a mother who wanted 10 fingers & 10 toes, but got something more...

My friend's expecting her first child. People keep asking what she wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head & 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 & 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 & 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 & 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 & fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park & 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 & 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 & 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 & 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'm 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 withlungs & limbs working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents & 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'll be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been minimal & manageable, so I watch with keen interest & great admiration the mothers of children with serious disabilities & wonder how they do it. Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in & out of a wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track medications, regulate diet & serve as the gate keeper to a hundred specialists yammering in your ear. I wonder how you endure the clichés & the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God's at work when you've occasionally questioned if God's on strike. I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces like this one -- saluting you, painting you as hero & saint, when you know you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this. You didn't jump up & 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 & 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've 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 & tender one minute & when circumstances require intense & aggressive the next. You're the mother, advocate & protector of a child with a disability. You're a neighbor, a friend, the stranger I pass at the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin & my sister-in-law. In some cases you're not the woman that gave birth to this child, but instead you've even surpassed her in that, you're the woman that 'chose' to adopt this child even knowing what was in store for you & your family down the road. You easily could've said, "No thanks, I'll wait for the next 'healthy' child to parent", but instead you pulled up your bootstraps & said, "I'm ready, with God on my side, I can do this". You're a woman who wanted ten fingers & ten toes & got something more. You're a wonder.

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this was sent to me by a friend of mine (laurie s)... i read it, thought it was very beautifully written about these mothers who give so much of themselves for their children... i emailed her thanking her for sending it as it was beautiful... she replied back with, "I thought so & passed it on to those mom's that get something more, but Do GREAT!!!!!"... it wasn't until i read that sentence that i even stopped to think that 'I' was one of 'these moms' the story's talking about... i was so touched as i'd never looked at myself that way... i thank god for allowing me the opportunity to raise the children we've got & for ruby, being as she is & causing me to be 'one of these moms'... i'm humbled...