Justin, you waited all day Friday for me to come visit you in the orphanage and bring you your machine, a toy car that beeps, plays music, and spins its wheels on its own. I came Friday afternoon, like I said I would but I had no car in my hand.
I said, “I’m sorry but Shawn left early today and I don’t have keys to the toy room so I couldn’t bring it. The smile you spread across your entire face when I walked in waned as you stared at my words. Watching a little bit of the excitement you have everyday drain melted my heart.
It was one of the “Should have, could have, wish I would have” moments. Should have gotten the car in the morning just to be sure I could bring it. Could have told Shawn I was going to play with you and asked if he would be there to get the toy later. Wish I would have brought your favorite toy with me—a small thing capable of bringing irreplaceable pleasure—to meet your smile and clapping hands.
Justin, I was ready for you to continue being disappointed for the rest of our visit, to sulk while Luvince and Reese, who don’t have to sit in a wheelchair, chased me around kicking the soccer ball. But, you raised your eyebrows, looked up at me and suggested, “Monday?”
I nodded firmly. “I’ll bring the machine on Monday.” Then, you smiled again. You watched me play with your friends and then you said, “Litto?” You wanted to see the hound with the bark that terrifies and exhilarates you at the same time who sleeps, runs, and eats in the sunny yard outside the surgery ward. I said, “Yes! We can go see Litto!” Something I could do for you. You clapped your hands as I pushed you to see him.
Justin, I want to know where you get the strength to smile even though cerebral palsy makes your legs like sandbags, too heavy for you to lift, and your mouth move slowly like wet clay when you talk.
Is it because 13-years of pain is all you have known that you never complain?
Why aren’t you bitter like the grapefruits on the trees outside that the wind shakes off before they have the chance to ripen?
When your friend and playmate—the 6-year old who can always understand the communications you struggle to coordinate from your mouth muscles—left you and the orphanage to live with a foster family, the only person who could tell you were sad was your physical therapist. She only knew because after working with her you wanted to stay inside alone instead of watching what happens outside the orphanage from your normal place under the shade of a lime tree that reaches its arms over the orphanage porch.
How do you wait and watch all day? What do you notice as you watch families enter and exit patient rooms across from your home in Kai Mira? Do you see tears when patients pass away? Are you bored of watching doctors and nurses stick needles in peoples wrist vanes to drip salty or sugary water into their blood?
How do you continue to smile through the frustration of my failure to understand you when you try to tell me what is clear in your head but lags on your tongue: you are slipping in your chair?
What do you think about when you can’t lift yourself up? You understood when I couldn’t move fast enough as you slid to the floor. You laughed when you hit the cement because you knew I would never let you fall on purpose. You knew that if you smiled, my face looking at you would also smile instead of gasping.
Justin, if you didn’t laugh, didn’t keep trying to form words to tell me what you need, didn’t reach your neck over the back of your wheel chair to share your huge smile with me when you sense that I am behind you, didn’t sit and let your eyes devour everything in their reach as you stare outside the orphanage, didn’t wiggle your entire body with laughter when I put the “machine” in your hands, didn’t plant joy in the form of smiles and cuddles in me when I visit you, what would I do?
