My “Different” Child
Sun., April 13, 12:55 AM
Rather than risk invading her privacy, I considered never posting this piece at all. I did hold off publishing it – I started thinking about it when her birthday was approaching. Many of you know my child already, even without links. Because of the current usage of the term, I’m calling her “different,” but she’s always been “special” to me. As I told my mother, this child marches to a different drummer. I knew she would never be boring.
I carried this baby for a full nine months, although by the seventh month people were asking if I would make it through the day – obviously a big baby. She was a squirmer rather than a kicker, and a few hours before delivery, she turned over, presenting her face rather than the back or the top of her head. Yes, I needed help, but forceps were out of the question. My obstetrician summoned a specialist in “vacuum delivery.” That is, they stuck a suction cup on the baby’s forehead; my kid was born with a three-inch hickey!
I heard the doctor remark, “this baby is more than nine pounds” as she emerged. Actually, she was closer to ten pounds (I heard a nurse say “nine thirteen” and thought it was the time!), bruised and scratched – she had long fingernails – and looking like a prizefighter. She was to grow into her own beauty, but in those early days… well, I’m her mother.
Nevertheless she seemed healthy until the second day, when she began running a fever. I had to go home without her, and they kept her for two whole weeks, while I got permission to come in once a day and nurse her.
We were to find out later that the fever thing is just one of the differences in this child. She ran a fever whenever she got immunization shots, and she ran a high fever with every cold. That is, my other kids would have temperatures of 101 degrees, and hers would be 102-103.
But generally, she was a placid, cheerful baby. I often said it was a good thing she wasn’t the first one because I would have been spoiled; the others were yellers. I watched as she taught herself to walk by observing her sister, and she started walking four months younger. She was speaking in full sentences before she was two, and when she was three and a half, I discovered that she could read! One of my favorite memories is of the four-year-old on the floor with her arm around the two-and-a-half-year-old, reading him a story.
Every child is different, as I kept explaining to my mother, who just didn’t understand this one. If she was smart enough to tell me, “Mom, I don’t like these diapers,” why couldn’t she figure out how to go to the toilet? It didn’t matter to me. I just blessed the people who sold disposable diapers (but not that brand!), and I knew she would learn eventually.
School was an adventure. Our elementary school tested and taught readers according to their ability, rather than their grade level. So my child had reading classes with the “big kids,” but she often had trouble finding her way back to the kindergarten room.
She also seemed to have some trouble learning left from right. I came to realize that she doesn’t really have a dominant side. When she was very little, she used her left hand.
“Stop her!” advised my mother, who loved this little bigmouth, but still didn’t understand her. (And bless you, Dad, for telling Mother she was wrong!) Mother even loved telling people that her four-year-old granddaughter called her a pain in the ass.
Child continued to use her left hand to draw pictures (she still does), but when she started to write words, she used her right hand. As a musician, she continued the pattern. When she had formal instruction on an instrument, she played right-handed. When she taught herself – guitar, keyboards – she played left-handed. It sounded a little strange – left-hand melody, right-hand chords.
In seventh grade she scored high enough on SAT’s to be accepted into one of the local colleges. Despite scoring even higher when she was in high school, she chose not to go to college at all but to spend a year in a business-related school and then went out into the working world. She has been self-supporting ever since. And she did eventually get her degree.
I’m not going to write about what she is now, because she tells you that all the time. Just let me say that a child like this is a joy to bring up, despite the few inconveniences. She’s also a wonderful friend.
