Joining Their Ranks

Today, I salute you, my friends, who happen to be the mother of a child with a disability. You've become an enormous part of my life the past 9 months. You've been a gift to me in more ways than I can express. I am sorry that before Oliver was diagnosed I overlooked you. You weren't at the places I used to go. I have found you now, you are at the children's hospital, on the seizure message boards, in the surgical waiting rooms, on the wheelchair ramp. I never dreamed I would join your ranks but, I am honored to be counted among you! 

Happy Mother's Day: Mothers Lie

By Lori Borgman

Expectant mothers waiting for a newborn's arrival say they don't care what
sex the baby is. They just want to have ten fingers and ten toes.

Mothers lie.

Every mother wants so much more.
She wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button
nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.
She wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being
flat-out ugly.

She 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 a mother wants what a mother wants.

Some mothers get babies with something more.

Maybe you're one who got a baby with a condition you couldn't pronounce, a
spine that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome or a palate that didn't close.
The doctor's words took your breath away.
It was just like the time at recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see
the kick ball coming, and it knocked the wind right out of you.

Some of you left the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even
years later, took him in for a routine visit, or scheduled him for a checkup, and
crashed head first into a brick wall as you bore the brunt of devastating
news.
It didn't seem possible.
That didn't run in your family.
Could this really be happening in your lifetime?

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, therapy or surgery.
Mothers of children with disabilities live the limitations with them.

Frankly, I don't know how you do it.
Sometimes you mothers scare me.
How you lift that kid in and out of the wheelchair twenty times a day.
How you monitor tests, track medications, and serve as the gatekeeper to a
hundred specialists yammering in your ear.

I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, the 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 columns 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 let me do it for you. From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack.
You've developed the strength of the draft horse while holding onto the
delicacy of a daffodil.
You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July,
counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule.

You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability.
You're a neighbor, a friend, a woman I pass at church and my sister-in-law.
You're a wonder.

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Lori Borgman is a syndicated columnist and author of All Stressed Up and No
Place To Go.