Mother's Lie

[Guest guest]

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.

ly, 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.

(Lori Borgman is a syndicated columnist and author of All Stressed Up

and No Place To Go)