Chicken Soup for the Soul: Children with Special Needs (29 page)

There is something about Benny that is tender. He loves babies, and wants to touch their eyes and nose and mouth. He wants to hold them and feed them a bottle. He loves animals, too, and pets their soft fur and feathers.

There is something about Benny that makes me sad. Kids say, “What’s wrong with you, kid?” and “Why do you talk so funny?” Benny just ignores them, but it makes me sad inside.

There is something about Benny that makes me mad. Sometimes I get mad because I have a brother who screams and yells and acts so strange. Sometimes I get embarrassed and wish that he had a different brain, a typical brain like mine.

But then he wouldn’t be Benny.

There is something about Benny that is out of this world. When he babbles and banters and barks to himself, I don’t call it nonsense. I pretend he is speaking with angels.

There is something about Benny that many people don’t see. They see a five-year-old boy saying silly sentences and parroting protests. They see a child whose body never seems to stop moving. Sometimes they get mad and sometimes they just stare, but sometimes they say mean things to him or my mommy. But they don’t see what I see.

There is something about Benny that is just like you and me. He wants to feel loved and needed and special. He wants to be included in the playground games. He wants to have a best friend. He wants to help others.

There is something about Benny that makes me want to reach out to those who are different from me. Sometimes I see people’s differences on the outside. Sometimes I see people who don’t look any different on the outside, but I know they are different on the inside. I can see it in their eyes and feel it in my heart.

I know that Benny is here to teach me to be patient and kind and forgiving and compassionate.

There’s something about Benny that makes me thankful that I have a brother who speaks to angels.

Kimberly Jensen

Kimberly Jensen
graduated with a B.A. in communication from the University of Utah in 1991. She is the mother of three children and writes children’s books focusing on loving children with disabilities since her youngest was diagnosed with autism in 2001. Please e-mail her at [email protected].

“Sharon doesn’t say much,
but she communicates well with animals.”

Reprinted by permission of Stephanie Piro. ©2007 Stephanie Piro.

Believe

N
othing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

Little did I know that Emily’s unconditional belief in her little brother’s can-do ability would someday help her recover from a devastating car accident.

When life as we know it shatters and dreams evaporate too soon, we lose our ability to believe that goodness can come from tragedy, that overwhelming grief can lead to future healing.

I was so young, and I knew so little in 1985 when our second baby, Mark, was born. I had survived a tempestuous childhood of enormous sadness and loss, and my only dream was to be a kind and loving mother to the happy, healthy babies God would surely bless us with.

But babies didn’t come quickly, and we spent years visiting fertility specialists. When Emily was born with bright light in her eyes and a joie de vivre that filled our home with wondrous energy, I believed she was a miraculous answer to years of prayer.

I selfishly wanted more for us and for Emily; I wanted another baby to share our blessings. Years passed, with more tests and several miscarriages. And then, on one of the prettiest spring days I’ve ever seen, my husband Russ and I celebrated the birth of our son Mark. God had blessed us once again, we merrily told friends and family, near and far, with a rich man’s family—a girl and a boy!

Mark was a sweet baby, quiet and undemanding, sleepy and content. Pretty, too, with his older sister’s dark brown hair and hazel eyes. But the morning after his birth, the pediatricians told us that Mark had one microscopic flaw that changed our lives forever—an extra chromosome, or Down syndrome.

Mark’s diagnosis shattered me deeply and gravely, but I had to keep living, to go through the motions for our four-year-old daughter. Somehow, I gathered enough composure and grace to show Emily her baby brother without sobbing through the visit. She loved him immediately, glowing as she held “her baby.” She was never jealous of him, never complained about all the medical appointments and therapists and emergencies that consumed the next year of our lives.

She adored Mark. She even angrily told me one day when I had let him cry too long that he didn’t want me anyway. “He wants me to be his mommy, not you! He’s my baby!”

The years passed, and Mark flourished. Milestones were significantly delayed, but he eventually reached them. The light in his eyes grew brighter as a magical little boy emerged from the shadows of doctors’ first gloomy predictions of “He can’t . . .” and “He’ll never . . .” I began to see that Mark was a happy, loving child who worked incredibly hard to do all the things his therapists and teachers asked of him, slowly but surely learning and doing so much more than I ever believed he would.

Emily was his favorite teacher. She didn’t know that other baby brothers and sisters didn’t have speech, physical, and occupational therapists coming into their homes several times a week. She didn’t know that all babies don’t begin school when they are three weeks old to learn how to track with their eyes, to hold up their heads, or to roll over. On days when I just couldn’t do all the infant-stimulation exercises with Mark at home, Emily would excitedly “play” with him, holding bright, musical toys for him to see, hear, and reach for. She always cheered his every move! He crawled to her before he ever crawled to anyone else, racing—at his own speed—for a hug from his big sister. I’m quite sure his very first smile was for Emily.

