August 12, 2007
When I talk about potential.
I guess I had forgotten how cathartic it was for me to write here. Maybe not just here, but writing in general. Having a place to take all my thoughts and just lay them out.
Anyway, last night I babysat Pammy's son and his friends while Pammy and the neighbors went out. (Yes I could have gone, but I didn't want to.) One of the kids was a little girl, I'll call her Ky, who is six. She, with the sparkling brown eyes and mile-wide grin.
It didn't dawn on me right away that she was different. I noticed a speech impediment first, but even that didn't tip me off to her true condition.
She proceeded to empty her belongings from her Dora the Explorer backpack, naming each item. Popsicle. Cake. Shirt. Until she came to the Play-Doh, which she didn't name, and instead dropped the now-empty bag, onto the floor, and took the Play-Doh to the table. I noticed she was a bit wobbly on her feet, but it still didn't occur to me that there was something seriously wrong.
I gave the boys instructions to let me know if they needed anything, and then went into the other room. A few minutes later Pammy's son came into my room to ask me "Can someone die and then come back to life?" To which I answered "No, of course not!" He left the room and I heard him telling the other kids "She said no!"
I assumed that was the end of the argument until a few minutes later when all four boys came into my room. Trev again asked me "Can someone die, and then go to the hospital and come back to life?" So I answered again "No, that only happens in the movies." But then the littlest boy said "Then why did my mom tell me that?"
So then the story comes out. When Ky was a baby she fell into an ice chest full of ice and water and drowned! She was revived (obviously) but she was left with brain damage. I would compare her physical condition to a child with mild cerebral palsy. Her mental condition is hard to judge because she's so young. She has a heavy speech impediment but her vocabulary seemed mostly age-appropriate.
Just like any typical six year old girl, she loves to talk. She told me about the dog she used to have named Jezebel, and about the cat that her mom wouldn't let into the house. She told me how she liked my sandals but that she could only wear those shoes, as she pointed at her plain black shoes. (I understood why later when she took her shoes off and seemed to have even more difficulty walking.)
I decided that she probably needed more attention than me listening from the other room so we all went into the living room together to watch a movie. While I watched Ky happily playing with her Play-Doh I started wondering what she might have been like had it not been for that tragic accident. I imagined her with straightened legs and a steady gait, and with a clear, sweet voice.
She's not even my child and it almost broke my heart to think of what their family must have lost. I wondered how the accident had occurred, and if her mother had carried horrible guilt. Then I wondered if her mother looked at Ky and cried over her lost potential.
Then it dawned on me. I hate the word potential. My own mother used to use that word as a weapon against me. She would bemoan my lost potential and what I could have been had I made better choices. My family has talked about how different I might have been had my parents not divorced, or had I been raised by my father, or had any number of things happened or not happened in my life.
I've always told them that I am the way I am for a reason, and that it's not their job to judge me or speculate about what I could have been, and to just love me as I am. Whatever I do or don't do with my life doesn't make me a better or worse person. Maybe where I am in my life right now is where my damned potential led me to be!
So then I had to look at Ky again and realize that while she might have been something different...nobody can say that for sure. She's special, and no matter what her family lost the day she had her accident, that's not nearly as precious as what they gained.
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jktty at 2:45 a.m.