If I’d been given a medal for each “I don’t know how you do it” that had been passed my way in the last eight years…wait, what am I saying?
There are no medals for raising a disabled child. Even though we’re the endurance athletes of parenting. Up at crazy hours, tending sick and weak children. Pushing our bodies, to compensate for our offspring’s lack of strength or physical ability. We are the Iron-Moms. The Iron-Dads.
For this next stage in the race – the stage where we moved our forever kid into his forever home – I was prepared mentally.
For the years leading up to the moment that Travis the Lionheart would leave his family home to live permanently in a home for children with special needs, I had examined this dramatic life choice from every angle.
1. How will we pay for the cost of his care?
2. Is it fair to spend such a big chunk of the family finances on one person? (More than the bond payment on our house, if you must know.)
3. How will I cope not having my own flesh and blood under my roof? Will he be safe?
4. Will my relationship with Travis change? Will he hate me?
5. Will my relationship with his younger brothers change? Will they hate me?
6. Will I become a better mother? A better wife? Or a blubbering train wreck?
7. And so on, and so on.
A mental race plan: scribbled down and scratched out and dog-eared from reading.
It has been one month since Travis moved to Oakhaven. He is home for the weekend – only his second visit back home.
He’s okay. We’re okay.
Oh, I cried buckets those first few days he was gone. I was the crazy mother, WhatsApping at all hours: “Has he had something to drink?” and “It’s 8pm, is he asleep yet?” and “Can you send me a pic, quickly?”
But I’d prepared myself for an emotional breakdown. Cleared my schedule. Iron-Mom, wrestling with her monsters as she bikes 21km through the Rocky Hills of Helicopter Parenting. She knows she needs to let go and freewheel, but will she? Spoiler: she will.
But I wasn’t prepared for the stabby hurt when I saw that Travis is growing up without me. In the car on the way home, my eyes searched his face. Some of the softness has left his features, he is a bit leaner, and for one panicked flutter I thought I saw some fuzz on his top lip but it was just a smear of dirt. Thank goodness.
So this is what the rest of my endurance race as Trav’s mother will look like, the race to reconnect with my son on each visit home. To quickly familiarise myself with the growing boy on the drive back to his “other house”, so that we can get on with the business of being a family for one whole weekend before we say goodbye again.
This wasn’t on my race plan, but I’m rolling with the changes, because I’m his Iron Mom.
Leave a Reply