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Jake and I made a conscious choice to play only educational games with our son and daughter. It was easy because play is children's work and every game is educational. We often make up our own games, directed by Julia and Stanley's needs at the time. Jake is an Occupational Therapist, on extended sick leave. Despite his illness, he's great with matching play to need. Me, I'm the gal that washes the dishes, sweeps the floor and runs Mum's taxi after school. I'm also out of work and thoroughly depressed about it, but not as depressed as Jake gets sometimes. Despite Jake's Bipolar, he still supports us with love and has an ability to make us each feel valued.

Trying to make alphabet and language fun for the kids, Jake decided that we could try playing "A word a day." We started with "A" and today we are at "P". Over breakfast, the kids get to pick a word each. The words must start with the letter that we are playing with. Over dinner, we each say a short sentence that includes both words. Some of the things the kids come up with are simply incredible.

This morning Stanley picked Pie (his favorite food that we never ate out of respect for Jake's hatred of them) and Julia picked "Paper". Oh, oh! Jake's depression was about to get a work out: paper and pie were not helpful words for Jake. They were two items that he would avoid at all cost. How would he cope with this?

"Paper Pie", Jake tried in his usual reflective manner. "You two make it too hard for me. How will I ever come up with a sentence around Paper Pie?"

The kids were super excited because they had stumped their Dad. Jake's reflection was feigned thought. I was the only one who knew his sad childhood story around Paper Pies and I saw him sitting there, stunned, but trying to pretend otherwise.

Every time either "paper" or "pie" entered discussion or sight, Jake would go into semi emotional shut down as he remembered what he had endured as a child. The connotations of the words would sweep over him like an icy chill factor blown in from Antarctica. As the proverbial stunned Mullet would swim through his neurons, it created synaptic firings from days of old. Today was no different and I saw Jake submit to his place of sad memory. He so wanted to break the power of the old memories, to be able to enjoy eating pies or reading the paper, but his eye flickering told me that it would not be today. Jake was about to fall deep into one of his depressive spirals.

"Pass the sugar please Daddy," an external voice from the

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