SO SHE MADE ME CRY...



this is a picture of my sister whitney. some of you may be surprised to see that she is standing-- as she is now paraplegic. this picture was taken at the age of two, probably just a few months before a fateful surgery would claim her ability to walk.

well whit is now blogging on a site for disabled folk and she most recently posted this blog about her baby boy... and thanks a lot whit... you made me cry like a baby! but truly, it's a very beautiful post and i wanted to share it with all of you.

MUSINGS ABOUT MOTHERS:

My little boy started truly walking about a month ago. It surprised me at how reflective that made me, just as much as it did when my daughter started walking. Watching his toddling, precarious gait propel him across a room fills me with a huge sense of pride in his accomplishment, but also because I made that! I helped him do that. Its sounds stupid but its almost like the feeling when you make a slam dunk when you and maybe other people didn't think you could. I may be in a wheelchair but I helped my son walk and I'm damn proud of it! And its almost something I want to say to other people when they give me that smile that people give babies when they are doing something cute. "See - I taught him that!"

It also makes me think of a picture I have of me. A little strawberry blonde cherub standing there in a pink dress giving a scrunchy smile to the camera. Standing there. My mother got to help me take my first steps as well. But then it was taken away from her. I constantly marvel at my mother's fortitude throughout the years. Our family has been through so much physically, mentally and spiritually through the years that if I wrote a family biography, everyone would accuse me of making it up. And through it all she seems to take most everything in stride. But she told me a story once. Right before they admitted me to the hospital for the surgery that ultimately paralyzed me, she had been scolding me. They had just finished waxing the hallway and I was running up and down like two year olds would. When I came out the anesthesia, and my legs weren't working, she told me that her guilt almost overwhelmed her. She had been yelling at me for using the legs that would never work right again. What a thing to think about at a time like that. But as a mother now myself, I understand what she felt. I get the seemingly irrational, emotional response to her crisis. Those precious little legs that she helped take those first few steps would never walk again and there was nothing she could have done about it. Her need to take responsibility needed to go somewhere, how ever illogical it went. But she got a greater gift then I will ever hope to get. She helped me become mobile twice. Her gentle encouragement through tears helped me learn to sit up again, to crawl around on my bum and knees, to use arms that would be for so many years my legs, and finally to be as independent a person as I could ever be.

So I guess what it really comes down to is this. I am passing my mother's legacy on to my kids. I am helping them to walk when I can't because my mom taught me first.