Flotsam and Jetsam

It's not very nice of me, I know, but when I went inside the teen lounge at the JCC on Saturday night to pick Noah up, I couldn't help but think of the kids there as the "flotsam and jetsam" of the teen world. These were the misfits, the socially awkward, the physically gawky. And my child was among them.

There's no shame in that, but there is indeed a good measure of sorrow. It's hard for me not to see a group of teens and young adults such as these and think of words like 'discards' and 'remainder.' Not kind on my part, but at least honest, if that's worth anything. And it didn't help that as I slipped past folks milling outside the lounge's door to find my son, I saw him slumped on a couch, with a look on his face that seemed both pained and sad. Had he been crying, I wondered.

As I got closer, Noah's face seemed to brighten, and I realized that the outline of sorrow I thought I'd seen at a distance either hadn't been there, or had vanished. But what I saw instead was even more disturbing. Noah sat in the middle, on a cheap vinyl coach, and to his right sat another teen, slumped even lower than Noah had been. To Noah's right sat two teens fairly passionately kissing. Just great. I sent my disabled, highly communicatively impaired child to a program that allows other impaired teens to probe the inside of each other's mouths and god knows what else, inches away from other impaired teens. And where the hell were the staff? Is this being encouraged as "typical" behavior?

Don't get me wrong; I don't begrudge disabled teens their hormonal impulses, but these are not kids who necessarily know what's appropriate, or where boundaries are to be drawn. Maybe it sounds like a loony leap, but I immediately wondered whether those teens--or others in the program--had been groping one another. Or if they'd groped my son. That would be my son whose default is to be cooperative and kind, and even when I know he's been miserable, to say that he had fun.

I can't give the staff a pass on this. I can't chalk it up to the chaos of dismissal. I don't send my child out of the house to a staff-monitored program for him to be in a place in which groping, kissing, fondling and the like go unnoticed, unremarked upon. This is just one more way to remind me that the only people who can or will ever protect my son are the people who know him best, and love and care about him most.

Maybe Noah is part of the flotsam and jetsam of disabled teen-dom, but he still deserves caring, concern, and protection. Maybe it's precisely because he's part of this motley crew of young adults that he deserves all that in greater doses and higher concentrations than do other youth.

That Telltale Smile

She asked for her mommy as she got on the lift. Her dad told her that mommy would meet them later. We rode up quietly together, just the four of us. I always love watching fathers with their daughters, especially when the interaction is so sweet and loving. I didn't notice, until she was getting off the lift, that this little girl has Down's Syndrome. I wanted to say something to her father, to tell him how touched I was to see him with his daughter. I knew it would come out the wrong way, so I said nothing.

As I watched father and daughter ski off, with dad holding his poles horizontally in front of him so his daughter could hold onto and be guided by them, I just thought that we've got it so wrong. We follow the burps and tweets of every version of idiot on the planet, but we too often fail to notice the true giants among us, the everyday heros. Here was a parent not outsourcing his job, not abandoning ship, not making excuses. Here was a dad having a day out with his daughter, just the two of them skiing.

Of course I've no idea what the back story is here. Maybe there's something not so heroic in this family's history. If so, that would just make them like the rest of us. But parents like him deserve a shout-out. Yes, I've got a horse in this race, but it's just true that it's harder to be the parent of a special needs child. And hell, it's harder to be the siblings, too.

I know more heros than I ever thought I would, people whose generosity and tenacity in just getting through another day leaves me in awe of them. There are Elizabeth, Diane and Jane, all raising kids with personalities rocked be emotional instability. There's Laurie, who smiles through the toughest days, and whose stories about sun-up runs to the donut shop always make me laugh.

There are the people whose names I don't know, like the mom who walked behind her son as he wheeled himself into the adaptive center for his day on the slopes. There was Taylor, a local boy who slurred his words and told my son, "I remember you, NG." And then he invited us to watch him sing in his school musical.

I watch my own husband with our kids and I think: "Never was born--or will be born--a man who gives more of himself to his kids." On his worst day, he's a better man and father than most.

That father and daughter on that ski run reminded me of how all the therapy, expertise and advice in the world can't begin to stack up against the only thing that ever matters to kids, and ever will. A parent's unconditional love and acceptance.

The Joke's On...Me?

So yesterday, Noah says to me, "Why is six afraid of seven?" I wasn't sure what he was getting at. Was it a real question? Slight pause, and then it occurred to me that this might be a joke. "What, Noah?" "Why is six afraid of seven?" "I don't know, Noah. Why is six afraid of seven?" "Because seven eight nine." "That's really funny, Noah." "Ha. Ha. Ha," came Noah's reply. Followed immediately by "I don't get it." Noah. In a nutshell.