Matt's birthday. As one of his advisors said, "He'll never learn long division but he'll always make friends." He works as a buggy gopher at a Loblaws store and on the occasions I have met him there, his co-workers all tell me what a friendly, polite young man he is - not so young any more. As I told you, he's 54 years old today. He's smart enough to be aware of his limitations. He asked me early on, "Am I going to push grocery carts for the rest of my life?" I guess. He was given his 20-year-service pin a while ago. I told him it was as significant as my Order of Canada. It meant he showed up every day, as we all must.

He's a glass-half-full kind of guy, thank goodness, and he has an amazing sense of humour and an awesome resilience, oh, and a forgiving nature. He's had his share of bullies and con artists and neglect and he moves on, hurt but not resentful. Without a birthday book or an app he remembers the birth dates of his entire family, including his nieces and nephews, as well as his friends. He has his own home, an apartment he shares under the aegis of Community Living Toronto.

It hasn't been easy. I vowed when he was born that he would grow up to be an independent person with a life of his own, a welcome guest in his siblings' homes, not an undesirable boarder, and he made it. I'm very proud of him.

And that's all I have to say about that.

My youngest child, Matthew, will be 54 years old tomorrow - hardly a child. He was due on my thirtieth birthday two weeks later but he was smart and lucky enough to get born a bit early and my paediatrician was standing by. I already had two girls and a boy, in that order, so I can say my paediatrician because by that time he was a friend of the family and boy! did Matt need a friend. He was born without any sugar in his blood; the placenta was damaged; he had been starving in the womb, weighing in at 4 pounds, 5 ounces at his birth, quite a contrast to his older brother who was 9 pounds, 10 ounces when he was born. My obstetrician had disapproved of such a big baby because he thought I shouldn't have gained so much weight, so this time he had me on amphetamines so I should stay svelte. I guess we were fortunate. Thalidomide was popular then, prescribed for pregnant women - I think to stop them being sick.

It seems simple and self-evident now that what a pregnant woman puts into her body - smoke, or alcohol or drugs, whatever - will directly affect the baby in her womb, but it seems not to have occurred to doctors at that time. Matthew was born without any sugar in his blood , and that was what did the damage to his brain. It/he could have been worse, so I was told, but my paediatrician did some amazing things to lessen the damage. Matt was hooked up to a glucose supply to fix his blood sugar level and then hung around the hospital after his mother went home without him for a couple of weeks. (Guess what I wished for when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake.)

Of course, the event changed my/our lives. I wrote a book about it, The Book of Matthew, describing some of the consequences. I have also written a chamber opera, Boy in a Cage, about him, and a film, not (yet) produced, called Six Lost Hours.

I could go on and on, and I do, but I'll stop now. Tonight I look back on my son's life. Tomorrow I will celebrate it.