Attention Target Shoppers

Volcanic Mommy rant ahead.
Dont say you weren't warned.

Attention Target Shoppers--yeah, I'm talking to you, lady in the green jacket, near the music. Would you please kindly remove your glaring eyes from my child. Your lack of information is showing and it's not pretty.

You think you know. But you don't.

Yes. I do know what you are thinking. It's written plainly in your glare and I've seen it before. Judgement. Lack of understanding. Condemnation. Sometimes pity, though I don't know why.

Yes. He's 5' tall, weighs 90 pounds and is 11 years old. He looks like a pretty normal young man on the outside, especially to someone who hasn't spoken to him in a conversation or seen him run full-tilt. Or picked him up off the floor after an emotional meltdown. Yes, I realize that it must look odd for his mother to have his foot hoisted onto her bent knee, tying his shoes. But to stare...and glare. Geesh.

I admit you probably don't see it every day...but in the scheme of things is it really such a shocking sight that you feel compelled to stare? And exhibit signs of attitude?

Don't think I didn't notice. I only pray he didn't.

What you don't know is that it's the fourth time today I have stopped to tie his shoes. It took 45 minutes for us to find two actual socks that he could get onto his feet and remain tolerant of until shoes could cover them. He's conviced that sockage is the motherly equivalent of modern day torture devices.

No, it's not something I really understand, but so what.

What you don't know is that I've seen that look before. No, not on your specific face but on plenty others. I recognize it a little too easily now and the pain of it lives right on the top of that part of me that grew in when I became his mother. No. It doesn't get easier. Each disdainful glare shoots a laser guided missile right into my stomach.

Yes, to the uninformed eye, he looks like he should be tying his own boots and wiping his own mouth with a napkin and getting his own zipper zipped and at times, controlling the drool on his lips and enunciating with a great deal more clarity...and a hundred other things I coud list. But the fact of the matter is--he can't.

He can't tie his own boots. His fingers don't work in conjunction with his brain to complete a multi-step process like shoe tying. They just don't. I know. I have tried to teach him. More times than anyone should.

What you don't know is that this child's body is broken, but not in an obvious way. Part of his brain is undeveloped and unusable. It appears on MRIs as a dark spot. Not a mass...just darkness. No electricity. It has not changed since birth and barring something miraculous, it is not going to suddenly come on like a light. It's the likely cause of seizures that bring chaos and havoc on his little life and his not-so-little body and a slew of other challenges--not the least of which is enduring staring, glaring, uninformed people.

Live with that for a minute and then glare at me for helping my son.