Waiting For the Bus

It was at a party for her daughter's eighth birthday, in the midst of a whole lot of hoopla, that we had this conversation, the other mommy and I. As parents tend to do when en masse, we talked about our children - their quirks, their cleverness, the lengths to which our love for them had driven us. We each had a boy and a girl, but in my case, the girl was older, and in her case, the boy was, by just a few years.

Image: Teece Aronin

Our daughters were classmates at school, and that was how the other mommy and I first met. She was flamboyant and loud, but in good ways - extroverted, I should have said. She was tall and sexy and could make smoking look almost as glamorous as people thought it was back in the fifties. She could also drink like a fish but didn't seem to lose control from it. I could never imagine her sick on booze, cooling her face on the bathroom tiles like a lot of people do when they've drunk too much. She seemed to take everything in stride, made everything she did look easy. And she was a loving mother, a hands-on mother, the kind of mother who makes mud pies with her kids.

Since children's parties and parent-teacher conferences were our usual conversation venues, we didn't talk often, but I enjoyed her when we did. One time she listed for me all the reasons she'd preferred to work outside the home even when her kids were babies. She said the same thing as a lot of women who work, when financially they can afford to stay home; that the adult interaction made her a better parent. Then she jokingly confessed the "real reason" and laid it smack on her daughter's playhouse doorstep: "That kid always talked way - too - damned - much."

But that was a different time and not the conversation I'd started to tell you about. This other conversation, as I said, took place on the occasion of her daughter's eighth birthday. But we weren't talking about her daughter; we were talking about her son. We were at her home, a comfortable townhouse she shared with her family. Being at her place always cheered me up because it was cluttered and chaotic even when she entertained, and she made no apologies for it. It cheered me up because when I entertained, I either compulsively bulldozed the clutter out or compulsively apologized for it to my guests. How could I get as comfortable in my skin as she was in hers, I wondered.

Anyway, there we were, the other mommy and I, grazing from the veggie plate, when she told me that when she was a girl, she used to make fun of the "short bus," the smaller buses used to transport kids with special needs to and from school.

So this is how the kids who teased, the kids who bullied might turn out, I mused. I had never met an adult with the guts to admit to that kind of behavior, but this one had, and she'd grown up to be . . . well . . . good, in a lot of ways. I don't know if she made fun of the kids themselves, the kids with special needs, I mean, or if she just joked about the bus itself, telling her friends they belonged on one and that kind of thing. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

For the life of me, I can't remember how we got onto the topic of her son's first day of kindergarten or what possessed her to tell me something so personal, but she did. She said that she stood at the curb with him, waiting for the bus, and the picture of them was so clear in my head, her standing there with him, her son, born with Down syndrome.

And she said that what looped through her mind over and over were the words: "Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus."

I don't remember if it turned out to be a short bus or not, but maybe that doesn't matter now either.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

Mother's Day will be here soon, so I thought I'd reach way down deep in the memory drawer and pull something out that I wrote years ago and haven't looked at in a while.

A picture of me with my own son

A woman once told me about the day when her son, born with cerebral palsy, came into the house upset because some neighborhood kids had been bullying him. She stood with him in front of the full-length mirror she kept in her bedroom and said, "Look at yourself. That's your body and it's beautiful." 

After she told me that story, I wrote this poem for her. I'm sharing it here for all the mothers of children with disabilities. Your children are amazing, and they have made you more amazing too and probably stronger than you ever thought you could be. Happy Almost Mother's Day to all of you.

A Perfectly Beautiful Son

"I'm crippled and useless; the kids say I am."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son."

"Mommy, how can you say that when you know how I look?"

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You look like your father. You're lucky, my pet. He's handsome and strong. Can't you see? You belong. Be proud, my beautiful son."

"My feet drag on the ground; I fall down all the time."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when you fall down, you get right back up. You've never stayed down and I know you won't now. Get up, my beautiful son."

"My hands always shake; I spill everything."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when your hands shake, I will hold them in mine. It will steady us both; not just you but me, too. Hold tight, my beautiful son."

"My speech comes out funny; people can't understand."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And when I hear you speak, I hear magical sounds. The words are so clear and their meanings so dear. Speak out, my beautiful son."

"People think that I'm weak, just because I'm so small."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. And your heart's grown so strong, how could you be weak? To me you're so mighty, sometimes I can't speak. Stand tall, my beautiful son."

"The kids have been saying I'll wind up alone."

"You're my perfectly beautiful son. You have so much to give and a great life to live. And when the day comes that a girl sees this too, I'll love her so much - but not like I love you. But I'll love her to pieces, and I'll shout to the world, 'My son's found his true love! What a perfectly beautiful girl!"