Clear as day it was, 6 years ago. I’m standing in the kindergarten Cognitive Impairment class the week before school starts at a ‘teacher meet and greet.’ It had only been 3 life changing months prior that I choke cried on the phone with Kristi. I was driving home from attending Whitney’s 3 year Comprehensive IEP Eval. I saw the report with my own eyes. 40 pages front and back, all the different data points telling us the same story.
Significantly behind peers. Won’t ever ‘catch up.’ Impairments in the plural form. Will always need supervision. Her whole life. Special Needs.
These phrases were the diagnoses Tim and I had spent large amounts of time, money and doctor appointments searching for while simultaneously hoping to avoid.
On the primary colored mats, I stood as if a statue, surrounded with the classmates that would become Whitney’s peers and friends. It almost felt wrong, sending this incredibly tiny, not-yet-stable little girl into a sea of older, faster, stronger, more able bodied children.
Would she be ok?
On the first day of Kindergarten, Tim and I walked her to the bus on the corner of our court. She had a driver, an aid and a giant five point harness. We kissed her goodbye, turned around and walked home in absolute silence.
What are we doing?
Vulnerability hung heavy in the air.
Will she be okay…Are we the worst?
There’s no way we could have known.
6 years later, this past Wednesday, Hendrix Hall walks up to the platform to receive his 5th Grade diploma. Tears stream down my cheeks, he’s not even my child. Hendrix is the cool kid: smart, cute, best dressed, tons of friends. Hendrix could do anything he wanted to with his time. And he chose her. Everyday, being the only remedy for her transitional angst, he walks Whitney to and from the bus at school. He plays with Whit any chance he gets. He celebrates Whitney in all she does. Hendrix has been not just a ‘buddy’ to Whitney, but a true friend. What a most desperately hoped for gift.
I wondered if our new teacher could salvage the setbacks in our ‘2 years without a permanent teacher’ class. Little did I know she would become a game changer. She deeply loves Whitney, she understands her through and through, and she pushed her into the fullness of her abilities both at school and home. I want Ms. Richardson to be her teacher forever and I mourn losing her this week.
Ms. Lisa the bus driver challenged me to let Whit use the normal seat belt and ditch the harness. ‘She doesn’t need it…she can do it…she wants to do it.’ Ms. Lisa, like so many others, have granted me eyes to see what I could not. She’s ready, let her go.
On Wednesday Whitney grabbed her little paper diploma outside of Delta Kelly and stood front row center-stage amongst her friends. She looked toward the camera, threw a little hip pop, tilted back her head and laughed. It was in that moment I knew. Beyond her newly sprouted ability to read, beyond her engagement in routines, fire alarms and gym, that hip pop revealed a secret.
She has found her confidence.
Neither proud nor plastic, her confidence is the real deal. She may not possess what the world compensates; academics, athletics, collegiate prowess. But she has what the world searches for…a contented happiness in the fullness of being who God has created her to be.
* * * *
Every morning before school Whit crawls into my lap for one brief moment. She wraps her arms around me, smiles wide and repeats a phrase she randomly created some months ago:
‘It’s good to feel hugged.’
I hold her long enough to let the grip of her arms and the warmth of her love convince me again for the day. How is that not the truest statement one has ever heard? I squeeze her body, kiss her face and re-gift back her wisdom.
‘Yes, Whit, your totally right…it is good to feel hugged.’