Part III of III
For years I kept a closest full of empty boxes for a moving day that never came. I saved the boxes for crystal vases, knick-knacks, anything. I wanted to return to the coast.
Eventually I had to make room in the house for our first baby. I was forced to clean out my closet. With my belly obscuring any indication that I still had feet, I stood on a chair and pulled down each box, flattening them one at a time, all by myself. It was slow, laborious, just as my first delivery was about to be. Here’s what I wrote:
Making room for a new life
meant cleaning out the closet
filled to the ceiling
with empty boxes
Saved to hold
the dishes, crystal and keepsakes
for the moving day
that never came.
With each box
I flattened
the long-held desire
of my spirit
Forced to release
the life fantasized
for the one
to be lived.
At the time I thought I was surrendering to life. I see it much differently now. I’d say it’s the point at which I gave up. There certainly are times to give up, but not at life.
In the words of Mother Theresa, “Life is life, fight for it.”
Sometimes losing the game after a valiant effort is what it takes to really win—not on the scoreboard—but at life. Life is learning how “to be obedient to events,” said child advocate Maria Montessori.
Nothing could ring more true to a parent with a special needs child. So much about wrapping my head around the fact that I have a child with a disability has been about facing myself—surrendering—allowing her to change me. It hasn’t meant being fatalistic or giving up. It’s been a lesson in acceptance. I can’t make it go away, no matter how many therapies I schedule or how many specialists I consult.
I think my white flag finally went up when the swine flu sent me into my panic swim. The protective layers wrapped around my heart like the paper skin of an onion began to unpeel. The deeper the layer, the thicker it got until at last all that was left was my core.
By that point my daughter couldn’t take any more. She was exhausted. Worn out. Tired. Not one more therapy. Not one more day of school. She was done.
My spirit finally broke free in a blast of emotion powerful enough to knock a man down. My head felt as if it split open. I saw my life. I had given up. Not when my daughter’s intense needs came along but years before.
This moment manifested in front of someone I didn’t know well. It was intense. We all were crying. This person forced me to open my eyes and I could see that they cared. And that’s what did it. Someone who cared.
With my white flag waving, I no longer need the old ways of doing things: The approval-seeking and the proving, for what? To show I know what to do? That I know how to care for a child with so many needs? I see now that I spent my life striving toward an unattainable standard set by people who keep moving the target with the shallow goal of keeping themselves in control. I am supposed to set myself aside so that they feel better about themselves? I don’t need to know the answer for the countless physicians who, in their white coats, fix their glare on me and give me option A or B, awaiting proof that I am a competent parent. Would you like to rip out her toenails or run the risk of repeated pain and infection?
It comes down to this. My daughter’s suffering saved my life. That’s a lot for a mother to face.
I have learned that I must climb aboard, sit back, let life unfold, and be open to the people and events that cross my path.
“When life asks…answer with love,” are the words of poet Nancy Wood.
–Jennifer Sandmann
