Colleen only ever knew life with a disabled sister. She did not have the experience of being an only baby in the household, or always having to play catch-up to her older sisters. Instead, she had the odd experience of having caught up and surpassed one sister, why not catch-up to the other sister?
The sister she did catch-up to may have been four years older, but she would always progress at a slower rate. The sister six years older than her would always be moving at a steady pace. It’s hard to catch-up when the other person is older and has some amazing skill sets. But, dang it, Colleen was driven when it came to intellectual pursuits.
Colleen was given the part of the narrator in the kindergarten play because she could already read. Her peers were given one sentence to memorize. Everyone in her class had a speaking part, but she, as the narrator, would tell the story. She came home one day crying and throwing the script at me. “I’m not doing it. It is too much to memorize.”
I reached out to the teacher to see if the expectation was for Colleen to read or memorize. The teacher assured me there was no expectation for her to memorize. The part was given to her because she could read. I spent time helping her when she still wanted to memorize her lines.
The play was going to be done in the early evening so all the parents could get there to see their budding thespians. Colleen was dressed as Mrs. Claus and was perched up on a high stool. She starts telling the story… pauses for the first elf to enter and say a line and then she proceeds. Every few sentences she pauses, and another elf enters and says a line. After several of these I could hear whisperings of, who’s child is that playing Mrs. Claus. I whispered back to one, ‘ours, she was given that part because she can read. She was supposed to be reading the narrative.’
When Colleen was in sixth grade, Andrea was a senior and had signed up for a Shakespeare course. The seniors were informed the first day of school that year that it would not be happening. The teacher hired resigned in the first few days of school, unable to find someone else, the retired Shakespeare professor said he would come in and teach the course. Colleen wanted desperately to take the class—this was her opportunity, only she was in sixth grade. She ended up receiving a packet of material of what was being done in class that she could review on her own. She would not be graded, but she did all the assignments and tests on her own. Andrea was the go between, bringing Colleen the packets of material and returning assignments and tests to Doc Davis. She received no credit for this, but that was not a motivating factor for her. The seniors also realized that Andrea’s younger sister was doing as well or better than some of them.
Colleen pushed herself to do more, learn more, read more. Her brain was like this giant sponge trying to soak up as much knowledge as it possibly could. Her need to learn extended to music as well.
As a toddler she had heard a fiddler, Natalie MacMaster, playing at a folk music festival. When she was 4-years-old Natalie was playing at the local Scottish Games. We attended the games as older sister Andrea was expressing interest in learning how to play the bagpipes. When we went to the venue to watch Natalie playing, it was already packed. There were only three seats available, one in the front row at the right-hand end and two right behind it. Forrest and Andrea had the two seats with Sheila on her dad’s lap. Colleen sat on my lap. She was transfixed by Natalie’s step-dancing as she played the fiddle. She looks back at me and says, “I want to do that…”
We found a Suzuki violin teacher and got her started. This teacher liked to work one-on-one with students and then group similar age and ability students for monthly group lessons. Colleen was advancing well, and her teacher knew about Colleen’s interest in folk music. When Ms. P heard that Natalie would be in the area, she went to the concert so she would have an idea of just what was capturing Colleen’s interest. Colleen was fortunate to have this wonderfully supportive teacher for several years, however she would decide to retire a year before I would have wished it.
There was a violin teacher I was interested in switching Colleen to when Colleen reached this other teacher’s age requirement. Colleen was a couple years shy of it when Ms. P retired. Ms. P recommended another teacher. It was clear right from the start that this was never going to work long term. When you have an intense teacher with an intense student there is a high probability of, well… tension. A lot of tension.
We found another teacher that suited Colleen’s learning style well. One of the things Colleen detested was the repetitive scales—this week the scale in C, next week in G, the following week in D and so on. She didn’t see the point of them, and as the teacher had not yet taught her how to shift her hand to reach higher notes, the scales were limited to what could be played in first position. Boring… Colleen was ready to quit. It was time to find someone else.
The new teacher that was recommended to us said at her first lesson, “I will only be teaching you one scale, but you are going to learn it inside and out, up and down, the full range of the violin. In doing this you will learn how to shift your hand into any position. You will learn how to play arpeggios, double stops, playing in fifths, fourths, thirds, sevenths and full octave double stops anywhere on the finger board. When you get done, all you have to do to play in a different key is to move your hand up or down a step, a half-step or wherever you need it to be to play in that key.”
This was music to Colleen’s ears. She knew what the purpose was for learning this scale. He was excellent at giving her the reasons behind what he was teaching, which made her far more willing to try. She worked with him for several years until the day came when she asked to drop lessons from her busy middle school schedule. We had the discussion about whether she still wanted to play traditional tunes, and yes, she did. So, I made a deal with her. If she practiced, on her own with no prompts from me, 45-minutes a day, 6-days a week, then yes, she could stop taking lessons.
It was the next summer she would be given an opportunity to stay one week with fiddle mentor, Donna Hébert. To prep for a week of potentially playing the fiddle up to 5 hours a day, in June of that year Colleen started extending her 45-minute practice sessions by 5-minute increments, progressing to 15-minute increments and 30-minute increments until she could play 5 hours a day in mid-July. We had a completely different fiddler come home from that experience. She had learned the “language” of Quebecois fiddling as opposed to Cape Breton style, New England, or Scottish style fiddling.
Like her oldest sister, Andrea, Colleen would sometimes be so close to Sheila and other times be more withdrawn from her. Has having a sibling with a disability impacted Colleen? How could it not? However, I suspect Colleen’s inner drive to excel academically and musically would still have been a part of her.
Are there things a parent can do to help the typical siblings in the family?
Make sure their needs are being met as well as the sibling with the disability. Is that always easy? No.
Have age-appropriate discussions about their sibling’s disability. Make sure typical siblings know that it was nothing they “did”, nor can they “catch” it.
If your typical kiddos have questions or concerns in the present or for the future, address them. Touch base more than once, as they grow their concerns may alter.
Was it all spun sugar and fairy tales in our home? No. Sometimes we all had to put in hard yards as we worked through challenges. But it was worth every bit of those “hard yards.”
Awesome writing and of course Colleen’s early life’s story! I watched her growing up and yet she is still amazing.