WRITINGS BY OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Personal thoughts, ideas and poems written by community members about adoption and Trisomy 21.  We are always looking for contributions from community members to this section!  If you have anything that you would like to add to the this category, simply click on the link below.

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How Lucky Am I
Submitted by Cynthia (cmedrano99)
July 22, 2003

To think a year ago, there was a phone call.
A few weeks later we met your birthmother and grandparents.

They are just wonderful and love you so much.

They searched and found us to be your mom and dad.

A week later, we met our 3rd angel, named Joshua.

The blond hair, beautiful blue eyes.
That little nose that wrinkle in it own way.

Your 10 little fingers and 10 little toes all there.

As your birth mom handed you to me, I cried with so

many emotions inside.

We where all smiles and the angels all around us to ensure happiness.

To leave was one of the first and foremost hardest thing I had to do. Finally you came home to us.

Now a year has past since we first knew of you.

Almost a year that we saw you.

Soon a year will be that we brought you home for the first time.

I look at you now... I see a very happy baby, smile and full of laughter.

The red/blond hair, the brown eyes. All 10 fingers and all 10 toes still there yet so small.
I looked at you this morning and jut cried how far you have come.

How big you have gotten. You busted with that laughter and smile, that broke my tear and brought me so much joy.
I watch you day in and out to think .........
                        HOW LUCKY AM I!
Love you lots, Mama
 

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Wide Open Prairies
Submitted by Monica (mom2mikey)
November 22, 2003

Sometimes things hit me, and I sit down and write them. Yesterday after I got home from a drive to a small town near by, I paused for a minute to write the following and I just wanted to share...

November 22, 2003

Driving through the wide-open prairies is always an amazing experience for me... where there are hundreds of miles between cities and all you can see to the horizon is open space and grain fields. Its an incredible sensation - it comes at you strongly through every sense. Hard to put into words.

And there are often days when I'm driving and Mikey is sleeping contentedly in his car seat in the back seat and I come into a rolling section of land and slowly the rhythmic feel of rolling hills starts to overwhelm me even more. And then there is a moment. A moment when I come over the lip of one of those hills and I feel like I am on top of the world because I can see for what seems like forever and I recognize just how small my car is in the whole big picture of things. And in that moment, I often get overwhelmed with the fact that out of this whole big world, somehow, someway, it was orchestrated that Mikey would be my son and I would be his mom. When I think of it in the context of that whole big overwhelming world I see around me at the top of that hill, I just know there is something amazing about the way that people come into our lives and then plant themselves there on one's life journey.

And as I drive down that hill, away from that place on the top of the world where not only my view was clear but my grasp of life was as well, I always turn around, look at my sleeping boy and realize that I'm more thankful and more in love then I was just a minute ago. I still cannot believe that those emotions can keep growing and growing when you always feel like you are already "full" of them.

Monica (mom2mikey)

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So, Who's the Lucky One?
Submitted by Monica (mom2mikey)
July 2003

These are some of my rambling thoughts from journals now pushed far under my bed... but thoughts that I think are important to reflect upon again from time to time.  They are thoughts that have come to me in my journey as an adoptive parent to a child with Trisomy 21 and although they speak about adoption, they also speak about society and societal views.  I hope that in some way the words will touch you the same way they touched me before I took pen to paper to write them down...

March 2001 Journal Entry...

We are sitting at McDonalds eating French fries and chicken nuggets when an older couple happens by.  They stop to interact with Mikey and we begin  to talk... in time they comment on a relative who also has Trisomy 21 (although they show their age by stating that he is a "mongoloid").  As they are leaving, they make a comment about what a "lucky boy" Mikey is to have someone that would adopt him and be his mommy.  I've heard it many times before, but it doesn't make the deep annoyance that comes with the statement any milder or easier to deal with it.

I wonder at my annoyance.  I know the reasoning behind some it is simply because I always feel that I'm the lucky one for being allowed to be his mommy.  I feel that somehow all the stars lined up just right in the universe one day and out of that alignment Mikey came to me.  I feel that there was some miracle that allowed me to be his mother.  Being his mother humbles me... it makes me wonder at what I have done so right.

And, yet, upon examination, I know this is not all there is to this emotion that overwhelms me each time I hear this statement.  Its about the power of words.  As an adoptive parent and a parent to a child with special needs you get a double-whammy crash course in the power of words... and what is and is not politically correct to say... and what you are really saying with the words that seem to come to you so naturally.  You quickly learn that, according to other people's words, as an adoptive parent you may not be considered "real" and that birthparents "give their child up" as if that child is some sort of belonging rather then a human being.   You learn to explain how actually your child's birthparents set up an adoption plan for their child not "gave them up" as children do not belong to anyone... they are not possesions.  You come to understand at times others will define your child by his/her disability.  And you really start to look at the power of words in general and how words are often a reflection of how people view the world... especially when they have not taken the time to analyze those words.  Words truly reflect what we think deep down when we do not stop to analyze before we speak.

And so when people call Mikey "lucky", I begin to wonder if they think that he does not deserve to have a loving, stable, happy home.   Every child deserves to have this kind of home growing up... and its a sad statement that we live in a society that views children (or perhaps just certain children) as "lucky" if they have this!  But do we view all children that way?  When a couple or a single parent adopts a child without a disability, then who is (are) the lucky one(s)?  I've heard it many times... how lucky the adoptive parents are to have this child.  Words are powerful... they speak volumes.  This only goes to show we have a long way to go yet in the area of discrimination against children with disabilities as we cannot even see yet that they deserve the same childhood experiences as other children.

~Monica~