If You Could Read My Mind

I had been avoiding her call for weeks. Yesterday, as I typed up my “To Do” list for the week, or my “Basic Weekly Plan” as I call it, her name reappeared. The issue that is causing this procrastination, are the transition plans for Dear Son after high school. The transition plan, documents the family’s wishes for their child’s future, when they leave the school system. She wants to know about my “vision” for my child’s future and specifically, “What do I want my child’s day to look like, when he exits the public school system?” From there, they will spend the next four years, developing his high school goals, around that vision.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s a good idea, but at fourteen, it’s a little late to ask me what my “vision” for this child will be. My dreams for Dear Son were buried a long time ago when I was picked up like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and tossed into the wonderful world of healthcare. As Dear Son lie bedridden, I find the calls for his future planning quite heartbreaking. But the breaking of a mother’s dream, was insulted by the school system, long before now. When Dear Son was in elementary school, I had to endure every school handout of fall football tryouts, along with basketball, baseball, soccer and every other sport you could imagine. In the meantime, I was still waiting for Dear Son to take his first steps, “alone”. Dear Son’s notebook, that was attached to the back of his wheelchair, was filled with these daily reminders, of what was never to be. I asked repeatedly for these not to be sent home to the Physically Disabled classroom or even just to Dear Son, however my request fell on deaf ears. It seems it would be “discriminatory” to “not” give each child the same information. Sometimes, it’s more important to be kind, than to be right.

My dreams for Dear Son are like a lot of Moms. To see their son grow up, date beautiful girls, have his first kiss, go to college, watch him get married in a church and have a family of his own. And in that order. I dream of my son doing what he loves and seeing the joy in his face. I want to be there when he buys his first home or has his first son or daughter. I want to be a Grandmother, of course. I want to see my son in my grandchildren’s eyes and see the world through their rose colored glasses as we make play dates in the park.

Instead, I will watch him deteriorate, doing less and less as the days goes by, instead of more. I will see the fire in his eyes slowly fade away and eventually burn out. I will be left with the ashes where a grand fire once was. I will watch his eyes when we are out somewhere, when he looks at other girls his age, and they ignore him like the plague. As handsome as he is, the normal girls have no time for him due to a nasty twist of the gene. If he was normal, these same girls would be tying up my phone lines, at all hours of the day and night. I will watch him on our daily walks around the golf course, on the jogging trail, as the other teenage boys run past him as they get in shape for their high school sports, never looking down at him in his wheelchair, but staring straight ahead. I will watch his eyes look up to them as they run by, imagining himself running beside them.

My dreams are different now and have been for some time. I want to take care of him at home, for the rest of his life. I want him to be comfortable in a sea of love and know that regardless of what parts of his body no longer work, that in his mother’s eyes, he’s everything she ever wanted in a son and that he will forever be the light of my life. I want him to know that there is no where else I would rather be, than taking care of him.

So tomorrow, I will make that call and tell her my wishes. And when I do that, a little song will play softly in the background, to the old Gordon Lightfoot song called, “If You Could Read My Mind” with the some of the words changed for my son. It would go like this,

If you could read my mind, Son,
What tale my thoughts could tell,
Just like a super hero story,
That all the young boys love.
And when you get to the part, where you can walk,
And you could then be free,
Then you would run and play.
And if you could, then I would cry,
Because my son, I’d be so glad for you.
But it is, not to be.

If I could read your mind, Son,
What a tale your heart could tell,
Just like a super hero story,
That all the toy stores sell.
And when you reach the part, where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me,
But heroes often fail.
And you won’t read that book again,
Because the ending’s just too hard to take.