Seesaw

Image by machbel via FlickrOne of the hardest parts of parenting a child with a disability is that you know your other child, the one without the disability, is sort of screwed too. Managing the disability is a full-time job. There are doctor appointments: many, many doctor appointments. There are medications that are always being tinkered with, and side effects, and rooms that must be kept quiet, and happy events that must, at the last minute, be cancelled. And that's just life.

To the healthy child, it's like an unbalanced seesaw that always leaves her hanging in the air. In her heart, the healthy child knows that she would not want to change places with the disabled child, but the heart is a very conflicted organ, as we all know, and the healthy child also knows that she is getting the short end of some stick, somewhere, and life is totally unfair, especially to her. And it is.

In the end, on both sides, there is much rivalry, much bitterness, much venom.

It is ugly.

But one must live the life one is given, and one must endeavor to do the best one can, and so last weekend we separated the vipers. My husband took my older girl to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and I took my younger girl, my healthy girl, shopping in Orange County.

I told the most junior Finnegan that this was her weekend. My attention was hers. We would do what she wanted. We would eat where she wanted. We would watch the Food Network as much as she wanted.

Much girliness ensued. I probably should not say too much because the details might make you explode into pink confetti, but know this: ears were pierced.

Life isn't just everyday reality, right? It's the extras too. Isn't it? She'll remember this. Won't she? She'll remember that I did my best? That I tried?