I woke at 5am this morning to odd popping noises. Ethan’s jaw sometimes makes a popping sound when he’s having a seizure, so I thought I’d better check it out, but when I got up I wondered if I was the one having a seizure, what with all the flashing lights and all.
“Ethan, are you okay sweetie?”
“Oh, it’s just me, Mom” came Mary’s voice, and I quickly found that the popping was her marker lids as she took them on and off. At 5am. By strobe light. (Side note: Her clip-on reading light isn’t supposed to be a strobe light, but it somehow worked out that way. We got it at all-a-dollar.) But when I turned on her regular lamp, she hid what she was working on. As it turns out, it was my valentine.
Sometime before six, she presented me with a box full of homemade cards that related the following story:
Legend of Velda 