I yelled at my mother this past weekend. Not my finest moment by any stretch of the imagination.
It was pretty much a given that something would get to me after typing up a post about how accepting I am of Charlie’s disability, and this past weekend something did.
It started on Thursday. Charlie had a Feldenkrais session and at the end his practioner noted that “he was trying so hard to talk.” That little phrase hit me harder than I expected, but I brushed it off in the process of getting one disabled preschooler and two infants out to my car.
Two days later my mom made the same observation with a smile on her face, and I lost it. I yelled at her to just stop saying that.
And why? I’m still not exactly sure. I mean, I should be excited to hear this–my mostly silent boy making attempts at communication.
But it feels the opposite. I can do nothing to help him with this. I can’t move his tongue for him, I can’t make it easier to vocalize. I have no choice but to sit here and see him struggle to do something that comes effortlessly to most. I’m helpless. A part of me wishes that he wouldn’t even try because it would hurt me less. Great mom, huh?
I can accept that my ideas and thoughts about the future will be different than what I thought. I can accept that there are things that my child will never do. What’s harder is accepting that there are things he wants that are out of reach, things I can’t give him. That’s the hard pill to swallow.