Before she was five, she had given Mark everything I struggled to give him—unconditional love and unconditional belief in his abilities. She taught me how to be Mark’s mom.

Little did I know that Emily’s unconditional belief in Mark’s can-do ability would someday save her.

On a Sunday afternoon in December 1998, when Mark was thirteen and Emily was seventeen, I was waiting for Emily to come home after an overnight with Melanie, her best friend. Mark, his little sister Carolyn, ten, and little brother David, eight, and I were home baking Christmas cookies and singing carols with friends and their kids. I was conscious of how happy I felt, how blessed I was to be surrounded with so much love.

The phone rang. Melanie was sobbing. A car had broad-sided them, and Emily, in the passenger seat, wouldn’t wake up. They were less than a mile from our front door. Life was shattered again.

As I choked out what had happened, Mark dropped to his knees and prayed, “Please, God, Emily can’t die; she’s my sister. Please help her.”

Emily had suffered a traumatic brain injury, broken pelvis, broken back, broken ribs, and massive internal injuries. She remained in a coma for three weeks. The doctors gave her less than a 40 percent chance of survival. If she did survive, they warned us, “She’ll never be the same and may have to spend the rest of her life in a nursing home.”

Therapists had given Mark so much so many years ago. Physical therapists, speech pathologists, and occupational therapists had taught Mark things his pediatrician thought were impossible. Emily’s unconditional love and belief in Mark’s ability had once been his greatest motivation. Now Mark’s lessons would help Emily relearn everything— words and their meanings, names of her friends and relatives, how to drink from a cup, hold a fork and a pen, how to stand and then walk, understand what she read, and believe in herself again.

“You can do it, sis,” Mark would encourage Emily as she tried to walk five feet down the hall using a walker. And she’d take a few more steps just for him.

She’d snarl at me when I’d make her use the right word instead of “thing” or “it.” But for Mark, she’d show off her latest mastery of the names of various fruits.

Head-injury patients are often angry and lash out at everyone around them. We all bore her wrath many times—all of us except Mark. She never screamed at him, or pushed him away, or slammed the door in his face. She always smiled for him, held his hand, and tried just a little harder to do a little more whenever he was with her.

Her recovery was miraculous. After just twelve weeks of intense rehabilitation, she returned to high school to finish her senior year. Many days were overwhelmingly hard; as she recovered, she became more aware of what she had lost. Some friends treated her differently, and a few teachers just sent her to a desk in the back of the room to work “independently.” Facts accumulated over years of education had to be relearned, math skills and formulas rememorized, and metaphors and similes reunderstood.

“I just have one thing to say, Em. Believe in yourself,” Mark counseled.

Now, I wonder as I look back:
Could we have encouraged Emily with the resolute belief that she could, indeed, relearn everything without all we’d learned from Mark’s intense early-intervention programs? Would Emily have graduated from college in just four years, run a half-marathon, and mentored thousands of high-school students as buddies to special-education students if Mark
had not been her little brother?

Every day of his life, when we’ve been astute enough to pay attention, Mark has taught us that life’s little victories add up to triumphs. As an infant struggling to make his own muscles lift the weight of his head, he taught Emily to persevere even when the task seems impossible. He showed her that sometimes the greatest rewards are a pat on the back for a job well done and belief in your own inner resolve. His very being taught his big sister that a person’s worth cannot be measured by IQ, class rank, or worldly riches—it’s measured by an unconditional love that many of us never experience, and very few of us are wise enough to truly understand. He taught us to believe.

Jennifer M. Graham

Jennifer M. Graham,
mother of four unique kids, has written about the inspiring abilities of individuals with intellectual disabilities for twenty years. Her articles have appeared in national and regional magazines, and the anthology,
You Will Dream New Dreams.
She is a family educator on transition. Contact her at jennifermgraham@ comcast.net. Emily graduated from James Madison University in 2004 and currently works for an international nonprofit serving children with disabilities. Mark graduated from high school in 2006 and has two part-time jobs in the community. He bakes the best chocolate-chip cookies and believes in the best in everyone.

Silent No More

I am a young man in a verbal world. I am silent. My mouth doesn’t work in the usual way. I have autism. For ten long years, I remained silent in a lonely prison. Locked away in darkness as vast as the universe is big. I expressed myself through negative behavior that no one could understand. My mom tried everything possible to help me break out of my lonely wasteland. I used picture communication systems, which were useless. I tried sign language, which was hopeless. My family resorted to the only real thing that works—praying a lot. My dad is a minister, so our whole church prayed for me.

One day, an amazing angel in the form of a purple-haired lady arrived at my school. She brought a Light writer, which is a special voice output device for silent people. The angel lady explained the device to me, and then took my hand in hers, and my silence changed to golden words of freedom. I am now able to type all my thoughts with the help of my trained support staff. My parents bought me my own device, and I have been a paroled prisoner ever since.