two. With a total of over 2000 entertaining words that are easy for children to understand and follow, Pillowdown is really a story about the indomitable spirit of a family’s love. I want to change direction a little bit. Let me combine my own personal bouts with multiple sclerosis and how it affected my physical and mental movement, fueling inspiration for another storybook, I’m sorry but I am just a grown-up child searching for answers as to why? This is a funny, funny story inspired by my own handicap this time. I used my art to try to keep good humor, hope and mental health alive by creating good things from bad. Mirth celebrated when circumstances were trying! Movement. Resurrection of a renaissance man, again and again. Relapse, remit. Relapse, remit. Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Succeed & fail. Laugh & cry. Despair, rejoice, worry & rest, trials then peace. These are the voyages of my star life living with multiple sclerosis. 

What makes matters worse is that my mind’s vision is clear but my body is unwilling to cooperate. Then fatigue weakens my mind also! FRUSTRATIONS GALORE! I can relate to many others who may have experienced this same dichotomy of experiences and emotions. I had my first major exacerbation and introduction to a newfound friend; multiple sclerosis in 1994. "Exsqueeze me, newfound friend did you say?" More like a taskmaster or a prison guard that now resides with me, 24-7. My taskmaster guarantees that everything physical has extra weight added to it; under the lash of fatigue. This is when I was most concerned about my son’s future. He was born with spina bifida in 1988. In 1994, under extreme duress and fatigue exacerbation causes, I attempted to publish a children’s book using my drawings, my son’s condition and our struggles for a plot. It served as a therapeutic remedy. Its plot is about a dinosaur-dragon that terrorizes a child and her father. The child became the liberator to those threatened in the story

CHAPTER  TWO 

ZoeBell Fair & her Long Zolden Hair

There was one little girl that couldn’t go “Quilling“ on Mt. Roonwren to gather feathers with the other children. Her legs and feet were too weak to walk up the steep mountainside for she could only creep. This made the little girl very sad. Her name was ZoeBell Fair with the Long Zolden hair. She did not have royal blood, but no Monarch could have been more regal and true. Her father worshipped the ground she lived on. She is all he had in his simple life along with his work and deep dish Lotzarella Quizza, with red, orange and yellow peppers. Lots of Lotzarella cheese sticks with hot dipping sauce! And a bottle of Zoca-Zola to finish it off rather spicely! At the beginning of her life she had been injured by a renegade DinosaurDragon called the Spinasaurus. This Spinasaurus made a hole in her back. This injury was very grave; it might have left her totally paralyzed had not another, but friendlier, Dinosaur-Dragon called a Bumplebeast, come to her rescue. This Bumplebeast closed her wound with his wonderful healing light. This Bumplebeast’s name was the amazing Nuro! The Spinasaurus that did its dirty work was the nastiest kind of dinosaur-dragon. He was a huge ugly beast and a coward that only lived, for some odd reason, to hurt children. Hurt children he did, some much worse than others.

 No child was really safe as long as the Spinasaurus was out of control and roaming free without restraint! ZoeBell was a dreamer. She lived in a tiny cottage with a deep, deep well and a large old barn on the outskirts of Pillowdown town with her father. He ordered deep dish Quizza shell whereby he fed them both real well. Father was honored as Pillowdown Nation’s most skilled metal smith! Working with steel and copper and gold he fashioned most of the implements and hardware needed for the inhabitants who lived in Pillowdown town. These inhabitants were known as the Pillowdown Quillers, and their children as the Pillowdown Quillees!

Father was gifted at his craft ’tis true! When the village doctor suggested to her father that ZoeBell needed some sort of leg supports to help her walk better, her father became driven by the obsessive task. A miracle to perform! That very hour Father put on his white leather apron and went to create magic in his smelting workshop. The goal of his magnificent obsession was to fashion something, anything that might help ZoeBell his precious daughter to walk. He designed leg supports and shoes made of 99.9% pure Zold! Zold! Zold! Pure weightless Zold!!

[End of Chapter Reading]