As my family gets older, it seems
like birthdays are happening more often than they should. Yes, I know they occur on the same day every
year. But sometimes I feel as though my
life has become a Twilight Zone episode where the hands of the clock are
spinning at warp speed, the calendar’s pages are flying off the wall, and I’m whirring along on a treadmill in fast
forward.
Friends
have asked me when I first felt like I was an adult. The answer—embarrassingly late, perhaps—is
when my twins were born. Seven weeks
premature, Max and Sarah came into the world underweight. Sarah struggled to breathe, suffered from jaundice
and heart irregularities; they both stayed in the hospital for 16 days. Bringing my babies home and learning how to
care for them was an awesome (and exhausting) responsibility. I had become a parent and by necessity
morphed into an adult.
The
truth is that families grow up together, and the parents of special needs kids grow
up on an entirely different trajectory. When my twins were toddlers, I was consumed
with running to various therapists and special schools to “rescue” Sarah from
autism, while trying not to neglect Max, the “neurotypical” kid (who turned out to have ADHD). Whatever pleasure I felt in watching my
bright, verbal son sprint ahead developmentally, was compromised by seeing his
twin sister lagging farther and farther behind. My husband says observing Sarah’s early development
was like watching the grass grow. And
then she hit puberty, went on a new medication, and suddenly (finally!) took a
leap forward. The words of one of
Sarah’s few optimistic doctors still echo in my mind: “Every time I work with Sarah it feels like
I’m pulling nails out of her coffin.”
So as the years went by—slowly then, they didn’t fly—our
daughter climbed out of her coffin into a wonderful school. At Winston Prep they believed in Sarah’s
ability to learn and honored her inexhaustible efforts with their own. She made her first close friend in high
school, began to travel independently on buses and subways and carried a cell
phone like other teens. At long last I
didn’t have to worry about keeping her busy on weekends so that she wouldn’t
feel lonely. Finally I could start to
exhale.
But there wasn’t really enough time to relax or
regroup before the next parental challenge.
Max went into full-scale teenage rebellion magnified by ADHD. Don’t think messy room. Think sewer or garbage dump. And he wasn’t just rude or disrespectful. Most of his vocabulary consisted of four
letter words. And while all kids lose,
forget and break things, our son’s loss of cell phones, keys, homework,
wallets, bus passes, sports uniforms etc. is probably in the Guinness Book of
World Records. Of course this made him
chronically late for school and just about everything else. Waiting for Max was like waiting for glaciers
to melt. If I wasn’t around to scream,
nag, edit and remind, he would still be filling out college applications instead
of graduating.
Max
will be home soon for vacation and (coincidentally) my birthday, March 10th. Is he coming Friday or Saturday? Or perhaps early Sunday? He’s not sure. I’ll have to wait and see. (Some things never change). While
most people are too polite to ask about my age, they have no trouble asking the
age of my twins. When I say they’re 22,
the typical response is: “Really? I didn’t realize they were so old.” (Neither
did I!) Or else: “Boy, did they grow up
fast!”
Well,
actually 22 is not so old, it turns out—especially for kids with disabilities. For special needs kids, 22 is the new 17. The latest scientific research shows that their
cerebral cortexes take longer to grow.
Obviously, Max and Sarah aren’t growing up fast, though somehow the
years zipped (or slipped) by. I’m the
one who grew up fast. Older than 50 and
younger than 60, I find it hard to admit my age even to my elliptical
machine. But it’s March 10th on Sunday, and even if I wanted to forget the new number and rewind, my family
won’t let me.
Labels: ADHD, autism, birthdays, college, family, parenting, twins