Dear Robin, 24 December 2007

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24 December 2007

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Dear Robin,

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I know you're having a bad day today. A really, really bad day. I know it's one of a long series of bad days, of self-doubt and recrimination and questioning. Days of wondering if there is in fact any light at the end of your tunnel or if it just keeps going on forever, never getting any brighter. I know you're afraid of the challenges Maya faces, the challenges that you face as her mother. Afraid for her. I know about the worries for her future, the fears. I know. I know that cold tentacle of fear that is slowly strangling you.

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I wish I had a way to reach back to you. To reassure you. To let you know that the road ahead is long, and I won't fool you, it's got its own twists and turns and it isn't an easy path, not for you and especially not for Maya, but that just a year later things will already look very different from how they appear today, with every sign that things will just keep getting better and better.

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Maya will spend the next year working her ass off. She will have speech therapy, and occupational therapy (that one is a story for another day), and weekly sessions with a developmental psychologist, and she will attend a special communications kindergarten where she will be in a class of just eleven children and where she will also receive twice weekly speech therapy (in addition to the weekly afternoon session she already has), occupational therapy, and art therapy. She will learn songs from the music teacher and sports from the gym teacher. She'll have a wonderful classroom teacher and aide. All of these people, and you and Jay, will help her break free from her shell and struggle, hard, to become the Maya still hidden deep inside right now.

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This is Maya today, just 14.5 months later, mugging for the camera as she bakes chocolate chip cookies with her dad. She's quite a ham your Maya. She loves to perform - she sings, she dances, she poses for endless photos. Heck, she begs to have her picture taken. She was moved to the very front row for her recital because she did her routine so beautifully. She goes skipping off to visit the neighbors when she wants a little treat (yes, the neighbor is still giving your children way too much chocolate, but at least she's learned to make them ask you if it's okay first, and you know she does it out of love), she makes up games and plays pretend, she loves princesses and fairies. She befriends other children in the playground and goes off to have adventures with them, yesterday she was even leading them on a hunt for an imaginary treasure box buried in the sand. This from the girl the experts just told you might never achieve symbolic play or be interested in other children.

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She comes home from school each day with stories of what she's done, actual real stories. She even tattles on other children who've misbehaved and has learned to tell children who are bothering her "you don't bug me - I'm not paying any attention to you!" and then to get up and walk away. She draws pictures and makes cards for her friends, which she writes herself (with a grownup helping with the spelling). She talks, and she listens. And if she wants something she can't have she's (eventually, she's still five after all) willing to bend or negotiate to reach a compromise.
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She's extraordinary your Miss Mouse. It's been only a year, but in all honesty if she didn't still look like the same golden imp she was before you wouldn't recognize her. She's incredible. She glows. She's comfortable in her own skin now, and happy, and it shows. She's completely changed, it's like she's a different child. It's like she's the child she was meant to be, the one that was hidden inside all this time looking for a way out. The child who spent Independence Day cowering in a corner didn't even flinch at all the firecrackers that kept going off outside in the runup to Purim, though she did say that she preferred the pretty colors of fireworks to the empty noise of firecrackers. Specifically she prefers the gold colored fireworks.

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Some things still won't come as easily to her as they would to another child, some other things may never come easily, but she is learning and growing and changing each day.

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And look closely - she's even wearing a blue shirt, one that she picked out herself (because yes, I actually dared take her shopping - at a crowded outdoor night market!). The girl who wore pink every single day for nearly two years is wearing a blue shirt today.

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Hang in there Robin. It's going to be a long, hard ride, and it isn't over yet, but the view out my window is glorious.
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Love,
Robin, March 2009
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I haven't scribbled for months, but this one finally woke up my long dormant writing muse. Who knows, perhaps she'll stick around for a while. I hope so, she's been missed.
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For a completely different take on this prompt, here is the post I did back in August 2007 for the Sunday Scribblings prompt "Dear Diary".
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