Dream: All in a sigh

When I'm missing something, it always seems to turn up in the last place I look.

A couple of weeks ago, I brought Big E to the two-hour dress rehearsal for her skating show. I sat bundled in a parka on the grimy bleachers and pulled out a thick folder of essay drafts.  Amidst a swirl of giddy little girls, blaring show music and chatty moms, I tried hard to scour for comma splices and pronoun-antecedent agreement.

The mother of a boy in Big E's class settled in front of me. We'd both been spending our Thursday evenings in those bleachers since fall and we'd talked a few times.  I smiled and said hi but quickly turned back to my essays, fluffing the pile with dramatic flourish and hoping that this would discourage further conversation. 


My standoffishness wasn't just about my workload.  There was, first, the fact that I'm just not a chatter.  I hate making small talk; friendly chit-chat eludes me and I find myself awkwardly smiling and nodding, desperately searching for a polite exit. 

Also, if I'm really being honest, there was my not-so-generous assessment of her (which, I realize, reflects less flatteringly on me than on her). She spent a lot of time volunteering at the school and was, in my opinion, a little boastful about it.  She complained in a braggy way about all of her kids' activities, and though I would politely smile and nod, I would be inwardly rolling my eyes at her pride in overscheduling.  Then there was the way she'd suddenly get all shrill on her kids in a way that, while probably not permanently damaging, made me uncomfortable.  Oh, and there was her son's fauxhawk.  I mean, why do people try so hard to make their kids cool in the first grade?  Also, she had definitely said li-berry more than once.  So, I was a tad judgey...

I wielded my essays like a conversational shield, not biting when she asked if I was doing work, shrugging good-naturedly but without elaboration when she asked if I could really get anything done with all the racket.  But soon I found myself smiling and nodding through a detailed description of her daughter's costume for her dance recital, stealing glances down at my papers as I made polite noises during a recap of her son's hockey season.

Then we got to talking about pre-schools.  She told me that her son had spent two years in a private nursery school but that her daughter had attended the public pre-school at the elementary school, and I said something profound, like "Oh, really?"  She looked away and said very quickly, "Well, she has an IEP. So..."

And then I put down my pile of essays, because I knew that second of hesitation.  I had felt it myself earlier that week when we ran into a neighbor as I was signing out of the elementary school office after Little E's occupational therapy session.  Just as he cheerfully inquired whether we'd been helping out in Big E's classroom I'd faltered, feeling both protective of Little E and just too tired to explain.  When the secretary interrupted him with a question, I was relieved to let the moment pass.

I had spent the months since we'd had our concerns about Little E's underdeveloped motor skills confirmed agonizing over it from all angles, and no one, however well-meaning, had been able to say a thing that made me feel better.  People, trying to lessen my concerns, talked about Down Syndrome and disease, which made me feel petty and unappreciative.  Some advised second opinions, suggesting skepticism of our plan and making me feel an incompetent advocate.  Others tried to sympathize with stories that meant to parallel my experiences with Little E, but which only made me feel less understood for their dissimilarities.

I leaned forward then, and I told this mother in the bleachers that Little E had just been put on an IEP.  I hoped to hear from her that thing that I'd been looking for, whatever that was. 

Instead, she launched into a dizzying list of her daughter's struggles, an inventory that dwarfed my worries.  She inquired about our interventions and then ticked off all that she would be doing in our shoes --coins in Silly Putty, sticker mosaics, bead stringing --and I nodded feigning new interest at suggestions that I'd heard over and over in the past months. I tuned out as she started chronicling the expert opinions she'd sought on her daughter's behalf.  She was clearly not going to say whatever words I'd been looking for.

By the time she began to wind down, her daughter's group was on the ice.  She looked down to the far end of the rink, and concluded, "But, so...yeah."  Then she dropped her shoulders and sighed softly, never taking her eyes off her little girl, who was working in earnest to keep in line with the other skaters in her group.

For one crazy second I had to fight myself back from reaching out and grabbing hold of her hand.

That sigh was quiet but unequivocal validation of the mess of emotion I'd wallowed in for the past months: the uncertainty, the melancholy, the hope, the guilt, the worry, the loss, the frustration, the overwhelming love.  I felt it all there, whether she'd meant it or not.

I'd been looking for months, searching over and over in a sea of words.  And there it was, all in a sigh. 

Work: And now I know...

I have been a teacher for ten years now, and in that time I have attended many special education meetings for my students, so many, in fact, that I assumed that I knew pretty much all there was to know: the jargon, the protocol, the flow charts. 

And then I found myself on the other side of the conference table.

Two weeks ago my husband and I sat in a special education meeting for Little E, the result of an evaluation she'd had with the school district's occupational therapist after her pre-school teachers had echoed my own concerns about her fine motor skills. 

I knew from my time on that side of the table that the people who sat across from me were professionals there to do their jobs, which, ultimately, was to help my child. Still, I couldn't ignore the fact that they were also there to tell me that she was decidedly flawed; worse, I was there to agree with them. 

Committing this betrayal while my daughter played happily at home filled me with a gnawing guilt.  This feeling was compounded not only by my mental list of the ways I'd already failed my child (pacifier, bottle, overzealous swaddling, liberal TV policy, extended period of denial), but also by my understanding that every day mothers cared for grown children with the needs of infants, slept on cots in their children's hospital rooms and birthed babies who would never take a breath. I was pretty sure that all of them handled their circumstances with more grace than I'd managed upon learning that my daughter was really not good at coloring.

Yet I doubt any of this internal mess was visible from the other side.  I knew my role in this meeting: small talk about the weather, conscientious note-taking, studious head-tilting and clarifying questions.

The occupational therapist who had evaluated Little E read from her report.  I knew from having been there that the people on the clean and clinical side of the table could separate the challenge from the child.  The fine motor delays that the evaluation had revealed were simply a problem to be solved and we were there to determine the best course of action.  But from my side, the view was a little hazier and the distinction not quite as simple.

Since the day of the evaluation when I'd sat at that very same conference table and watched my daughter, grim-faced with determination, fail to color properly, to cut with scissors properly, to form a letter, lace a card or trace a line properly, I had struggled with a measure of grief.  I wasn't exactly grieving for Little E, who was still the same sweet and silly, delightful and exasperating girl she had been before that day.  I grieved more for the fact that so early I had to retire the notion that she would travel the clear path I had imagined for both my daughters.  I grieved for knowing from experience that in school achievement is measured with pencil and paper, that preparation for standardized tests starts in kindergarten, and that none of this would come as easily to her as I wanted it to.

As the meeting neared its end, the chairwoman turned to the flow chart that is used to determine a child's eligibility for services.  From sitting so many times on the other side of the table, I knew that this was a matter of legality, of filling out paperwork and applying the appropriate jargon so as to get on with the real work of fixing problems and helping children.  She read aloud:  Is there a disability? Yes.  What type? Physical.  I felt my husband's hand on my knee.  My breath stuck in my throat, my stomach lurched, my head swam.

And I knew then that this was more than words and paper, jargon and protocol.  I knew then that despite my ten years on the other side of the table, there was a whole lot that I didn't know.