She only had one child because time ran out.
She only had one child because she had no time.
She only had one child because she feared what came next.
She only had one child because she feared she hadn’t enough love for more.
She only had one child because she feared she hadn’t enough love to start.
She only had one child because she didn’t know how she’d pay the bills.
She only had one child because one was all her money could buy.
She only had one child because one of herself was enough.
She only had one child because one was all her body could bear.
She only had one child so she could still hear herself think.
She had no children so she could hear herself think.
She had no children because even one was more than she could bear.
She had no children because her body would not bear even one.
She had no children because she couldn’t trust herself.
She had no children because the cost was too great.
She had no children because he chose to have none.
She had no children because she chose him instead.
She had no children because she didn’t meet him in time.
She had no children because she met her instead.
She had no children because there had never been the time.
She had many children because all she had had was time.
She had many children so she would have no time.
She had many children because they could afford many children.
She had many children because she’d been one of many children.
She had many children because she saw herself in each of them.
She had many children because her body bore the burden well.
She had many children because they required it.
She had many children because he required it.
She had many children because she imagined it would make him stay.
She had many children because she never imagined anything else.
Author: sehaldorson
I write narrative nonfiction/lyrical memoir. I'm the mother of a special needs child and the wife of a cancer survivor, and I work in publishing.
Adagio
Most people claim that time passes too swiftly. Parents in particular. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear someone exclaim—at a birthday party, at the worrying of a loose tooth, at the advent of kindergarten, in celebration of a baby’s first steps—”They grow up so fast!” No, they don’t. Not always. When parenting a special needs child, one with delays in development, the reverse is true. Time passes slowly. Sure there are still the loose teeth, the outgrown corduroys, the first days of school. The body grows, and time passes, but we are parenting in adagio. There is still music playing but at a pace significantly slower and often less dynamic than the usual exciting, staccato rhythms of life with children. Sometimes, in this special kind of life, time plays out like a dirge. Particularly during the frequent illnesses you have no control over, or during the IEP [individualized education plan] meetings where for several hours a number of well-meaning people tell you, unrelentingly, just how behind your child is, or during the tantrums so inappropriate that it is anything you can do to make the seconds speed by before you can leave Target. Superficial, yet critical: I have been watching the same Elmo’s World episodes for nearly 10 years. I can no longer understand parents who bemoan the passage of time; I crave it. And yet, I also fear it because with each year, my son’s age splits like a widening gulf between the years and his capabilities. My 10 year old is a 3 year old; someday I hope my 25 year old will be my 10 year old.
The hard-won gift of this glacial pace is, however, in those moments when your child, no matter how delayed, shows the mastering of a new skill. Noah did not walk until he was 3 years old. And now, over a year later, I watch him with eyes filled with awe as he runs awkwardly through the grass at our neighborhood park. He did that! It is something he did, that he once hadn’t done! And in those moments, it doesn’t matter in the least that he looks nothing like the other children running around him, that his gait is herky-jerky and he is expressing a level of glee that have most of the kids looking at him like he’s just broken their favorite toy. It doesn’t matter the tears shed or the doctors’ appointments booked or the therapy sessions tolerated. In other words, the time that is past no longer matters. No. Those moments linger like a singular note held after a bold crescendo that is so beautiful, and simple, and clear that it is physically painful the longer it is held, and yet, you can only savor it as long as it lasts.
Dear God
He shouted at me, an obscenity. My gentle, generous husband who never so much as slams his hand on the arm of our cushioned couch when his team loses a game. He was walking away, as he does, when we go at it, both of us so tired of the old habits burrowed deep into our 20-year love like tattoo ink under a scar. So I told him, fine, go, we don’t need you, even though it was a lie, a lie so obvious we could have laughed if either of us remembered where we had last left our laughter. Our son was still sick, still so in need, our marriage was parched with a thirst that comes only from years of unmet desires. I knew he was worn down, frayed at his ends, edges rubbed raw, no relief, no release, from the expectations of everything he loves that loves him back with great expectation. I knew it, but maybe I wanted him to slip, for his pressure valve to leak the same kind of hot steam that built up behind my sternum every day from sharded sleep and worry wounds. I wanted him to reveal evidence of his pain, to make it manifest and give it shape. Lonely with my sorrow, I said the worst thing; I implied that he was unnecessary. No heavier stone could be thrown at him, he who believed doing was the same as loving. I said it to him and he shouted at me: go fuck yourself, words so foreign to my ear it was as if he were speaking in tongues. But I knew it couldnt be true because he doesn’t believe in the God to whom he should have shouted it.
