Everywhere we go, our noises go before us. Teeth grinding, giggling, constant chattering, repeated phrases (Mama happy, Mama happy, Mama happy, Mama happy, Mama happy!…..you get the idea), tongue and lip noises, and groaning sounds (even though they mean a child is happy and content). Who ever thought that noises and sounds help to define who we are by our society? We have now learned a lot about people from their reaction to our strange sounds in public. Other things that seem to expose the heart are people who have ongoing relationships with us, and how they respond to our family sounds, or odd sentence structure (when we going store?, or birthday what month is it?) We have found that sometimes character can be seen in the reactions in grocery stores, or especially our local upscale, healthy organic grocery store (why is it that this spot is such a hard place for us to shop?). Some jump away with a visceral reaction, some stop in their tracks, mesmerized by the free entertainment, others just gently drive their cart away, yet others turn and look with curiosity, and the group we love turns and looks at us, and smiles, some even will then talk with one of our children. The rare, and I do mean very rare person will pursue an interaction even when our kids delay an answer, or are unclear in their speech. We love those check-out people who don’t mind when Maggie takes the food right from their hand and bags it. Some people can be so kind, but unfortunately this is definitely not the norm.
Many of you who know our kids know how much they love to go out and shop, and eat out, and go to hotels, pump gas, walk on our outside downtown mall or long outside shopping center, and just be in public. They love all the things to look at, the music, even the smells. They love to dance at the store at the mall that booms the loud music out the doors. They love to pay the money to the person at the cash register. There are days, though, where the interaction of the general public we meet is so discouraging that it makes me want to protect our kids from the unkind reactions, and just stay home all the time.
I’m struggling with imagining now how hard it could be when I am a Mom in Zambia, where it is widely accepted that it is a curse or a sign of your own bad moral conduct to have a child who has special needs. So, will our participation in community life attract more attention, more comments than here? I live in free speech, forward-thinking America, where, supposedly, children who have intellectual disabilities are a welcome part of society, and I have a hard time going out in public. How much more challenging will it be for us then to be in a society where children who have intellectual disabilities are rarely ever seen in public, and therefore may not be seen as welcome additions. Can you imagine what the noises of our family will sound like then? What will our children reveal in the minds and hearts of the people of our new home? And what will my responses to their responses reveal about me?
