Expectant mothers waiting for a newborn’s arrival 
say they don’t care what sex the baby is.
They just want to have ten fingers and ten toes.

Mothers lie.

Every mother wants so much more.
She wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head,
rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.
She wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the
Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.

She wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take
those first steps right on schedule (according to the
baby development chart on page 57, column two).
Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run,
jump and fire neurons by the billions.
She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the
park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire
ballet class.

Call it greed if you want, but a mother wants what a
mother wants.

Some mothers get babies with something more.

Maybe you’re one who got a baby with a condition you
couldn’t pronounce, a spine that didn’t fuse, a
extra chromosome or a palate that didn’t close.
The doctor’s words took your breath away.
It was just like the time at recess in the fourth
grade when you didn’t see the kick ball coming, and it
knocked the wind right out of you.

Some of you left the hospital with a healthy bundle,
then, months, even years later, took him in for a
routine visit, or scheduled him for a checkup, and
crashed head first into a brick wall as you bore the
brunt of devastating news.
It didn’t seem possible.
That didn’t run in your family.
Could this really be happening in your lifetime?

There’s no such thing as a perfect body.
Everybody will bear something at some time or another.
Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes,
or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips
to the doctor, therapy or surgery.
Mothers of children with disabilities live the
limitations with them.

Frankly, I don’t know how you do it.
Sometimes you mothers scare me.
How you lift that kid in and out of the wheelchair
twenty times a day.
How you monitor tests, track medications, and serve as
the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists yammering in
your ear.

I wonder how you endure the clichés and the
platitudes, the well-intentioned souls explaining how
God is at work when you’ve occasionally questioned if
God is on strike.
I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy columns like
this one-saluting you, painting you as hero and saint,
when you know you’re ordinary.
You snap, you bark, you bite.
You didn’t volunteer for this, you didn’t jump up and
down in the motherhood line yelling,
“Choose me, God. Choose me! I’ve got what it takes.”

You’re a woman who doesn’t have time to step back and
put things in perspective, so let me do it for you.
From where I sit, you’re way ahead of the pack.
You’ve developed the strength of the draft horse while
holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil.
You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove
box in July, counter-balanced against the stubbornness
of an Ozark mule.

You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child
with a disability.
You’re a neighbour, a friend, a woman I pass at church
and my sister-in-law.

You’re a wonder.