Flowers...

Like a beautiful garden, light pink, yellow, fuchsia, red, peach roses, lavender, purple irises, pink gerber daisies, indigo delphinium, lavender, sage, mint, magnolia trees white with expensive ladies’ perfume.  Each flower unique but lovely, full of potential.  Like the poem at a local garden, “Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky” by Khalil Gibran.  Flowers are God's art showing us the limitless.  A patch of clover may reveal three leaves, rare to find four…

The Gardner plants the seeds for each flower, plant and tree. The clover grows without effort.  The Gardner, as my Dad use to say, “keeps the faith.”  It will all bloom like so many stars in a night sky.  As parents we, too, “keep the faith.”  Our children will grow and blossom.

Georgia O' Keeffe said, “It takes time to see a flower.”  Her paintings show that she took that time to not just look but to see the flower.  We must take the time to be in the present as the book, Allen our friend, reminds us.

Present.  All we have.  See our children and the beauty they each possess.  Like a gorgeous flower.  Each extraordinary in talents and unusual in how they appear.  At brunch the other day at Christina and Allen's (dear friend's whose visit Michael missed for a ninth row Eagles game), I gave them a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were ones I had never seen before, unique but magnificent in their difference.  Like all flowers, the same.  Their power was not missed because they were different.

Everyone is quiet.  His shoulders are out.  He is on my belly.  Plop, the placenta comes out.  Internally, I dance that this labor was the easiest of the three boys.  No tearing.  A quiet deafening takes over the room like first snow.  Doctor touches my hand. She says, "his ears, his eyes, the neck are characteristic of ‘Down babies.’”  W H A T?  My mind races that life is over, that our children’s lives are over.  Then a flash like a light…I think of a cutie pie, Georgie, from my teaching job.  All last year, he stopped by my classroom to say, "Hi, Mrs. Schwartz."  I calm my heart with this image.  No group photo is taken like the others.

In the hospital I am given a book on Down Syndrome.  I could not open it.  I did not want to see the pictures.  I could not see the faces.  It would just be a reminder how my life was ruined.

It would be Georgie's mom, who visited me in the hospital.  Her words still hold us up.  Grace told me what her Dad told her as I cried into the phone.  She said, “People will respond to him the way that you respond to him.  He is just an addition, he is not taking anything away from Josh or Sam.  He is just an addition.  Say the serenity prayer, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."  I cried again uncontrollably at her balm.  It was medicine for my soul.  I write her words down, each one carrying power to turn things from upside down to right side up.

Grace continues to impart her wisdom. "Be happy, celebrate every day, make holidays special, decorate, distract yourself, read good books like Chicken Soup for The Mother's Soul and Sarah Breathnach’s Simple Abundance. Get him a cute haircut, always dress him well."  Blessed.  Grace knew what I now know.  Alex is the BEST, a flower unlike and like all flowers.

In the hospital that month Alex was there, Grace said look at his ten tiny cute toes and ten tiny cute fingers.  Love.  We all fell in complete and total love with this baby.  He was diagnosed with Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) but it does not define him.

Cecilia supports us and shows us her AMAZING family.  Her son, reading Korean, signing and reading just one year older than Alex.  Cecilia is a person that I could not imagine my life without, like Grace and Mara.

My dear friend Mara would come with her adorable children.  Showing me you look like a model in Burberry and your children can look like hers, ADORABLE and CUTE!  I will never forget her appearing at the NICU with a gift for us with her children. She and Grace and Cecelia and many others remain our friends.

I met Mara through the doctor at the NICU, Grace was a parent in my school that I was connected to from my book group family and Cecilia was a person my doctor helped connect me to.  Reach out, others are here.

It is so funny, now I seek pictures of children with Trisomy 21.  They are GORGEOUS and RARE like a shooting star.  I see BEAUTY, LOVE, JOY and children.  I do not see the medical diagnosis.  Like trees, flowers and clovers...each BEAUTIFUL, EXQUISITE and EXTRAORDINARY.  Keep the faith....

When you find yourself in a garden or in a patch of clover or near the trees look and see...find the difference and see the similarities.

Sincerely, 

As a Guest in the Stork’s Nest~

Mama Nancy

*Stay tuned for mama Nancy's blog each month*

Artwork by Michael Schwartz