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| Ragged Edge EXTRA! |
A Disabled Mother's Day On a beautiful spring day we had earned by surviving a long gray winter, I took my three-year-old son to a concert given by Bob McGrath. Bob has been an important character on the Public Television program, "Sesame Street" since its very first year in 1969. I had been watching the show since the beginning. My son had been watching the show for the three years since HIS beginning. As the kid put it then, we both wanted to see "A 'Street' Guy" in person. With him in my lap, I rolled my wheelchair from our recently renovated, inner-city row house to the nearby theatre known as "The Egg." Just the fact that we could have such a date together was cause for celebration all by itself, since my son had only recently developed the skills and stamina necessary for such an afternoon outing. After continual ear infections, his spoken vocabulary had finally begun to blossom. A brief medical operation had made that possible. The kid started talking non-stop in the recovery room and hadn't quit yet. That meant rolling to the theatre with my son was like having Walter Cronkite on board to comment on everything we saw. I was madly in love with my kid that day. The great storm of purely maintenance activity his birth had brought was finally subsiding a bit. The pay-off of just plain ole good company had really begun. On the way there, my son insisted on buying a red carnation to give to Bob. I was moved by that unexpected act of generosity. But I was also saddened, because I figured the odds were slim that we could actually get close enough to give it to him. To our delight, we actually got the accessible front-row seats we had reserved and paid for ahead of time. There were zillions of kids. The parents were as thrilled as their offspring to be there. The music was simple, lusty and life-affirming. The whole audience heartily accepted the invitation to join in whenever they knew the words -- and many times when they just made them up as they went along! And God love Bob McGrath -- toward the end of the show he came over and graciously accepted my son's carnation. Then Bob used that humble flower, with tattered green paper and drooping fern, as a baton to direct the audience and orchestra in the tune "Tomorrow" from the musical "Annie." It was the last song of the afternoon. Afterwards, he had the audience applaud my kid for giving him the bouquet. It was magic. I greatly enjoyed my young son's company that day, especially because he was so newly interested in the world outside himself. I felt great pride in seeing him use new memory and language skills to sing along. I was sorry that his father wasn't there to enjoy it, too. Above all, I was moved to tears that Bob treated my kid's gift with the respect and sacredness that both the gift and the giver deserved. Upon later reflection, I came to realize that one of the reasons we did have such a fine experience that day was actually because my son's Dad was not with us. That day became the first clear glimpse I had that I and my kid were a happy family all by ourselves. That day became the first time I really and truly understood that my disability had absolutely nothing to do with loving parenting and good family interaction. The full weight of my able-bodied husband's uninvolvement hit me as, over and over, my son and I delightfully relived that afternoon together. As a direct result of that day, I decided to legally become the single parent I had always been in reality. The good feelings of that day gave us many things to remember and talk about during the black times of the separation. The beauty of that day created a vision that helped carry us through divorce, moving, my vocational rehabilitation ordeal and my son's own continued growth. The love nutured by that day helped us stay open to meeting the good man with disabilities my kid and I later decided to marry. This year that second marriage will be twelve years old. This year that toddler with the red flower will be seventeen years old. This year we have already talked about when we get to take his own kid to a concert like the one on that fine day of fourteen years ago. What an adventure! What a journey! Rus Cooper-Dowda is a minister and freelance writer in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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