Just Something To Share

This was posted on our 1p36 Yahoo Support Group website and I thought I'd share it with all of you. As parents supporting each other we share these kind of things often. I think of all the parents of disabled children and marvel at their courage. Disabilites come in all shapes and sizes. I know many parents raising children with Autism and they too are so strong and wonderful. Anyway, here it is and I hope you enjoy reading it.

SOME MOTHERS GET BABIES WITH SOMETHING MORE...

My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she
wants. She
smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have
given
throughout the ages of time. She says it doesn't matter whether it's
a boy or a
girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes. Of course,
that's what
she says. That's what mothers have always said.
Mothers lie.
Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother
wants a
perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose,
beautiful
eyes and satin skin. Every mother wants a baby so gorgeous that
people will pity
the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly. Every mother wants a baby
that will
roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule. Every
mother
wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the
billions. She wants a kid that can
smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of
the entire
ballet class. Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we
want.
Some mothers get babies with something more. Some mothers get babies
with
conditions they can't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, a missing
chromosome
or a palette that didn't close. Most of those mothers can remember
the time, the
place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the
small,
suffocating room where the doctor uttered the words that took their
breath away.
It felt like recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick
ball coming
and it knocked the wind clean out of you. Some mothers leave the
hospital with a
healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, take him in for a
routine visit,
or schedule her for a well check, and crash head first into a brick
wall as they
bear the brunt of devastating news. It can't be possible! That
doesn't run in our family. Can this really be happening in our
lifetime?
I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing
finely
sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The
athletes
appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an
ounce of flab
or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs working
in perfect
harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through
the contents
and pulls out an inhaler. As I've told my own kids, be it on the way
to physical
therapy after a third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo
cardiogram,
there's no such thing as a perfect body. Everybody will bear
something at some
time or another.
Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it
will be
unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or
surgery. The
health problems our children have experienced have been minimal and
manageable,
so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the mothers of
children with
serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly, sometimes
you mothers
scare me. How you lift that child in and out of a wheelchair 20 times
a day. How
you monitor tests, track medications, regulate diet and serve as the
gatekeeper
to a hundred specialists yammering in your ear. I wonder how you
endure the
praise and the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God
is at work
when you've occasionally questioned if God is on strike. I even
wonder how you
endure schmaltzy pieces like this one saluting you, painting you as
hero and
saint, when you know you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite.
You didn't
volunteer for this. You didn't jump up and down in the motherhood
line yelling,
"Choose me, God! Choose me! I've got what it takes."
You're a woman who doesn't have time to step back and put things in
perspective,
so, please, let me do it for you. From where I sit, you're way ahead
of the
pack. You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding
onto the
delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in
a glove box in July, carefully
counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You can
be warm and
tender one minute, and when circumstances require intense and
aggressive the
next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a
disability.
You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at the mall. You're
the woman I
sit next to at church, my cousin and my sister-in-law. You're a woman
who wanted
ten fingers and ten toes, and got something more.
You're a wonder.

Lori Borgman is a newspaper columnist and author. You can find her
at:
www.loriborgman. comCaroline Kupstas Daley