant updates on Andrew please check out his Facebook page. Thanks!

 

Here is my entry  (556 words)

 

WE WRITE OUR OWN EPITAPH

 

Seven years ago, Hurricane Rita was a category 5 hurricane.

I spent the morning running rare blood to scrambling hospitals.

I drove back home to wolf down lunch. A mandatory evacuation was issued. I went downstairs.

Someone had siphoned the gas from my car. All the gas stations were shut down. I was stranded in the path of a killer hurricane.

Alone.

Freddie, my supervisor, called checking in on me. He offered me a ride in his car as he drove beside his wife's car containing his two children.

So with the clothes on my back, my laptop on my lap, and Gypsy, my cat, in a carrier, I rode into the darkness.

The highways were log-jammed.

We drove the back roads, the cypress trees bending down over us in the blackness as if listening to our whispered voices. Freddie's eyes were hollow.

As we passed his wife's car, I saw she was frantic.

I winked at the pale faces of Freddie's two children, pulled Gypsy out of the carrier, and picked up her front paw as if she were waving at the them.

They giggled. And the grip of panic on their mother seemed to break.

Freddie studied me for a moment and said, "Dude, you're like Job."

"How so?"

"I mean you got your gas siphoned out of your car just when you needed it most."

"I bet a lot of people did."

"Yeah, but if Rita hits Lake Charles, this will be the second time you'll have lost everything.

You lost it all when your home burned. And before that you closed your business. Your mother died before that. And before that your fiancée died. And your childhood best friend died before Kathy. Damn, it's like you're Job."

I nodded, smiling sadly, "As I recall Job ended up pretty well."

"You've got a strange way at looking at life, dude."

"You're not the first to say that."

We made it to Baton Rouge where I worked delivering rare blood to all the hospitals reeling under the impact of Katrina.

I drove to the hospital of Metairie, the first suburb of New Orleans. (It is a French term for a tenant farm.)

I saw people who had only thought they knew what having nothing meant. I smelled the stench of decaying human flesh on the breath of a too silent city.

I saw young boys in uniform trying to be men under impossible conditions.

Late at night I typed the first draft of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, alone in the spacious suite afforded me by the blood center for which I worked.

It had been leased for the board of directors to oversee the new center in Baton Rouge.

So for two months I slept in a prince's suite. Gypsy was satisfied with her accommodations, she being a princess and all.

I barely saw the suite. I was always driving  --

down unfamiliar roads to hospitals protected by hollow-eyed young boys with automatic weapons and dry mouths.

On my days off, I would volunteer to drive vans for the Salvation Army, Red Cross, church groups, or out-of-state relatives frantic to find lost loved ones. There are stories in that time that haunt me still, but they belong to shattered, valiant hearts.

In the end, we write our own epitaph in the ink of our deeds