Snapshot

On Saturday morning, I took Ronin and Keira to the rec center to swim. In the parking lot, an elderly gentleman looked after us fondly and guessed aloud, "About 3 months?"

"Thirteen, actually," I called as I kept walking, ignoring the surprised look I'm getting accustomed to.

In the kiddie pool, a precocious little girl, probably 5 or 6, approached K and me and asked, "Is your baby pretending to be dead?"

I smiled and said, "Sort of. She's kind of overwhelmed with all the noise in here, so she closes her eyes." The girl seemed curious and hung around for  a bit.

"You're really lucky," she said. "My aunt just had a baby and her legs are crooked."

"That's too bad," I said. I wasn't sure what to say next. I thought I could tell her more about Keira. I'm always eager to teach kids a thing or two about special needs, but  I didn't want to sound like I was competing for the saddest story.

After a minute I decided on, "Actually, we're not sure whether our baby will ever be able to walk. She was pretty sick when she was born."

"Really?" the little girl said. "You mean she couldn't walk in the water like this?" as she demonstrated.

"Maybe not, but we'll love her all the same." At that moment, Ronin tromped over and taking Keira's hands, moving them vigorously, he proudly made her open her eyes and laugh like he'd just woken sleeping beauty.

***

So, maybe I won't feel this way next week, or maybe not even tomorrow, but right now I'm thinking that this all gets easier to swallow as Keira gets older. We still don't know whether she'll walk or whether she'll talk or whether she'll eat solid foods. But we do know, without a doubt, that she is, and will be, very delayed. When she was a newborn, and for that first year, it was always a question. We watched and compared her to the same-aged babies, wondering if and hoping that she was going to defy the odds and move ahead faster than we could have guessed. We watched, sometimes painfully, as those other babies rolled over, sat up, crawled, and walked. Now, as sad as it may sound, that faint hope that everything might be okay, in the typical sense of the word "okay," that glimmer has burned out. The surprising thing is that it feels easier to breathe. I see her next to the other 13-month-olds now and it's no comparison. They're bigger. They're walking. They're talking. It's no comparison. K is who she is and we love her. We'll take any development we can get in her timing. But she's okay. We're okay. She's happy. We're happy.