We live in a really small New England type town. There are three traffic lights with four roads, two of them that are used like highways. These four roads lead to the center of town. You can get all the way from one end to the other in four minutes hitting every light. Since we sold our first home at least one of the four main roads coming in have had construction on it at all times. It’s amazing one tiny little town can have so many orange cones.
Our town has been likened to Mayberry and people come far distances to see our foliage in the fall and the spring. It is beautiful, but it comes with the cost in that all tiny towns, everyone knows everyone. They flourish with the gossipy details and little nuances that people can usually hide in a big city are amplified. You are assessed consistently not always with condemnation, but introspectiveness. We do it daily, even subconsciously, regardless of where you live, but in this small town, amazingly our daughter is not the first child to come through the school systems with a limb difference.
There was another boy years ago with only two fingers, but within the first few years his mother pulled him out to homeschool. I can’t tell you how many times I waffled choosing what to do with our little peanut, and I had almost come to terms with keeping her home both because she is my baby and selfishly I wanted that extra time with her. Of course I want to protect her and I can’t do that from other five year olds that are so perceptive.
One day early October, while she was finishing soccer practice, she asked to go play on the playground. It was a nice day, so we said sure. I think inherently she has understood that the monkey bars and ninja warrior style spinners are a challenge for her so she gravitated to them like a perpetual mountain to climb. She would get up to that top ladder reach out with all her might with her left hand, grab onto that first bar and hang there. With pride and joy she could do the one and I can’t say that it mattered to her that she could do more than that. This particular day a soccer player from the same age group watched her vividly. After a minute or two she came up to me and asked what happened to her arm. I shrugged and said ask her. Marley was determined to continue to hang on over and over and over again; she would climb, grab and hold on for dear life with a joyful smile across her face. After a few seconds she’d drop only to mount the ladder again. The little girl stops her and asks what happened to her arm. Marley not wanting to be disturbed, grumbled with a big UGH. A little girl comes back over to me and says she doesn’t want to talk to me. I said that’s okay, but being relentless she wasn’t interested in being put off, I say she had surgery. The little girl finding this a satisfactory answer shrugs her shoulders goes off to play. A few minutes later another little girl which one could presume was an older sister comes over me and says what happened to her arm? And then something amazing happened. The first one comes over and says she had surgery. They both shrug and continue to play minute or two later a third sister of the same family, a little older than the other two comes over stares for a minute and says to no one in particular what happened to her arm. Both sisters in unison say she had surgery. However, this sister being a little older and a little wiser, says my friend had surgery and his arm doesn’t look like that, but they all shrug and continue playing side-by-side with Marley. In that moment, the answer was given to me.
I think when we’re given roads to go and we expect them to take us home, but faced with detour after detour we can choose to look at that though it’s this punishment, be at the universe, or God, or whatever. But if we, for just a minute, take a look around and really see where that road has taken us sometimes it can take us to the most unexpected places. I came home that day and said to my husband your girl’s going to school.
She is almost finished with her first year. It is still the best decision I thought for certain I wasn’t going to choose. That day the road did not lead me home and for that I am eternally grateful.
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