A written hug for moms "like us"
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| Sat, 09-03-2005 - 9:13pm |
Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More
written by: Lori Borgman
Columnist and Speaker
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 pages 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. Every body 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 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.
~~~
Have a wonderful holiday weekend, ladies!
~ Chelsea (Justus & Noelle's mom)

That was beautiful, Chelsea....thanks!
Michelle