Someone sent a copy of this column to me for Mother’s Day. It spoke to me
because you know what, I didn’t desire or knowingly choose to parent a child with major
special needs. I marked big fat no’s on
anything that asked if we were open to a complex syndrome or to permanent
developmental disabilities. These
conditions scared me more than anything else in adoption. And yet here I am now with a son who has
both, a son we adopted thinking he was cleft-affected and hearing impaired,
nothing more. I do feel sorry for myself
in moments of weakness, disappointment, sadness, and frustration, sorry for having to
give up dreams and being made to dream new ones, but generally I don’t have
much time or use for such self-pity. It's because I have a little boy who needs me to be the woman in this column, so I try every
single day.
Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More
Lori Borgman | Monday, May 12, 2002
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
(according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two).
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 hammering in your ear.
I wonder how you
endure the clichés 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.
