I've written before about my awkward relationship with clinic waiting rooms.
The majority of my professional life has been spent on the other side of the waiting room door. Back there where we do tedious tests and provide therapies, playing with play-doh or Don't Break the Ice, reading Goodnight Gorilla! or building endless iterations of Mr. and Mrs Potato Head. Of course these days my life revolves around all manner of creative ways to present barium as the best! snack! ever! and delivering more bad news than good - though, fortunately, the good makes a sometimes disheartening job worth the doing.
And the paperwork. Lord help us, the paperwork.
But for the last 3 years I've found a place on the outside of that door. Sitting in the clinic waiting room with other moms & dads, sisters & brothers, watching new sisters & brothers enter the world and other clinic kiddos come and go - changing to a new day, moving out of state, heading off to school.
I don't like it out there.
I never have. And it's not because I don't like the companionship; it's because I didn't choose it. I won't pretend to speak for another mother or father but I think most of us, given the choice, would rather that our children not have to face the challenges that they do. We love them as fiercely as any other parent loves their child, for sure. But I think it's that love that leaves us wishing that our kids didn't have to carry the loads that they've been given. I would gladly pick up Becca's challenges for her if I could. No questions asked.
But of course it doesn't work that way. Not for her, or for my other two kids and any of the difficulties they may face. It is what it is, and it's not going away, and so - onward.
Today Becca headed off to see Miss Jaime and Gideon for OT. By all accounts she had a great day today and our girl is starting to bust out some very nice circles THANK YOU VERY MUCH, and was working the buttons, zippers, clasps & snaps on therapy dog AJ's vest. (Thank you Jesus for AJ, sweet Dorian, who is gone but not forgotten, and our own beloved Midnight, three dogs who speak to Becca as much or more than any human among us.) In fact, allow me to brag for a minute because she is making steady strides in all of her therapies: now pedaling and steering the tricycle, walking the 6" balance beam like it's no big deal, climbing the ladders and rock walls on our backyard play set, and getting some legitimate air when she does a two-footed jump. Speech and language have exploded this year and I hear her using new, novel vocabulary all the time. Even my brother noticed her growth this summer. After a brief exchange she and I had in his kitchen, CJ looked at me and said "Wow - that was an actual conversation."
Recently we have started bringing Libby along to therapy appointments because she's finally old enough to be manageable, if you know what I mean. Plus there are a couple of other siblings around on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she enjoys playing with them. And I enjoy watching them, but I won't lie because it's bittersweet seeing this mismatched crew of "typical peers" playing so.... naturally. It all comes so easily to them: pretending to be bullfrogs, hopping up and down and under and behind; negotiating turn-taking; asking to be friends; chasing each other and giggling and chasing some more. It's so delightful to watch them talk and play and argue and regroup. Just like kids do.
Just like kids - who don't have to work so very hard to do all of those things - do.
I'm incredibly proud of the gains Bex has made, and I'm so thrilled with her steady progress, but these waiting room observations are also a reminder of how far we still have to go. There's just a little ache that comes along with every visit, a tempering of my hopes and enthusiasm that puts my feet ever so firmly back on the ground, where I find myself still sitting on the outside of the waiting room door, comparing notes with the other moms and dads, reviewing and updating goals, contemplating that additional intervention that has been recommended, worrying about the expense of hours and hours of therapies every month, condemning myself for not doing more work with her at home, pushing back the guilt of shorting my other two kids, finding joy in the smallest victories and humor in the universal honesty and goodness of all kids - whether they have a "diagnosis" or not.
There's a lot that goes on out here, and a lot of waiting for things that transcend our 60 minute appointment. And I don't like it. But you can rest assured that we'll be back Thursday, and Friday, and Tuesday, and Thursday again and again and again. Because it is what it is, and it's not going away, and so -
Onward.
