Lily’s Pad

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 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 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.